Unified Review Theory

Marks and Spencer Turkey, Ham, Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce Baguette

2010-12-16T22:01:00.002Z

(Christmas Sandwich)

JAMES says:

Expectations were high for this one. The buzz in the office had been positive, and there was genuine excitement when it was first spotted for sale. These things literally happened. However something happened to undermine the expected M&S dominance, and that something was plucky newcomer Wenzel. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the baguette. They had overdone the cranberry sauce so it rather overpowered the other ingredients, but it was a competent little sarnie. But whilst I was eating I couldn’t help but mentally compare it with my former baguette. Whereas Wenzel’s turkey had been moist and fulsome this was a little on the dry side. And do you remember how the crispiness of the bacon melded with fruity cranberry? I’m sorry M&S baguette. I thought I’d moved on but this really isn’t fair on either of us. I don’t know if Wenzel’s will take me back, I have no right to expect it, but I have to try. In fact, I’m pretty sure they will.

I’m sorry Marks and Spencer Turkey, Ham, Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce Baguette. You deserve someone who will appreciate your rather uninspired attempt at a turkey sandwich and it’s just not me.

I hope this doesn’t mean I have to stop seeing your Liebkuchen?

4.8/10

Ginsters Turkey, Bacon & Cranberry Pasty

2010-12-13T09:19:00.001Z

(Christmas Pasty)

NEILL says:

Ah, Ginsters. It is an inconsequential but pleasing side-effect of having this blog that I know to the day the last time I was foolish enough to eat a Ginster's pasty. (Wednesday, February 18th, 2009. The "New York Style" Steak & Cheese Pasty. Bloody awful, 4/10.) But upon seeing this festive offering on the shelves of our local Londis, how could I resist? Cleary, my duty as a reviewer outweighed all considerations of taste, common sense or intestinal safety.

So, first impressions: cold, flavourless pastry with a texture the word "claggy" could have been coined for. And inside, that unidentifiable grey Matter so familiar to afficionados of the Ginsters range. The packaging claims this to be composed of 'Turkey, Bacon and Cranberry', so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and agree that that's what it was. I didn't see any cranberries in there, that's all I'm saying. The overwhelming flavours one is left with are of Cold Turnip and Cheese, which is slightly worrying as neither of these ingredients are actually listed.

Mmmm, Matter.

More than simply being an unpleasant eating experience - although it was certainly that - this pasty left me genuinely depressed for humanity. Whilst eating it, a vision formed. Of a man, perhaps in his late forties, unshaven, stumbling across a frozen petrol station forecourt somewhere in Britain. He is dressed in stinking, unwashed clothes, but there is no-one left in his life to comment on the smell, and he is too far gone to notice or care himself. He has children, but he has not seen them in years, and indeed between the drinking, the substance abuse and the onset of mental health problems, he can now barely remember their faces. He is alone, forgotten, uncared for by all and certainly by himself. And he staggers home now from the petrol station, back to his frozen, empty bedsit, clutching his reward, this pasty... his Christmas Dinner.

Ginsters Christmas Pasty: The Taste of Human Misery.

2/10

Pigs in Blankets Flavour Pringles

2010-12-12T20:24:00.005Z

(Christmas Crisps)

JAMES says:

It must be tricky to recreate the distinct flavours of both streaky bacon and cocktail sausages in crisp form, which might explain why Pringles have instead decided to recreate the distinct flavour of bacon flavour crisps.

3.3/10

Wenzel’s Turkey, Stuffing, Cranberry and Bacon Baguette

2010-12-09T22:17:00.003Z

(Christmas Sandwich)

JAMES says:

You may not have heard of Wenzel’s, if you don’t spend much time between Popiandy’s and the old back entrance to Woolworth’s where the homeless people hang out in Watford. In fact, if you haven’t heard of Wenzel’s it seems unlikely that you will know what Popiandy’s is. Think cut price Wimpey’s. But I digress. The point is, if you don’t spend much time hanging around the grimy end of the Harlequin centre you are missing out on one damn fine Christmas sandwich. The bacon is crisp, the stuffing squidgy, and the authenticity of the flavours can only lead me to think that Mr Wenzel is having daily Christmas dinners just to produce the leftovers needed for this most awesome of baguettes. And all for £2.50!

8.9/10

The Pret-a-Manger Christmas Lunch Sandwich

2010-12-03T11:22:00.006Z

(Christmas Sandwich)

NEILL says:

On paper it all looked so good. A Christmas Sandwich from Pret - a place where 'making nice sandwiches' is pretty much their whole deal. And indeed, early bites delivered on this promise. Moist, flavoursome turkey and a generous wedge of stuffing, combined with the wholly welcome textural innovation of a scattering of crispy onions. Unfortunately, all of these fine ingredients end up being rather drowned out by the port & cranberry sauce. I don't know if there was slightly too much of the stuff, or if it was just a bit too sweet, but halfway through I was struck by the unpleasant realisation that what I was essentially doing was eating a chicken salad sandwich that someone had put jam in. And there is a reason that 'chicken and jam' is not in the pantheon of classic year-round sandwich combinations.

And, again with the spinach. Who even has spinach as part of their Christmas lunch? NOBODY, THAT'S WHO.

I MEAN, MAYBE POPEYE.

BUT HE'S FICTIONAL.

AND CERTAINLY, NOBODY ELSE.

5/10

Morrisons’ Christmas Dinner Pizza

2010-11-29T21:38:00.002Z

(Christmas Pizza)

JAMES says:

Only 2 reviews in and already the rule book is out the window! Not that there is a world of difference between the modern sandwich and pizza, both being doughy arrangements existing to showcase the ingenuity, or lack thereof, of the additional ingredients. The Unified Review Theory overview of Christmas snacks is a broad church and does not discriminate against any as long as they contain turkey and stuffing.

It must have been an exciting moment in the Morrison’s food labs when they squared the circle of how to combine Christmas with pizzas. This they did by adding the key ingredients of a Christmas dinner, namely cooked turkey, stuffing, bacon, cranberry, cheddar cheese and tomato sauce, to a pizza base. The genius, you see, is in the simplicity. The finished article is maybe less than the sum of its parts, and those parts are fairly lacklustre to begin with, but you have to reward their demented genius.

Better still was the cheese board pizza, but that is a whole other review.

6.8/10

Starbucks 'Turkey Feast' Sandwich

2010-11-25T21:12:00.006Z

(Christmas Sandwich)

NEILL says:

December! When the shelves of our nation's supermarkets, coffee shops, petrol stations and pharmacists fill up with that most deliciously festive of foodstuffs, the Christmas Sandwich! Indeed, the sheer preponderence of competing Christmas Sandwiches may seem bewildering to the uninitiated consumer. If only - if ONLY - there were some way to gain an objective and thoughtful comparison of the numerous varieties of Christmas Sandwich available, in order to make an informed and correct decision about which Christmas Sandwich to eat.

Thankfully, Unified Review Theory has returned for it's latest and most socially useful undertaking to date - The Grand Christmas Sandwich Review, 2010. As part of this project, Neill and James Cameron will set about the difficult and thankless task of eating a whole bunch of Christmas Sandwiches, from all the leading high street retailers, and telling you which one is best.

We begin our noble humanitarian undertaking with the Starbucks 'Turkey Feast', an appropriate starting point in that it exemplifies perfectly the standard attributes of the typical British High Street Christmas Sandwich. The basic elements of Christmas Sandwichiness are there - Turkey breast and stuffing, along with a selection of standard sandwich ingredients to round out the proposition - in this case mayonnaise, beechwood smoked bacon and baby spinach leaves. And there in a nutshell you have it all; both the glory of the Christmas Sandwich and the inevitable mild disappointment of these prepackaged homogenised commercial versions. The True Christmas Sandwich - the sandwich you actually make with leftovers of your Christmas dinner - is, as all right-thinking gourmands realise, the Single Greatest Foodstuff God Ever Bequeathed Onto His Creation. The sheer glory of the True Christmas Sandwich makes me indirectly grateful for the existence of Christianity. And yet all commercially available Christmas Sandwiches can only ever be a pale reflection of this glory. In an attempt to pander to the mass market, they tone down the sandwich's noble excesses and substitute bland conformity. For example, what is mayonnaise doing in this sandwich when everyone knows that Cold Leftover Gravy makes a far finer condiment. And I submit that no-one has ever made themselves a nice sandwich with the remnants of their Christmas dinner and thought, you know what? This would be better with a bit of spinach in.

Still, for all that: it was okay. Better than most Starbucks sandwiches, but doomed by its nature to remind one of the far, far greater sandwich that awaits us all in a mere month's time.

Bit dry, maybe. Could have used a little extra seasoning.

6/10

URT Podcast 007 - The Dark Prince of Froot Loops

2010-02-04T18:16:00.005Z

“Batman!”

In this special grim and gritty edition of Unified Review Theory, Neill and James brood their way through reviews of The Dark Knight, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and, um... Froot Loops. Neill also attempts to break the record for the number of times someone says “Batman” in a podcast, whilst James’s family attempt to kill each other.

Episode 7 - The Dark Prince of Froot Loops

Unified Review Theory

Download mp3 | Visit podcast page

Show Notes 007:

The Dark Knight was 2008, James was right
Heath Ledger was in Home & Away, so that’s almost Batman
James would like to apologise to everyone else in the world for calling them chumps. Though, y’know, if the cap fits.
Nestor Carbonell played the Mayor in the Dark Knight, as well as that guy in Lost and the love interest post-Judd Nelson in Suddenly Susan. Check out his work and eye-lashes here! http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004801/
Neill has never marked the Dark Knight, once more he is misremembering.
James REALLY needs to get a better microphone.
The angry background shouting is Debbie (Mrs James) berating Lex (James Jnr) for violence.
Hamlet was based on the 13th Century Viking legend Amleth, apparently.
Froot Loops do not seem to be available in France, but are in Germany.
You can follow URT on Twitter! Tweet-sized reviews at @urtheory, Neill at @neillcameron, and James at @pretzelsncheese.

Final Scores-

The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller 5.75/10
The Dark Knight 4.6/10
The Cowboy Wally version of Hamlet 9.5/10
Hamlet 6/10
Froot Loops 7.5/10

URT Podcast Special: BATTLE OF THE DECADES!

2010-01-05T11:29:00.008Z

"There were some terrorists, which was bad, and then there was Doctor Who, which was good."

In this VERY SPECIAL New Year's Eve-recorded episode of Unified Review Theory, Neill and James are joined by special guests Mrs. Neill and Mrs. James (or "Di" and "Debbie" as they seem to prefer being known) for an in-depth round-table discussion in which we not only review recently-completed decade The 2000s in their entirety, but also contrast and compare them with The 1990s, and also The 1810s for good measure.

Join us for a fascinating and only slightly exhausting debate which covers such diverse topics as the unexpected outcomes of the Last Great Time War, Opium Eating and why it is 'a boy thing', why Neill is clever and the other three are idiots for not liking Harry Potter, and whether the global climate of fear, tension and hostility precipitated by the rise of international terrorism was a Good Thing or a Bad Thing. You'll be surprised! (Note: you probably won't be surprised.)

Download MP3
Visit Podcast Page

Show Notes:

90's BBC sitcom Mulberry did in fact really happen. We didn't dream it.You can read about it here.
Yeah, sound quality is appalling again. Sorry.
To begin to list the errors, omissions and factual inaccuracies contained in this podcast would be a herculean effort, but if you feel you'd like to have a go, please go ahead.
Look, we were a bit drunk.
You can follow URT on Twitter! Tweet-sized reviews at @urtheory, Neill at @neillcameron, and James at @pretzelsncheese.

Final Scores:

William Wordsworth (romantic poet): 2/10
2000s (decade): 5/10
1810s (decade): 8/10
1990s (decade): 8.5/10

URT Podcast Episode 5: Metaphysical Mario Kart Mashup!

2009-12-14T14:36:00.008Z

In this HIGHLY EFFICIENT Very Special Episode of Unified Review Theory, Neill and James review popular Nintendo Wii driving game Mario Kart, while playing Mario Kart! They also review the philosophical concept of Free Will, also while playing Mario Kart. It gets confusing. Join us, won't you? Have listen here, download the mp3, subscibe on iTunes or just listen using the embedded player below!

Episode 5: Metaphysical Mario-Kart Mashup

Unified Review Theory

Show notes and final scores:

Neill apologises for mumbling.
FREE WILL scores an average 6/10 (NEILL: 5/10, JAMES: 7/10)
MARIO KART WII scores an average 7.5/10 (NEILL: 8/10, JAMES: 7/10)
So Mario Kart is better than free will! That's one problem solved, anyway.
Oh yeah, we reviewed The Year 2009, too. It got like, 4.5/10?
You can follow URT on Twitter! Tweet-sized reviews at @urtheory, Neill at @neillcameron, and James at @pretzelsncheese.

The URT Podcast will be back with a special DECADE IN REVIEW roundtable discussion, as soon as possible after Hogmanay. In the meantime, why not check out some of our old episodes at the URT Podcast Page? Or don't. Whatever you like, man. Hey, back off!

Pilgrim's Progress

2009-12-10T21:52:00.003Z

By John Bunyan
(Medieval Visionary Poem)

JAMES says:

(in the style of the work)

And so I had this really freaky dream, right, about this guy, right, this guy called CHRISTIAN, and he was really bummed out. He dwelt in the town of Despair, and house prices were just plummeting. There was also quite a bad write-up of the place in the ‘Let’s Move to...’ section of the Guardian Magazine. He tried to talk to his wife and children about it but they, like, totally didn’t get him AT ALL. Then one day there was a ring on the door-bell. And there stood GOD-BOTHERER.

GOD-BOTHERER: Why so glum, chum?

CHRISTIAN: I don’t know, I sometimes feel, like, what’s it all about?

GOD-BOTHERER (Spotting weakness): Well, that’s because you dwell in this crappy place. Over yonder metaphorical hill there is a wonderful city with excellent amenities, a thriving cultural scene and a tram system. Also, the grass is much greener than the rubbish grass here. It is called Croydon.

CHRISTIAN: How do you know of this fabulous place?

GOD-BOTHERER: It is all written down here, in this pamphlet published by the Croydon tourism board. So therefore it must be true.

CHRISTIAN: And can I reach it?

GOD-BOTHERER: Of course, the way is open to every man with an all zone travel card. But be warned, though many set out for Croydon but few can resist the temptations of the way.

So CHRISTIAN ran in great delight to his wife and children and said to them “Rejoice, for we are to travel to Croydon!” At this they were much surprised and his wife queried the wisdom of such a move, especially as her job and all her friends were in Despair. And CHRISTIAN tried to explain how meaningless such things were next to the glory of Croydon, but they just wouldn’t listen. So he packed a suitcase, told them he was going out for cigarettes, and left.

As he set out on his journey CHRISTIAN was greeted by his friend GULLIBLE, who asked him where he journeyed.

CHRISTIAN: I am travelling to Croydon.

GULLIBLE: Is it nice?

CHRISTIAN: It has trams.

GULLIBLE: Can I come?

CHRISTIAN: I suppose so.

So together they travelled to the train station. And their hearts were gladdened when they saw that the next train to Croydon was in only 15 minutes. So they sat and waited, and the fifteen minutes came, and went, and the departures board didn’t update at all until, suddenly, their train was no longer on the departures board, and no announcement or nothing. At this point GULLIBLE got slightly narked and went home, and CHRISTIAN cursed him, and went to find a guard.

CHRISTIAN: What happened to the Croydon train? It just suddenly disappeared?

GUARD: Engineering works, I’m afraid sir. There are notices up. You’ll have to use the
Replacement Bus service.

So Christian went and found where the buses went from and got on the bus, and found a seat next to SLIGHTLY INSANE.

SLIGHTLY INSANE: Are you travelling to Croydon?

CHRISTIAN: Indeed I am.

SLIGHTLY INSANE: Do you mind if I keep you company, as I am also travelling there?

CHRISTIAN thought this was quite an odd thing to say, seeing as how everyone on the bus was going to Croydon, but he thought it would be nice to have some company, so he acquiesced.

SLIGHTLY INSANE: I think Croydon is going to be great. What are you looking forward to the most?

CHRISTIAN: The trams, definitely.

SLIGHTLY INSANE: Oh yes, me too. I think they will be lovely, all shiny and red.

CHRISTIAN: Excuse me, sir, but I think you will find that the trams are blue.

SLIGHTLY INSANE: Oh no, they’re definitely red.

CHRISTIAN: Look, it definitely says here in the ‘Visit Croydon’ brochure that they are red.

SLIGHTLY INSANE: No, that is a mistranslation of the original Dutch. It should definitely be Blue.

CHRISTIAN: No. You are wrong. And stupid. And I hate you.

SLIGHTLY INSANE: All right, no need to be a dick about it.

And he changed seats, whilst CHRISTIAN shouted “Red!” at him.

In a few hours the bus reached Slough, at which point the driver asked everyone to disembark. CHRISTIAN mentioned that the bus was supposed to be going to Croydon but the driver forcibly let it be known that this wasn’t his problem. So CHRISTIAN left the bus, and as he sat in despair he was approached by DIFFERENT BUT STILL EQUALLY VALID VIEWPOINT.

DIFFERENT BUT STILL EQUALLY VALID VIEWPOINT: What’s the matter?

CHRISTIAN: I’m trying to get to Croydon, but the trains aren’t working.

DIFFERENT BUT STILL EQUALLY VALID VIEWPOINT: Well, why don’t you go to Reading instead?

CHRISTIAN: Do they have trams?

DIFFERENT BUT STILL EQUALLY VALID VIEWPOINT: No, but there is a big stone lion.

CHRISTIAN: Really?

DIFFERENT BUT STILL EQUALLY VALID VIEWPOINT: And an annual music festival.

CHRISTIAN: Reeeeeallly?

So CHRISTIAN set off towards Reading, but as he was walking past a brothel, out came GOD-BOTHERER, looking quite shifty. He spied CHRISTIAN and called him over.

GOD-BOTHERER: Where are you going?

CHRISTIAN: Reading.

GOD-BOTHERER: Not Croydon?

CHRISTIAN: Ummm....

GOD-BOTHERER: Because we talked about this, and I’m pretty sure we decided you should go to Croydon.

CHRISTIAN: I know, but...

GOD-BOTHERER: Besides, Reading is but an imperfect reflection of the majesty that is Croydon

CHRISTIAN: Have you been to Croydon then?

GOD-BOTHERER: No, the mayor of Croydon says my work here is too useful for me to go to Croydon yet.

CHRISTIAN: You’ve actually spoken to him? The mayor of Croydon?

GOD-BOTHERER: Not spoken, but he communicates to me all the time. Through the classified adverts in local newspapers. In code. He tells me I’m special.

CHRISTIAN: OK

GOD-BOTHERER: Now, go to Croydon or the Mayor will force me to stab you.

CHRISTIAN: Alright, alright, I’m going

So Christian braved the vagaries and uncertainties of the public transport system, and eventually had reached the foul city of London, where temptations are freely available. And as he was sitting on the underground railway, idly reading an advert for cheap international telephone calls again, he caught the eye of RICHARD DAWKINS, who was wearing a loud jumper.

RICHARD DAWKINS: Hello

CHRISTIAN: Hello

RICHARD DAWKINS: I’m married to the bird from Dr Who, the one who was with Tom Baker, did you know that?

CHRISTIAN: I think I had heard that, yes.

RICHARD DAWKINS: So, where are you off to?

CHRISTIAN: Croydon

When he heard this, RICHARD DAWKINS punched CHRISTIAN in the face several times, knocking him to the ground. Then he proceeded to kick him repeatedly in the groin, before spitting on him and walking angrily off.

And then in my dream CHRISTIAN approached the great station of Victoria, where there were Deli de Frances and Burger Kings and all was rejoicing, as CHRISTIAN knew he was close to his goal. And as he waited there for his connection he saw JAMES, who was hanging around fulfilling a narrative purpose.

CHRISTIAN: This is great, isn’t it?

JAMES: Hmmm?

CHRISTIAN: I said, this is great isn’t it?

JAMES: The station?

CHRISTIAN: No, the fact that we’re so close to Croydon!

JAMES: Oh, you’re going to Croydon are you?

CHRISTIAN: Of course, that is where everyone should go, it’s obvious

JAMES: I think it’s far from obvious. Even accepting the fact that Croydon is obviously a clumsy metaphor for the Christian Heaven (and I could add, not much clumsier than in the actual work), you can’t present it as a rational choice. You have the right to believe what you want, of course, but your dogmatic certainty, backed up by personal interpretations of ambiguous texts and flawed reasoning, is deeply unbecoming. Don’t get me wrong, you have some lovely imagery, but like a lot of the bible that’s all it is. It’s poetry, and not matter how attractive poetry can never be a replacement for open-minded debate. Except for most of human history that is.

CHRISTIAN: ....Screw You.

Then he came to the platform, and asked the GUARD if this was where he should catch the train for Croydon.

GUARD: Dunno mate

CHRISTIAN: What do you mean?

GUARD: Well, there’s only one train that departs from here, everyone has to catch it, and
nobody knows where it goes because no one has ever come back. Some people think it goes to Croydon, others Brighton, it’s all guess work. If I were you I’d just enjoy the station while you’re here, get a paper, go to the pub, and don’t spend all your time worrying about where the train goes. When it’s time for you to find out, you’ll find out.

CHRISTIAN: Typical British Rail.

And then I dreamt that I was eating a giant marshmallow, and when I woke up my pillow was gone.

5.2/10

Diagnosis Death

2009-11-24T20:31:00.002Z

(Film)

JAMES says:

New Rule: If you are a slightly weasely looking man in his 40s, with a wrinkly, shrivelled face, and you are writing a film, do not cast yourself as the romantic lead. Especially not if you co-star is 18. Double especially do not write a scene where you take the aforementioned 18 year old’s virginity. It is just creepy. Also, if your film features Jermaine and Murray from Flight of the Conchords but they have a combined screen time of less than 3 minutes, it is slightly disingenuous to feature them in the poster of the film. Finally, your film is rubbish. This advice may not be terribly universal, but hopefully it will be taken up.

3.4/10

URT needs YOU

2009-10-23T11:31:00.004Z

...to tell us what to review. That's right, our next URT podcast is going to be an ALL-REQUESTS special. James has rather foolhardily declared that we will review whatever our listeners ask us to, and so I guess we are honour-bound to do so. So if there is something which you particularly desire to hear us hold forth on for 10 minutes or so from a position of very probably absolute ignorance, just let us know! You can put your suggestions in as comments here on the blog, or via twitter (We are at @urtheory).

Looking forward to your suggestions! (And by looking forward to' I really do mean 'worried and slightly terrified by)...

Choco-Leibniz

2009-10-17T11:45:00.012Z

(Biscuits. Or are they?)

NEILL says:

Choco-Leibniz is a chocolate biscuit, which bears the slogan 'More chocolate than a biscuit', which I find rather confusing. It reads like a slogan translated from another language (presumably German) to English, by someone with an imperfect grasp of one or both languages. One way of interpreting the claim is that it means:

"More chocolate than a[nother] biscuit"

... i.e. that Choco-Lebinz offers a more generous proportion of chocolate-to-biscuit than lesser alternatives such as the humble McVities digestive or Hob-Nob, and such a claim is certainly true. Another interpretation offers an even bolder proposal; it is arguable that the slogan means to imply that Choco-Leibniz is:

"More [a] chocolate than a biscuit"

... i.e. that the aforementioned chocolate: biscuit ratio is indeed so prodigious that technically the product must be classified as chocolate, rather than biscuit. But that's just silly, it's clearly a biscuit. It's on the biscuit shelf in the shop, and everything.

The clue to solving this apparently intractable riddle perhaps lies in the biscuit/chocolate's name, so we must look to the works of celebrated 17th-century German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for an explanation. In his 1685 Discourse On Metaphysics Leibniz introduced his famed 'predicate-in-notion' principle, which claims that every single predicate of a true contingent proposition is contained within the terms of that proposition. If we apply this to the proposition "[Choco-Leibniz is] More Chocolate than a Biscuit", we can see that the predicate 'chocolatiness' is indeed contained within the notion of 'biscuitiness' - that is, that the idea of a biscuit logically contains the possibility of a certain degree of chocolatiness. And yet there is a contradiction, precisely because of the claim that the chocolatiness of Choco-Leibniz is higher than the degree of chocolatiness permitted by the concept of 'biscuit'. Paradox inevitably ensues.

Clearly the makers of Choco-Leibniz are on very shaky metaphysical territory. Perhaps they would have been better advised to seek inspiration for their slogan in another of Leibniz's theories, the idea that the world as it exists is, despite the existence of imperfections, suffering and evil, the optimal of all possible worlds that God could have created. Thus we get:

"Choco-Leibniz: The Best of All Possible Biscuits"

Which, actually, it pretty much is. They're very chocolatey you know.

7.8/10

Having an Infected Cyst

2009-10-07T15:48:00.003Z

(Condition/Journey into the Heart of Awfulness)

JAMES says:

You can probably guess that this is not going to be a glowing review. Or pleasant. Also, as no one could choose to experience having an infected cyst it will be of no use to anyone. Well, I had to suffer so why shouldn’t you?

There are a number of things that are undesirable about having an infected cyst. I will now list them:

1. The pain. The absolute burning constant unrelievable pain. Now, belonging to the gender I do it is normal for me to shun painkillers, preferring instead to complain to my wife as relief (mine, not hers). I am currently at maximum suggested dosage of both Ibroprofen and Paracetomol Extra, and am a long way past the pain peak.

2. The lack of sleep. In my case the cyst was on the back of my neck, meaning there was only one position I could lie in that was not agony. Unfortunately this involved my arm being in a very unnatural position and meant that very soon after reaching unconsciousness I would attempt to adjust my position, roll over and very suddenly and unpleasantly no longer be asleep.

3. The sore back. Having to hold my head in an unnaturally crooked position led to, along with mocking from my wife, a very sore back. Attempts to relieve this with a warm bath were not terribly successful as I had to perch awkwardly half out of the water to avoid my dressing getting wet.

4. The squeezing. When you visit a member of the medical profession, they need to remove as much icky stuff as possible. This is done by squeezing. Imagine a part of your body that is so sore that you wince if someone even touches it. Now imagine someone placing that body part between their thumb and forefinger, and applying as much pressure as they can. Repeatedly. Whilst you have to make conversation with them.

5. The lack of sympathy. Due to my aforementioned constantly tilted head I had many concerned enquiries about my neck. When I informed them of the state of affairs (I tried lying and saying that I had been stabbed in the neck during a bar fight but it didn’t fly), the concerned look would be replaced by one of disgust. It is unfair but despite the relative amounts of suffering involved, start mentioning pus and people just don’t want to know.

6. And they are were right. It’s horrible. Now the inflamed, painful stage has past it has settled on constantly producing a sticky and smelly goo, which I have to dispose of discretely.

7. The pain, again. It really was very bad.

The positives are:

1. It makes you appreciate not having an infected cyst.

2. Umm...

So, in summary, don’t get an infected cyst. And feel sorry for me.

1.3/10

URT Podcast, Episode 4: Sleepytime!

2009-10-04T13:03:00.004Z

In this very special episode of the Unified Review Theory podcast we review various subjects related to the subject of Sleep with the intention of providing suitable sleepytime listening for the toddlers in our audience, but unfortunately do so in an expletive-filled manner filled with SUDDEN LOUD NOISES.

Join us for a vigorous and wildly incoherent discussion that takes in such subjects as Flying Hippy Yoga Monkeys, Sleep Deprivation as an Easy and Cost-Effective Form of Torture, and the Amazing Phenomenom of Unihemispheric Slow-Wave Sleep Which James is Totally Bored By.

This episode features special rubbish clicky-fuzzy sound quality to simulate the feeling of being semi-conscious while listening!

(We promise to do better next time. Honestly.)

Download MP3
Visit Podcast Page

The Day of the Locust

2009-09-26T11:37:00.002Z

(Film)

JAMES says:

It was as if everyone decided that there were only a small number of films from the past that were worth watching, and these films must be watched for ever and ever until we all drown in a sea of Great Escapes and Godfathers and Jawses. An understandable reaction, I suppose, to the horrific realisation that you will never be able to watch every film, read every book, sleep with every hootchy mama. This explains the rise in these lists of 1000 things you must do before you die otherwise your time on this planet has been a complete freaking waste of time just because you’ve never found the time to sit through Sixteen Candles. If you can create a fortress against the great tide of culture constantly being spewed at you, if you can say ‘These things I will watch, the rest can go hang’, then you can escape that gnawing feeling that maybe you should have watched Revenge of the Nerds II, I mean the first one was pretty crappy but maybe the turned it around with the sequel, maybe it was all building up to some pretty biting social commentary.

A natural human reaction to mortality, but one that leaves you in danger of missing out on some pretty cool stuff that for some reason or other never made the canon. Day of the Locust, for instance (just in case you had forgotten what the actual subject of the review is by this point). I had never heard of the film version before seeing it, and the only reason I sought it out on Lovefilm was that I am currently at the point on my literary cycle where I am wanting to re-experience stuff I read or saw 10 years ago. I had read the novel by Nathanial West at university and not since, but it is one that has stayed with me and I am always curious to see adaptations of books I have enjoyed.

The Day of the Locust is set in 1930s Hollywood, amongst the bit-players, the art assistants and the wash-outs that live of the fringes of the great entertainment machine. These people are completely sure of their own talent, but are only able to survive by debasing their talent. The great clown becomes a polish seller, the visionary artist designs sets and the actress is a prostitute. But then aren’t they all. The characters sweep along in their own tawdry worlds, blinded by the glamour that is so close and yet out of reach, until into their world comes Homer Simpson (yes, really), an awkward repressed bumbler, the poor slob representing the consumer of the entertainment industry’s product and whose money funds the clouds the artsy types live in. It will come as no surprise that his life is not improved by this meeting.

The mix between fantasy and reality, between the degraded world of the bottom feeders and the divine life of the chosen few is captured well by the style of the film, as is the human cost of the fantasy being created in Hollywood. The sweat is always visible beneath the make up. The plot also sticks admirably close to that of the novel, allowing the characters to commit unforgivable actions that would alienate the viewer if they ever really asked for forgiveness. The finale, meanwhile, transcends the rest of the film. It was as if reading the Great Gatsby you find that the last page had been replaced by a Goya etching. When Debbie awakened after falling asleep as usual and asked me what happened in the end, all I could answer was the end of the world.

The only criticisms I have are with casting. Firstly they have that funny looking woman whose eyes are too close together and who seems to be in every single film from the 70s as the romantic lead. Secondly, the only guy in it that I’d actually heard of, Donald Sutherland, was completely miscast as Homer. Far from bumbling, he appears almost debonair at times, and it is unclear at times just why the character is acting the way he is. However all this is forgiven for the ending of the film, and I would beg all reading this to watch the film, tell your friends, and don’t let it become a forgotten gem. Um... might have missed the boat on that one actually.

And if you too have deep seated worries that you are missing out on cultural greatness in your life, don’t worry. Nothing that has been produced is entirely without value, nothing can be watched without some kind of benefit or enjoyment. Except The Edge of Love with Keira Knightley.

9.1/10

URT Podcast, Episode 3!

2009-08-24T08:30:00.009Z

Hey, why not go and listen to the latest episode of Unified Review Theory: The Podcast? Due to technical difficulties we had to come up with some review topics at very short notice, so in an inspired move we turned to the 'Random Article' button on Wikipedia for help. Enjoy the spectacularly random results as Neill and James discuss such wide-ranging and really interesting subjects as Status Quo's 1989 album Perfect Remedy, disgraced drug-abusing NBA player Dirk Dewayne Minnifield, and the Flag of Pakistan.

Also, James tells a funny joke! Although it's kind of only funny if you've played a lot of Mario.

If you would like to suggest review subjects for future episodes, to prevent this from ever happening again, please do so in the comments below!

Wikipedia links:

Dames

2009-06-24T19:53:00.003Z

(Broads)

JAMES says:

I knew she was no good the moment she walked in my office. Only one type of guy ends up scraping the bottom of the barrel where I reside, someone who has absolutely no one else to help them out. This gal could get fifty guys to die for her just by walking into the nearest bar, winking and offering casual sex. She looked like an angel, if angels could give you a look that suggested that they didn’t mind at all those thoughts you’re thinking, and maybe if you play your cards right... I don’t know, things might be more laid back up there these days. They certainly are down here.

I offered her a drink and she wasn’t about to say no. When I got back from the shop with the WKD Iron Brew she’d made herself comfortable, very comfortable judging by her expression, on my couch.

“Listen,” she rasped in a voice like Bette Davis narrating a trailer for the latest Terminator flick, “I need your help” She gave me some sob story about her husband going out to buy a packet of cigarettes and not coming back. It struck a bum note, any guy who went home to those gams each night would have to be dragged away by some kind of giant robot gorilla, and when I saw the weasely face in the picture that she slid across to me I knew I was being spun what we in the Shamus business call a Daily Mail exclusive. However, when she introduced me to her friends Mr Darwin and Ms Fry all doubts evaporated.

The case itself wasn’t too taxing. I recognised the poor slob straight away as the teacher at a Salsa class my old lady was always trying to drag me to at the community centre. I spent a decent interval running up expenses like an MP in a Kensington antique store then tossed hot-lips a nod in the right direction.

I must confess to a slight pang of guilt when I saw his face staring out at me from the front page Harpenden Enquirer next Wednesday, however I took consolation from the bulging wallet in my jacket. I tell you one thing though brother:

Dames, they ain’t nothing but trouble.

9/10

The Compleat Moonshadow

2009-06-22T19:53:00.005Z

By John Marc DeMatteis and Jon J Muth
(Graphic Novel)

JAMES says:

Yes, that’s right, I said Graphic novel. Not comic. If any work deserved to avoid the negative baggage of the sequential story-telling medium it is this one. Not only does it have a literary sensibility strong enough to justify the novel tag, it could even quite happily be a penguin classic if you added in a few humourless, patronising and distracting foot notes. The story of a young boy’s journey from innocence to experience, it falls firmly into the bildungsroman genre, specifically the masochistic bildungsroman of works like Candide or Nathanael West’s A Cool Million. In a presumed attempt by the author to punish his past self for his surrendered innocence (which, if we think back on our own over-earnest teenage years is all understandable), the eponymous hero suffers indignity, disease and betrayal as his romantic world view is extracted with a rusty hook.

When looked upon as independent sections matters are not always subtle, and you are reminded that the author also co-wrote the Justice League during it’s humourous late 80s phase. However if the characters are drawn with broad brush-strokes it is of a piece with what you might find in, say, Dickens or Moses. And it all adds to the archetypal feel of the work.

Perhaps the reason why few graphical works achieve a level where they could be referred to as literature is that they have twice the opportunity to fail. To succeed either the author must be one of the few, the happy few, artists who are also able to write well, or the collaborators are fortunate enough to have complimentary visions. That is definitely the case here, where Muth adapts his style to the plot sympathetically, from sketchy caricature to languid Klimt-esque eroticism, whilst not losing an over-arching and cohesive vision. And it’s mighty pretty.

There are, of course, downsides. Pleasure needs be bedded with her cruel master disappointment at all times, thus is the cosmic balance maintained. Throughout Moonshadow’s journey he is placed in numerous perilous positions, yet there is very rarely a sense of peril. Partly due to the fact that the narrator is the hero in his dotage, yet also due to a feeling of invulnerability as he drifts from one disaster to another. He even manages to keep his cat with him, for G’l Doses’s sake, whereas my two cannot make it to the end of our road without getting spooked and running up a tree with a tail as bushy as a Scotsman’s beard.

Also, whilst one gets a slight sense of superiority from reading a weighty novel on the tube, the stigma attached to having pictures mean this must needs be consumed at home. Finally, for the duration of the book you will have ‘Moonshadow’ by Cat Stevens stuck in your head.

Regardless, this is a work of real beauty and profundity. It's subject matter is all human life, and there are no definitive resolutions save that most definitive of all, and if you can read the final chapter without feeling the approach of manly yet sensitive tears then you are not welcome at my table.

I’ll lend it to you if you want.

9.3/10

BNP Wives

2009-06-22T08:22:00.012Z

(Sky Three Documentary)

NEILL says:

While flipping channels last night I had one of those curious 'did I see that right'? moments, flying through the long Freeview hinterland between where BBC4 ends and E4 begins. I went back a couple of stops and realised that, yes, I had seen that right. Sky Three were indeed showing a programme titled 'BNP Wives'. Incidentally, the last time I was so arrested by an intriguing title was Sky Three again, with 'Darts Players Wives'. This seems to indicate both a certain theme to that channel's output and a weird equivalence in the station controllers' minds between Darts Players and Far-Right Nationalism.

I only managed to catch the last 10 minutes of the show, which would not ordinarily be considered sufficient grounds for review, but based solely on what was contained in those minutes I think it's fair to say this may have been one of the most fascinating films ever to appear on British Television. As I tuned in events were already in full swing, with a series of scenes filmed at some bizarre BNP countryside fair. Fat-necked skin-headed men sat around in folding deckchairs, their demented tattoos of Germanic knights on proud display, watching some wholesome BNP-approved entertainment. This seemed to consist of a teenage boy singing Sinatra and a dumpy middle-aged woman reading hilariously, spectacularly bad poetry about her adulterous husband. Apparently her work was too awful even for the fat-necked tattoomen as they all left, and she finished her reading to an empty stage. The whole scene was utterly surreal, like watching a Village Fete run by Vogons.

It turned out that the betrayed fascist poetess was one of the Wives of the programme's title, three women involved in the BNP in various ways who were followed around for some time by the documentary-makers and given every possible opportunity to show themselves to be amongst the worst and stupidest human beings ever to drag down the grade curve of this green and pleasant land.

During one segment, the poet woman - who I think was in fact a BNP councillor - tried to evade questioning on the admittedly subtle and complicated question of whether Britain should in fact have gone to war against FUCKING HITLER. "To be honest, I've never really thought about it", she said, before starting a sentence that began "I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but..."

I don't think we really need to finish that thought, do we? Has any sentence worth hearing ever started out "I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but..."? I tried to write a few, just for the purposes of Comedy and honestly, it's almost impossible.

"I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but... it's raining"?
"I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but... I quite want a sandwich"?
"I don't agree with everything Hitler stood for, but... I'm a MASSIVE IDIOT NAZI WHO WRITES TERRIBLE POEMS"?

So just to reiterate, this is a person who is actively engaged in politics - specifically the politics of race and nationalism - indeed, who seems to have made those politics central to her whole life. And who claims to have 'never really thought about' such issues as Nazism, Hitler or Whether He Was Bad. This is either genuine, in which case it is possibly the most shocking and jaw-dropping stupidity ever expressed by a human being, or it is an attempt at being disingenuous so pathetically ill-advised as to actually be even more stupid.

Watching this programme was, of course, depressing in its way. But mostly it was just astonishing. To see these people going about their days, living in their seedy and depressing bubbles of hatred and idiocy, and thinking through it all that they are the normal ones. I honestly think these people fail to understand an important simple fact, so I'm going to state it here as clearly as I possibly can.

We - and I'm going to speak here for the overwhelming majority of people in this country who are, you know, NOT NAZIS - despise your ideas. We despise them. It's not that we are afraid of them, or that we don't understand them, or are 'not ready to hear them'. We understand them fully, we understand their roots and their implications, and we despise and utterly reject them anyway. The reason we understand all this is because a) we are so very, very much cleverer than you, and b) unlike you, we have actually thought about this.

The overwhelming ignorance that these people kept falling back on when pressed on any significant point was actually, in the end, oddly hopeful. It seemed to confirm something I dare to dream in my more optimistic moments: that most of what we call evil - this kind of low-grade goose-stepping flag-waving/flag-burning variety of evil, anyway - is just ignorance, at its core. And whilst 'evil' can seem mysterious and unstoppable, ignorance can be defeated relatively easily; by, oh I don't know, reading a book once in your entire fucking life. For example.

BNP Wives - the documentary, last 10 minutes thereof: 7/10
BNP Wives - the actual human beings portrayed therein: 0.4/10

Wasps vs. Bees – A Comparative Review

2009-06-07T17:56:00.002Z

(Insects)

JAMES says:

On the surface they are so similar. Both are yellow and black insects that turn up when it gets warm, sting you and go “Buzz”. However, scratch beneath the surface and they are as different as Flash and the Reverse Flash. Wasps are vindictive little gits who will sting you soon as look at you and serve no useful purpose at all. They kill more Australians than any other animals (which when you look at the competition is pretty good going) and if you have the audacity to drink fizzy pop outside then they are as relentless in their pursuit as a Glaswegian divorcee who thinks they might be on for some sex.

Bees on the other hand are ace (though not to be confused with The Bees, who are also pretty good). They’re furry, and have little interest in your beverage if there are flowers around. Also, without them there wouldn’t even be any flowers. And they make honey, which is one of the dopest foodstuffs ever, and the only one to never go off. If you were to find a jar of Sumerian honey you would still be able to have it on your toast, that’s how great bees are. Although, having said that, if your Asda economy clear honey has turned into crystals it might be an idea to chuck it.

Despite this, and in definitive proof that the creator of this world is in no way benevolent and that the Lombards had it spot on, it is wasps that continue to thrive whereas bees are in danger of disappearing completely. I mean, come on, won’t someone please think of the bees. Wasps, you can all officially go to hell.

Bees 7.9/10
Wasps 1.4/10

The Book Thief

2009-06-07T17:30:00.004Z

By Marcus Zusak
(Book)

JAMES says:

A girl in Nazi Germany has a cool dad and steals books. For some reason this interests Death.

From the start this book is obviously going for the magical and sentimental tone used so well by writers such as Louis De Bernieres. Not long afterwards you realise that the writer is no Louis De Bernieres. It is a difficult thing to pull off, having a book narrated by Death without it seeming annoying and crass. In fact, one wonders why you would even attempt it. In this case the effect is worsened by a series of lists and asides that seem to suggest that Death is a Nick Hornby fan. I’m not sure if that is a comforting thought.

It seems an admirable idea to have a book featuring an ordinary German family during the Second World War, however the stigma of such times is so great that the author feels the need to show repeatedly and explicitly that the family at the centre of this story are not Nazis. He might as well have made them English and had done with it. The father of the family does work for Jews when no one else will, refuses to join the Nazi party and eventually hides a Jewish man in his basement. Though it is difficult to write about the period without mentioning the Holocaust, it was rather refreshing to have a book which didn’t centre around it and so I found this development rather disappointing.

Something that also became very wearisome during the course of this book was the way that even though it was written in English some phrases would still be in German, then repeated in English. It made proceedings worryingly reminiscent of Chris Claremont-era X-Men. Unglaublich.

This is not to say the overwhelming sentimentality of the book was not effective at some points. The characters were likeable and so when some of them died (given the narrator I don’t think this is spoiling anything) it was very sad. However, the overall impression was of what could have been an interesting study of live under a totalitarian regime in war time just ended up like every other book you have read about WWII, only not as good.

And besides, Death speaks in capitals. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT

3.9/10

P.S. If anyone could recommend an actually good book about life in Nazi Germany, let me know.

URT Podcast, Episode 2!

2009-06-07T10:43:00.010Z

Yes, Episode 2 of the URT Podcast has belatedly arrived! In this excitingly rambling and incoherent SUMMER SPECIAL, Neill and James cast their critical eyes over two pieces of essential holiday viewing: the 1965 Elvis Presley musical 'Harum Scarum', and 80's Japanese animation 'Voltron: Defender of the Universe'.

Listen / download by clicking the image above, or: http://urt.podomatic.com/enclosure/2009-06-07T03_20_26-07_00.mp3

...EDIT: or indeed using this handy embedded player:

You can also now check out our new podcast page, where you can subscribe to the RSS feed and stuff.

Episode 3 coming soon! Well, sooner. And with more coherence, guaranteed.

Baby Sumo

2009-06-02T08:54:00.008Z

(ritualistic form of child abuse. But, you know, in a FUN way)

NEILL says:

The 'Baby Sumo' festivals held annually in Japan do not, as it turns out, actually feature two infants being forced to fight while dressed in tiny sumo outfits. This is of course something of a disappointment yet as is so often the case with Japan the truth turns out to be gratifyingly demented in its own unique way.

The one-year-old contestants are dressed in traditional costume and placed opposite each other in a ring, held in the arms of their caring parents. At this point the shinto priest refereeing the "match" proceeds to try and make each baby cry, apparently mostly through a combination of sudden loud noises and, if that doesn't work, occasional poking. In a further pleasing inversion of expectations / common sense / general normality, the baby who cries first is declared the winner, crying being considered a sign of vitality and strength. This leads unscrupulous mothers to surreptitiously pull hair and pinch cheeks in attempts to grab glory for their offspring.

In a variant of this festival held in Asakusa, Tokyo, the entertainment quotient of the event - which I think you'll agree is already pretty high - is ratcheted up further by replacing the shinto priest referees with proper sumo wrestlers, who hold the babies above their heads and bellow terrifyingly into their faces.

I'm considering suggesting the introduction of this practice at my son's nursery, as I think it would help toughen the kids up, sharpen their competitive edge, and provide a fun and highly amusing day out for the parents. I'll let you know how that goes over.

9/10

URTwitter

2009-05-22T17:15:00.008Z

NEILL says:

As should be now be apparent, there is a lot of Stuff in the world, and the business of systematically reviewing it all and assigning marks out of 10 is time-consuming, difficult and highly dangerous. A top URT think-tank of scientists, mathematicians and cheese connoisseurs was recently convened to assess the situation, and its findings are summarised in the following formula.

x(S+N)
_________
U

S represents the amount of Stuff in the world.
N represents New Stuff.
x is the rate of increase in the amount of Stuff.
U is the rate at which Unified Review Theory is actually managing to Review Stuff.

The implications are clear and terrifying. Not only is Unified Review Theory not currently making any significant progress in reviewing the Stuff backlog, but the exponential increase in Stuff means that we are actually, in real terms, moving backwards.

Clearly this situation cannot be allowed to stand. To increase our efficiency and Stuff Turnover Rate we are pleased to announce the introduction of URT on Twitter, whereby your faithful reviewers Neill and James will continue to review everything, but in manageable and convenient 140-character chunks.

You can follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/urtheory

Unified Review Theory - Reviewing Stuff For Today's Busy Lifestyle!

Watchmen

2009-03-29T17:53:00.003Z

(film)

JAMES says

Better than I thought it would be.

7.3/10

Going to the Cinema on your own

2009-03-29T17:44:00.002Z

(Solitary Pursuit)

JAMES says

I have no idea why this should be such an issue. You wouldn’t think twice about watching television or your neighbours on your own, so why should the larger screen size (not in all cases, I can think of some cinemas and friends TVs that have roughly comparable dimensions) mean that instantly it is unsafe to venture on your own. Like a pub or restaurant cinemas are designated social areas, and to venture into one on your own is basically admitting that you have no actual friends and might as well start having rambling conversations with the pharmacist as your only human contact.

I admit it is preferable to watch something with someone else, if only for the chance to critically evaluate/lazily mock afterwards. However, this isn’t always possible. Like most heterosexual people I am married to someone who doesn’t exactly share my tastes in films and whilst the majority of times when we go to the cinema (which due to our young child is approximately once every economic cycle) we can find some happy medium, there are some adventures into the hard core of geekery which she is too girly to wish to accompany me on.

I do have actual friends (or Facebook friends, which are close enough), but the majority of them have yet to fall for the lure of Suburban life and insist on visiting the capitals overpriced fleapits. So it’s just me, facing down my failure in the form of a disinterested ticket seller. And while I’m here, did you know that teenagers get a discount on their tickets? Why don’t we just give them subsidised glue and say goodbye to society while we’re at it?

Of course I am the only one in the place on my own. Having no one to go for a drink with beforehand I am of course in time to see all the adverts, enduring the looks of all the happy couples who regard me as they enter, before finding a pair of seats at a safe distance and starting to chat. Then they start to laugh! Like it’s Fun! Don’t they know they’re interfering with my enjoyment of the advert with the guy and the car and stuff. I console myself with my popcorn, too large for one so that if I were to at it all myself my flesh would dehydrate and shrivel like a Nazi.

And I have no one to play the Trailers game with. Which is probably for the best as I’m rubbish at it.

The movie itself is fine as, like death, you are always on your own watching a film. But then after the explosive climax you are thrown back into your own existence, and the silence of the solitary man is deafening. And of course due to the length of films these days by the time you get home your wife is in bed, and doesn’t thank you for your lengthy discussion on how you missed the squid but actually the new ending makes more sense philosophically. Luckily, that is where the internet comes into its own, and you are no longer forced to spill your critical seed on the ground.

Cinema-going, like bridge and sex, is at its finest with at least 3 other people.

3.4/10

Brighton Restaurant Reviews

2009-03-16T20:17:00.003Z

by JAMES

Oki-Nami

I am going to come clean straight away. The reason why I am going to review these restaurants is in the hope that word gets around that I might be reviewing a place and then maybe the serving staff would give me some goddamn respect. Hence the picture. There, that’s my face, remember it well waiters of England. It would be nice to get some kind of return for all this (admittedly minimal) effort I’m putting in.

Anyway, with interests fully declared, Oki-Nami. It’s a Japanese restaurant, as you may have guessed, in Brighton, and its fab. It is the ideal luncheon venue in that it is cheap, cheerful and with quite quick service. My companion and I both dined from the special lunch menu (we were there at lunch time, by the way), and were both very happy. The staff were pleasant and affable, maybe having recognised me, and the building was a lovely regency affair with twisty staircases. Any excess waiting was softened by the chopstick wrappers which doubled as origami patterns. My companion D had the very last tempura vegetables whilst I had pork belly (and is it just me, or is the pigs tummy the only thing they seem to be serving anywhere these days) with noodles.

For afters I had Japanese Millionaire’s Shortbread, though the only oriental element seemed to be some green ginger, and D had green tea ice cream which was refreshing but disappointingly not Tempuraed as promised. All washed down with plum wine and sake, enough to make me fairly giddy in the afternoon. My only criticism (apart from my other criticisms), was that there was a baby seated on the table behind us who uncannily mimicked both the looks and actions of our own child whom we had fled to the South Coast to escape from.

7.6/10

Alexander’s Gastronomy

It might undermine my apparent objectivity but we did appear to visit the two best restaurants in Brighton. Even if you were resident there you might not be aware of Alexander’s, located as it is off the main drag up and in the basement of one of the little hotels on the Old Steine. It is definitely worth the trip, as it is probably the finest restaurant I have ever dined in. It might be due to the fact that this is one of the first times I overcame my natural thriftiness and chose not to dine in a restaurant of the sort described above.

Or it might be all the booze we drunk.

Whatever the reason, it was great. There was a distinct lack of atmosphere caused by the remaining tables being filled by couples who seemed to have looked upon the place as a neutral location where they could sit and scowl in silence all night. But the waiter chap was friendly, and the toilets where Bali themed and reached through a secret passage, which I think is important. But most of all there is the food, the sort of food you wish could be conjured into reality by the sheer power of your memory, as memory could only ever be a cold reflection of the majesty of the process of eating.

I would warn you, though, don’t go if you’re a vegetarian. From the mighty amuse-bouche of pancetta on black pudding it was a big meaty fishy treat. I had my first ever lobster bisque as a starter, but it was the mains that really shone. Excellent ingredients cooked excellently seems to be the secret. My main was really three, a superb goose breast, a hare confit and some stuff which I never quite worked out what it was but tasted fine. As a special bonus I also got to eat my companion’s crackling as she had misread the menu. Eating other people’s food always gives it a little touch of specialness, which pushed this pork belly (see!) into the pork stratosphere.

The wine list was magnificent (we went for a sparkling wine from nearby Ditchling), the music was so good I begun to get paranoid that the guy had just nicked my iPod and put it on shuffle and the waiter (who turned out to actually be Alexander in the end) was very welcoming and enthusiastic when explaining the food. Also, by lasting three hours it solved our dilemma of what to do after dinner. We went to bed and watched TV.
Finally, a tip. Pretend you’re staying at the nearby Sea Spray hotel and get 10% of the bill (or actually do stay there, it’s great and has an Elvis themed room).

9.5/10

Delifrance

As if to punish us for such fine food, our final meal on the train home was straight from the anus of Satan. Due to my usual underestimation of how long it takes to travel by foot between locations and my insistence on having a hot cookies and cream milkshake (big mistake) we were unable to have fish and chips on the beach. My companion D was not best pleased as we ended up in East Croydon at 3pm still unlunched, so we decided to use our 10 minutes between trains to check out the culinary options available to us.

There weren’t many, but on a platform side Delifrance there were some surprisingly inviting looking Croque Monsuiers. Sure they were expensive, costing about as much as our tempura/pork tummy noodles the day before, but they were ham sandwiches with melty cheese on them, what could go wrong? The fact that they had a consistency more akin to bodily fluids than actual food, and a taste that could only have been reached by several months of consultancy, focus groups and hours spent in the lab trying to come up with the flavours most likely to cause someone to pull a face combining disdain and disgust.

I wonder if the whole thing is a cunning French satire on fast food?

Yuk.

0.5/10

Ginsters New York Style Steak and Cheese Pasty

2009-02-18T10:51:00.008Z

(Pasty)

NEILL says:

Ah, New York. What is the definitive flavour of such a multifaceted and vibrant city? A glistening slice of Pepperoni pizza from Lombardis? A pastrami-laden bagel from the Westway Diner on 9th? Or is it, perhaps, the taste of stodgy pastry, cold potatoes and a few scant morsels of greyish mechanically recovered meat, bundled together into the conveniently portable form of a Cornish Pasty?

Of course it is the latter. For a true taste of NYC, the knowledgeable modern gastrosexual-about-town knows not to bother with all the faff of transatlantic flights, currency exchanges and hilarious cultural misunderstandings when you mention your intention to "pop out for a fag", but simply to head to their nearest shabbily-appointed corner shop or 24-hour garage and pick up a Ginster's "New York Style" Steak and Cheese Pasty. Cleverly exploiting the often-overlooked culinary and cultural affinity between New York and Cornwall, this superlative example of modern global fusion cookery manages to send the consumer into heady international raptures; with each mouthful you will feel as if you are out on the town amidst the glamourous neon-drenched bustle of Times Square.

No wait, hang on.

It's a fucking CORNISH PASTY.

4/10

Sleepyhead

2009-02-15T10:48:00.008Z

by Passion Pit
(Song)

If you are down and in need of cheering yourself up, you could try putting The Avalanches' excellent debut album Since I Left You on the stereo in one room of your house, and the soundtrack to the film Lost in Translation on in another, and then rapidly bouncing back and forth between rooms on a space hopper while pouring Red Bull down your neck and emitting loud, shrill childlike noises. Or you could simply listen to this implausibly likeable song from american electro band Passion Pit's debut EP Chunk of Change and achieve largely the same effect, but with less potential for personal injury.

I cannot decide these things for you.

7/10

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

Mid-Week Drinking and it’s Inevitable Consequences

2009-02-08T13:04:00.002Z

(Mistake)

JAMES says:

In an ideal world we would all go out drinking on Friday and Saturday nights, wake up around midday the next day and head to the pub for a leisurely roast meat/newspaper session. Thanks to the incompetence or disinterest of the creator this is far from an ideal world. In many important ways it sucks, and one of the times this is most noticeable is when you have to spend time in the office environment the morning after a spree.

I would dearly love to take the weekend drinking path, but frequently find it strewn with obstacles. Generally obstacles that my wife has booked in and which involve me driving somewhere, precluding any kind of liver abuse. Just going to the pub and drinking beer fails to rank as a worthwhile social activity, and is also kind of awkward with a young child in tow. As such any drinking that is to be done in the correct fashion, eg. aimlessly, uselessly and regretfully, is chased into the social wilderness of the middle of the week. It is also pretty much the only time you can hope to find a pub quiz.

I therefore find myself blameless, an innocent victim swept along the tide of events by the inevitable march of history. It all starts innocently enough, with vague intentions of leaving after a couple, but I do find beer very moreish. There is also the danger of the round trap. Let me explain the round trap. Say you are meeting a group of three other drinkers, their names are not important. You are the second to arrive, being well-mannered yet not a loser. Your loser friend is already at the bar and you go to greet him. He offers you a drink. You accept. God is in his Heaven and all is right with the world. Shortly afterwards another friend arrives and offers you a drink, basking in the safe glow of your barely touched glasses. You thank him for his empty offer but decline and he sorts himself out. Drinking and laughter ensue.

And then you notice the relative state of the drinks in front of your party. You are reaching dreg levels, your sad friend is close behind you whilst your smug friend is about half way down. You briefly consider slowing right down, hoping smugface will overtake you and fall into the round trap. But he is in full flow about Buddhism or The Wire or something and, besides, that beer is very moreish. You polish it off, and make the offer of another drink, which is gleefully and unsurprisingly accepted. As you stand up in rocks your last friend, almost as if he had planned it. (He wouldn’t have, would he? Skulk out in the cold and dark just to not have to buy a round? No, the idea is absurd).

The end result of all these passive/aggressive machinations is that you are 4 drinks down and have only seen 2 drinks benefit (and late friend has ordered a gin and tonic, typically). Your only option is to stick it out for another two drinks, and hope smug and late don’t wimp out of their commitments. By this point you are four pints down, and have entered the Bizarro World stage of the evening.

“Stupid Humans eat a healthy nutritious meal before going to bed at a reasonable hour! Here at 11pm on a Wednesday night world we eat fried chicken and go to dubious establishments with late licences, before falling asleep on last train home!”

Eventually you make it home, waking up your wife, cats and child in the process which means you start the next day with a negative balance of goodwill. You also start it with a wounded disbelief at why your alarm clock is going off when it’s clearly still the middle of the night. That is, of course, if you manage to avoid the vicious circle of waking up too early, then worrying that you’ve woken up too early and being unable to get back to sleep due to this worry (and the fact that you have the first line of Leggy Blonde by Flight of the Conchords stuck in your head). However it happens, it happens that the healing embrace of sleep is replaced by the unforgiving slap of so-called reality.

At first it doesn’t seem too bad. Despite previous experience you think that this time, somehow, you’ve gotten away with it. It’s not until you’re safely ensconced at your desk that Har-Garr the Morning After Beast strikes with his full might. A hangover, when carefully nurtured and indulged with enough ginger beer and time spent on the sofa can, like giving birth, be a joyous experience. Stick it in front of a computer with nothing but the prospect of 8 hours of spreadsheets to look forward to and it becomes more akin to a breach birth whilst stuck in an elevator with only Zach from Saved by the Bell to assist.

You eventually make it, bloody and bruised, to lunch time and yet again taking a distinctly Humean approach to experience you decide that a big pile of junk food will be just the ticket for sorting you out. You are wrong, as you will shortly discover. The combination of too much greasy food and a ravaged digestive system is total annihilation, and I have yet to experience a workplace bathroom in which the inevitable results are entirely free of some kind of trauma.

And so the clocks refuse to move, your head refuse to stop pounding and your work refuses to just do itself for a change. It’s hell, nor are you out of it. Until you are, of course. The birth analogy is once again useful here because when you make it to the end of the day you solemnly vow to never do it again, but time smudges the horror and buffs the benefits and eventually there you are again, quietly sobbing into our keyboard whilst praying that none of your co-workers notice the congealed kebab stench.

Now, a confession. Though I have used ‘you’ throughout the piece I could just have easily used ‘I’ for, you see, I too have experienced the thrilling high and crippling lows of being drunk on a Tuesday night. It is not worth it. If you simply must drink alcohol outside the permitted time zones my advice is this, do it during the day at work, that way you can sober up by the time you go to bed and avoid the hangover completely.

A cautionary tale

3.3/10

Unified Review Theory - the PODCAST

2009-01-29T15:52:00.007Z

Yes, we have recorded a podcast! In this first-ever episode of Unified Review Theory, join your hosts Neill and James as we continue our ongoing mission to Review Everything. Only this time, you know, by TALKING. In this packed episode, we take it back to the 90's with a review of beloved time-travel TV series Quantum Leap, and get in touch with our highland roots with a frank and full discussion of the Cameron Family Motto.

Just click the above image , or follow this link:

http://www.archive.org/download/NeillandJamesCameronUnifiedReviewTheory-Podcast01_0/URT_podcast_00196kbps.mp3

We will put it on iTunes and stuff if we ever figure out how. Also, if we ever record another.

Your thoughts, comments and feedback would be very welcome, as would be suggestions of stuff for us to review in future episodes! Just leave comments below, or on our Facebook page.

Enjoy!

McVities Toaster Waffles

2009-01-20T09:52:00.013Z

(Low-effort 'convenience' foodstuff)

NEILL says:

Imagine waking gently from a deep, long, sleep. You push yourself up from between cool and crisp white linen sheets and let your mind slowly settle. What has woken you up? Not a noise - the house is blissfully quiet, the only sound being the gentle lapping of the waves on the beach outside. The light? It's true, warm sunlight is streaming in through the windows and across the bed. But that's not it. No, it's - a smell. A wonderful, rich, delicious smell. Someone downstairs is making waffles.

That is the dream that waffles represent, and it is a dream that is heartbreakingly poignant when one's real wake-up routine involves a regular 4am leap out of bed into a pitch-black and freezing-cold house to deal with a screaming baby who has the runs. So poignant, in fact, that it can lead one to doing odd, otherwise inexplicable things. Like, for instance, buying 'Toaster Waffles'.

The actual review: they're not aggressively unpleasant. They do taste vaguely waffle-ish, which is probably the best one could hope for. There's a certain degree of sogginess that is unexpected in something that is, after all, cooked in a toaster. But they possess one unexpectedly winning quality: the smell. Not only do they make your house smell like someone has actually been making proper waffles, but that smell then lingers with an astonishing degree of persistence and causes pleasant olfactory tingles of waffliness whenever you walk into the kitchen for the rest of the day. My wife suggests that the ideal solution would be to simply toast a couple every morning and then chuck them in the bin. But I think she underestimates my desire to eat soggy toaster waffles.

7/10

A Short History of Nearly Everything

2009-01-11T14:33:00.003Z

by Bill Bryson
(Book)

JAMES says:

A very handy book for a new father, as it gives me at least some of the answers to the barrage of questions I will no doubt be subjected to in a few years time ("what is wind? Who build the moon? Why don't trains have legs?" etc), however I think once again I have fallen victim to my inability to do anything other than start a book then read it in numerical order by page until I reach the end. This is probably more of a dipper. Several elements are repeated, mainly trying to make you comprehend how big or amazing things are (If you put every zero in a row it would reach to Sevenoaks, it was as if a cat had suddenly learnt how to conduct hostage negotiations overnight). The whole book is basically one big "Isn't it neat". And it is is fact neat. Although the next time a scientist tells you he knows something laugh in his face.

5.8/10

Ninjafied Rap

2009-01-10T15:34:00.008Z

(New Musical Form)

NEILL says:

One of the advantages of being self-employed and working from home is that I am able to play lots of really loud hip-hop, and rap along at the top of my lungs in an excruciatingly awkward thirtysomething-white-man fashion. In a more conventional office workplace this would be somewhat embarrassing, if not entirely inappropriate, but in the comfort and privacy of my own studio I am free to really let rip. There is, however, one significant problem with the practise. As a guilt-ridden middle-class liberal of impeccable credentials, there is.... a particular word that I am literally unable to say. Even in the privacy of my own studio, where there is no-one around to hear or be offended. And, unfortunately, it is a word that is used a lot in a lot of rap songs. I mean, really a lot. You know the one, it begins with 'N'.

This has caused me minor consternation for years, as when happily rapping along to The Roots or Nas in my pleasantly ridiculous fashion, I am forced to either simply skip over the word, performing a self-imposed mental version of a radio DJ pressing their cough button, or substitute a random incoherent mumble for the offending N-word. Either of these take a certain amount of memory and concentration, which are not exactly my core competencies anyway, and generally end up messing up my otherwise formidable Flow. Even worse are the rare occasions when I fluff the procedure and the word slips out, causing me to spend the rest of the afternoon in the throes of a crippling liberal guilt attack and worrying that my subscription to the Guardian will be revoked.

As you can see, this is a major problem for me. I would go further, in fact, and describe it as a major social problem for our times. However, it is a problem which I am happy to say I have totally solved. And all it takes is the easy substitution of the word 'ninja' for, you know, the other word. This is perfect, as:

a) it sounds almost the same anyway so the lyrics still flow perfectly
b) it renders even the hardest-to-excuse examples of gangsta rap into songs about ninjas. And I don't know about you, but I find that pretty amusing.

fig. 1.1 - The Wu-Tang Clan, Shame on a [Ninja]

fig 1.2 - Geto Boys, Damn it feels Good to be a Gangsta (Ninja)

fig 1.3 - Gangstarr, The Militia (Ninjafied Version)

My only regret is that this is without question the single greatest idea I will ever have in my life, and yet it is one that will almost certainly never make me any money. But that's it, my gift to the world and to future generations. You can thank me later.

9/10

The Originals:

Gangstarr, The Milita. Greatest video of all time? Very possibly yes.

Geto Boys, Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta. Doesn't it, though?

Teething

2009-01-05T02:37:00.007Z

(Developmental stage)

NEILL says:

I am unable to give an accurate review of the subjective experience of teething, as it was quite a long time ago and I don't really remember all the details. But I would imagine I didn't particularly enjoy it. What I can give you is an all-too-comprehensive account of the experience from the other side, as the parent of a teething one-year-old. Essentially, in layman's terms for those of you who are fortunate enough to not yet have spawned offspring of your own: it involves a lot of being awake when you would prefer not to be awake. One's nights become a soul-destroying routine of being wrenched from pleasant dreams¹ to spend several hours going through a futile cycle of milk bottles, teething gel, Calpol and "oh just leave him, he'll surely stop crying sooner or later". (He doesn't). Of course, when you do finally manage to successfully get the screaming ratbag back off to sleep, the mind then chooses just that moment to rebel and experience a perversely ill-timed bout of insomnia, and you end up lying in bed for hours in the middle of the night worrying and wondering about topics as diverse as whether the kid's okay, the global economic crisis and its likely impact on your mortgage, and whether this would be an appropriate time to get up and have that leftover ham in a nice sandwich with maybe a glass of milk.

I once heard about a scientific study which found that the impact of small-baby-enforced insomnia on one's mental acuity and intelligence levels was functionally equivalent to experiencing a mild but significant form of brain damage, and the only thing I can say about that is "well, duh." I do feel it gives one a peculiar insight into one's own parents. Have you ever wondered why your Mum and Dad were so weird? Well, it's because you, by the sheer fact of your existence and basic needs as a human infant, systematically destroyed their mental stability, judgement and decision-making abilities to the point where wearing corduroy trousers with bicycle clips seemed like a good idea. Are you happy now?

2/10

¹ Tonight's, since you asked: with the assistance of Marvel supervillains and Thor adversaries the 'Wrecking Crew', I was helping that woman out of the first couple of series of Teachers move her new soapmaking business' stock of Bath Bombs out of her old premises and onto a nice new canal narrowboat HQ, and everyone present was very impressed that I could carry the whole sofa on my back with no assistance.

New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-04T08:39:00.012Z

(Custom)

NEILL says:

I hate to come off as the predictably cynical misanthrope that, well, I am, but New Year's resolutions really are a load of absolute shit. Whether to "lose weight", "stop smoking" or "try not to have more than two bottles of gin before the milkman's been, except on Saturdays obviously, everyone's allowed Saturdays off, right? Right?", they are equally futile. It is entirely inexplicable why people persist in the delusion that their catastrophic character flaws, stubbornly resistant to any attempt at change for the rest of their lives, will somehow be magically rendered soluble by the fact that the last digit on the calendar has changed incrementally. If anything, the start of January is the worst possible time for embarking on any attempt at self-improvement, as it's cold out, everything's pretty fucking depressing and you're probably hungover anyway.

New Year's resolutions can be useful and constructive, but the key is to set achievable goals. If you aim too high you only end up failing, depressing yourself, and reverting to your destructive behaviours harder than ever, the only winner in the whole ghastly feedback loop of self-annihilation being Paul McKenna and his ever-growing empire of fraudulent "I Can Get You Off the Pipe" style self-help books. As such, I have decided this year to set the following - entirely realistic - resolutions for myself in 2009:

Learn all the (correct) words to the theme tune of Rawhide.
Train my one-year old son to say "Daddy" and give a sharp military salute.
Become rich and famous and successful and that.

One out of three seems a realistic target.

3/10

Lost

2008-12-31T16:54:00.019Z

(TV Series)

JAMES says:

It was so close. I almost didn’t start watching Lost at all. How nearly identical things might have been. The thought of a glossy drama about a bunch of whiny Americans trapped on an island didn’t strike me as my thing. However, having recently finished Robinson Crusoe, and also just returned from being stranded in the Pacific for a number of months following an ill-thought out mutiny attempt, I was in a desert island kind of place mentally, so thought I’d give it a try. However, as a backup plan I also played Scrabble with the wife, so if it was crap I hadn’t wasted the evening.

Jack, heroic

Luckily it takes very little of my mental power to beat Debbie, so I was able to follow the initially formulaic and lacklustre plot. That was until the polar bear appeared. A momentous polar bear, it marked the moment when American TV decided to embrace its slightly insane side. Or at least, when one show did, and then was quite successful and slavishly copied by everyone else.

As well as the increasingly intricate and ludicrous mysteries the show also had an innovative structure whereby interspersed with all the running around the jungle you get a little flashback story about one of the characters and the crazy things they got up to back when they had different hairstyles. This meant that you got a good mix of ongoing developing stories, and self contained little vignettes, something you don’t see so much these days.

And all was well and good and Boon died and that was even better. However, when it came to the second series the makers took the controversial decision to make it just really dull. The running around the jungle that was innovative and ground breaking in the first series now looked tired. Every other episode seemed to focus on Dr Jack, an actor with a face so dull it couldn’t really be said to have even one expression. When the momentum seemed to dip either they’d find another hatch or Sawyer would take his top off again and look angry.

Jack, scared

When this dampish Smallville of a season reached its end the shock news came through that free telly people would no longer be showing it, and it seemed like a natural time to give up on the whole thing. I believe a number of people went through a similar testing of the faith, but most of them failed like the disappointing idiots that they are. However, I was able to start viewing the third series in the format that fits it best, badly recorded video tapes. The first three episodes probably contained more excitement than a whole season of Britain from the Air.

The third series on DVD, along with the American Office series 3, got us through the hard first few months of parenthood, whilst the fourth series got us through the slightly less hard but no less lethargic recent couple of weeks. And whilst one of the most fun parts of it, discussing it with co-workers the next morning, has been Lost, at least I have the comfort of knowing I have seen series 4 whilst Neill hasn’t.

Jack, perplexed by the baffling metaphysical inconsistencies of his universe

Admittedly the whole thing is little more than ‘what’s in the box?’, ‘oh, it was a monkey in a hat, that’s slightly disappointing. But look, here’s another box. What could be in this?’ etc. Etc. But as Scooby Doo knows, mysteries are cool and distracting and help you fill up the wasted hours being working and sleeping. And that’s what Lost does. And if strange magical islands don’t rock your world there is an incredible assortment of humorously bad accents to laugh at, many of them inexplicably done by people who hail from the very area that the accent belongs to.

8.9/10

Buy Lost - The Complete Fourth Season [2008] on DVD from Amazon now! Then you too can lord it over Neill in an irritating fashion!

Get caught up:

808s and Heartbreak

2008-12-18T13:28:00.004Z

by Kanye West
(Album)

NEILL says:

One of the greatest strengths of Kanye Wests' three previous studio albums as rapper and producer was their diversity. On 2004's debut The College Dropout in particular, he covered an enormous amount of stylistic distance, jumping from driving gospel-tinged military march (Jesus Walks) to demented string-heavy instructional tape parody (The New Workout Plan) in the space of a couple of songs, and taking in such far-ranging topics as race, education, politics, and of course the vital importance of Hitting That. He extended this pick-n'-mix approach to collaborators, gleefully bringing in a wide range of guest vocalists and casting them against type, getting well-respected if slightly obscure 'conscious' rappers like Talib Kweli and Common to loosen up and rap about about pulling chicks (Get Em High) while bringing out a slightly deeper side of mainstream artists like Jay-Z (Never Let Me Down).

Given that this energetic eclecticism was such a strength of his previous work, it is something of a surprise that his latest album, 808s and Heartbreak, is almost wholly composed of Kanye himself abandoning rap to sing whiny vocoder-heavy ditties about being dumped by his girlfriend, with beyond-parody titles like 'Heartless', Paranoid' and 'Welcome To Heartbreak'. Over and over again. For an entire album. What is even more of a surprise is that the end results are surprisingly bearable, and indeed in places are actually pretty fucking awesome.

Far better than it had any right to be on paper.

6/10

Buy 808's and Heartbreak on Amazon now!

Let's take it back to '04! OLD SCHOOL.

Secret Santa

2008-12-14T13:58:00.003Z

(Annual Office Travesty of the Festive Experience)

JAMES says:

I am a man, and therefore I have trouble thinking of gift ideas. For my wife, my family, even for my brother who has pretty much exactly the same tastes as me (excluding The Athenian Murders) I can traipse around HMV for hours with a confused look on my face and still emerge unpresented. Who, then, thought it was a good idea to have to buy another present, this time for someone with whom my interaction has yet to progress beyond ‘Morning’ (not even at ‘Good Morning’ level yet) and discussions about the milk supplies.

Me, I thought it was a good idea. I am a chump.

The office environment has a way of dragging in that which is good and wholesome and pure in the world, and cheapening it. Look at parties, look at romances. Here it is taking something which is already quite fraught with awkwardness and possible missteps. Once you remove any present that could be considered offensive or even potentially offensive, anything that would involve some effort to purchase, anything they might already possess and anything over £10, you are left with the lowest common denominator of presents. This is why, without exception, men get booze and women get toiletries. Because women smell and men are all drunkards. What a sad indictment of our race.

This shouldn’t be a problem because of the secrecy clause (tee hee) in proceedings, but if anything dies quicker than genuine emotion in the poisoned environment of the office it is a secret. Before the wrapping paper even hits the bin you have a whole series of conspiracies along the lines of ‘I’ll tell you who I bought for if you tell me who you did’, and before you know it the guy you thought would really dig a ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul for Golf interactive DVD game’ is blanking you at the photocopier.

And people will also spend £4 less on you than you spent on them. I mean, I know I said £10 was only an upper limit, but come on.

2.7/10

No Country for Old Men

2008-12-06T17:27:00.007Z

Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007
(Film)

JAMES says:

It’s the Coen brothers, so it’s beautifully shot, and full of quirky but interesting characters; this time round they’re proper cowboys and Indians (well, Mexicans but close enough). Fairly early on in proceedings (about the time the guy starts shooting dogs) we agreed that it wasn’t a Debbie film. What surprised me, by the end I had decided that it wasn’t a James film. I will explain my reasons, but I warn you they might be misinterpreted to create the impression that I’m low brow, stupid even. Far from that being the case, I am as highbrow as Stephen Fry without an anus.

With that mental image always close at hand, let us continue. When we watch a film it is often a give and take process, we suspend our disbelief and they give us a satisfying but generally absurd experience. Now, this is of course not always the case, and there is a valid and growing subset of movies concerned with a couple of hours where nothing much really happens, y’know, just like life. Mutual Appreciation is a very good example of this. But No Country for Old Men isn’t. Rather a lot happens, mainly involving men ending the lives of other men using firearms or vacuum cleaners.

And that of course is fine. Movies where lots of people kill other people, movies where one guy takes on rooms full of slightly sweatier men with semi automatics and comes out unscathed, I love movies like that. Every bullet that whizzes past as our protagonist does a forward roly poly to the scant cover of a hotel bed makes you feel a little bit invulnerable. So it hummed along perfectly nicely until it suddenly decided to be inconsequential, unresolved and unsatisfying, y’know, just like life.

But it hadn’t been like life up until then, and the sudden change of tone was jarring, annoying even. After all that crossfire foreplay we want the money shot, the hero and the villain, the showdown, the kiss and the sunset. What we get is an old guy having some dinner with his wife. It’s like at the climactic point of a porn film the couple (or group, or menagerie) just stop doing it and start playing Mario Kart. Which is probably artistically valid and clever but leaves you frustrated and tugging desperately at your drooping member (I hope you’re still remembering Fry and his lack of anus).

Maybe I’m being shallow in desiring traditional resolution, or maybe I’m just annoyed because I got confused and had meant to order There Will Be Blood from Lovefilm (though to be fair there was quite a bit of blood). What I definitely am is disappointed by this whorish tease of a movie.

4.2/10

Buy No Country For Old Men [2007] on DVD from Amazon now!

The First Year of my Son’s Existence

2008-11-23T16:53:00.005Z

(You'll miss it when he's all grown up)

JAMES says:

As pretty much all I do or think about or am forced to wipe these days revolves around my son, I thought I would do ten Freakonomics style unexpected (though eminently foreseeable) consequences/discoveries of having a child:

You actually save money in the short term, as you can never ever go out anywhere, and any free time you have will involve people visiting you to see the baby (you gotta see the baby). This has the additional benefit of them bringing presents so you don’t have to buy anything yourself. Nice stuff too, not like the crap you end up getting for them. And, to be honest, it is great having an unarguable excuse to get you out of any and all social engagements.
You, or your wife at least, will make lots of new breeding friends.
You quickly give up on keeping your books in alphabetical order on the shelf after the 10th time he has happily pulled them all out. This is I think the worst consequence.
He will train you up as efficiently as John Noakes would train a puppy. If anything makes him smile or laugh you will find yourself doing it again and again and again. I recently spent a whole day saluting my young nephew as he seemed to enjoy it. You give up on dignity pretty quickly as well.
There is no more terrible sound in creation than the squawk of a baby at 2am when you thought he had finally gone to sleep.
Conversely there is no more satisfying feeling that inserting a block into its right hole in a shape sorter.
You spend all your time worrying why they’re not talking/crawling/walking yet, then you spend all your time reminiscing wistfully about the times when they’d stay still and shut up.
On the rare and precious occasions when you are allowed out of the house to meet with normal people, you’ll find the only topic of conversation you have available to you is children’s television, about which the majority of people are indifferent to or HAVEN’T EVEN SEEN. This also applies to reviewing things (see last week).
In addition, the theme tunes to said children’s television penetrates your subconscious to a pernicious degree. The ultimate deterrent in any disagreement between you and our co-parent is to hum the first few bars of ‘Charlie and Lola’, which will then be stuck in their head for the rest of the day. Of course, you will also be left humming away to yourself, but this is a small price to pay for the smiting of your enemy. They shouldn’t worry about using Eminem to torture people at Guantanamo Bay, the theme tune to ‘Higgledy House’ would be enough. In fact, force them to actually watch ‘Higgledy House’ and they’d crack in hours.
No matter how much of a nuisance your offspring has been, no matter how much pickling they have got up to in the day, you only have to see them asleep and all is forgiven. Which I guess is how our species has managed to survive.
Oh yeah, you lose a lot of your cynicism obviously.

9.2/10

That Time Me and Di Went To Japan

2008-11-23T11:49:00.007Z

(Holiday)

NEILL says:

9.3/10

Phlegm

2008-11-16T14:10:00.007Z

(Bodily Fluid)

JAMES says:

After last week’s looking at the stars, it’s time for a bit of quality gutter time. Now, in its right place phlegm is harmless, even beneficial. It lubricates your throat to allow things to pass down more easily, a sort of KY Jelly for the mouth (or if you’re on Brokeback Mountain a KY Jelly for the bottom). I have no issue with this type of phlegm. What I do object to is what happens after the two deadbeats from ‘Once Upon a Time... Life’ take over production and it become ‘Sick Phlegm’.

Sick Phlegm is far scarier than any serial killer or shark in Venice. It is the colour and consistency of pus and flows in a constant stream from your nose and mouth. It is unrelenting and yucky and lives in your head. If you’re lucky it restricts itself to the nose and you can manage the whole affair with a good stock of tissues. At present I am not lucky. At present I am coughing up great big globs of glistening jelly, and I’m unsure of the best way to deal with them.

Now, the most obvious way is to spit it into a tissue, assuming you have one to hand. This is generally successful but due to the higher moisture content of throat snot against its nasal brother you have no hope of reusing the now soggy tissue, whereas it could have probably withstood 3 or 4 blows of the nose. Thus you contribute directly to the destruction of the planet. Also, whilst you are fairly sure a sneeze is going to lead to product, the majority of coughing is harmless. This lulls you into a false sense of security until you end up with a dripping sticky hand. Any future action to locate a tissue in pockets/drawers leaves the place looking like the hotel in ‘Ghostbusters’.

Another option is to simply bite the bullet and swallow the phlegm. After all, that’s where it came from, right? No mess, no fuss. Unfortunately it doesn’t taste very nice, a kind of sweet yet salty mixture that would only appeal to connoisseurs of oysters. Also, seeing as how your body is going to all this trouble to get rid of the stuff, it doesn’t really feel like playing the game to just send it right back down there again.

Finally there is the classic if antisocial solution of spitting it out. This is ideal if you’re on your own, or in an open space, but people begin to look at you funnily in the office if you cover their monitors with germ ridden mouth juice. And it doesn’t merely disappear like a murdered video game character or semen. It stays there, silently accusing you until it retracts into a persistent stain.

Worst of all are the times, such as driving along the motorway or making love, when you feel a wet cough coming on but there is nothing to do about it. You are left with the Hobnob’s choice of letting it fly every which way, which at least spreads the problem around a bit, or coughing on your hands and then wiping it in the least noticeable place.

Now I realise I am arguing from a point of prejudice, and if anyone wishes to take up the case for phlegm feel free, but I hate the stuff. It reduces us to filthy diseased beasts. It is the X-Factor of the bodily fluids world.

0.6/10

Andromeda s1, ep 7: "The Ties That Blind"

2008-11-12T15:08:00.014Z

(TV show)

NEILL says:

As part of our current week of space-themed reviews, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to watch and review a random episode of the science fiction TV series Andromeda. I have never seen Andromeda nor indeed do I have any idea what it is about. All I know is that it is a science fiction TV series starring Kevin "that guy who was in that thing that was like Xena but with a dude" Sorbo.¹ I thought it would be fun to review something with absolutely no background or familiarity, to judge it solely on its effectiveness as a dramatic presentation, free of any pre-existing bias or preconception.

Here is the episode summary, which I read before proceeding:

Andromeda s1, ep7
"The Ties That Blind"

Beka is unexpectedly reunited with her con-artist brother when a Wayist courier ship asks Andromeda for help after being attacked. Rafe Valentine claims to be a devout Wayist, making the Andromeda a prime target for Restorian attack, but does the conman have a hidden agenda?

Here were my observations upon reading the above.

Oh God.
"The Ties That Blind"? Really?
One of the characters is called "Rafe Valentine".
Seriously, maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
"Wayist"? "Restorian"? Suggests some kind of appallingly cackhanded religious allegory.
There's going to be lots and lots of talking, isn't there?

I even went so far as to jot down my predictions for what exactly would happen in the story, based on this description. These read:

Act 1) Brother introduced, seems charming. Kevin Sorbo is suspicious of him.
Act 2) Kevin Sorbo learns that Brother is a wrong 'un. Tries to tell 'Beka' (love interest?) - but she gets angry with him and tells him to GO TO HELL
Act 3) Faced with some incontrovertible proof of Brother's wrong-'un-ness, 'Beka' is given opportunity to turn him in / blow him up / similar (DRAMATIC CLIMAX), but lets him go. Promise of redemption for Brother? Ends on bittersweet rapprochement between 'Beka' and Kevin Sorbo.

Now, I'd like to be all smug and sit here and tell you that this cynical and sneering caricature of a plot was, in fact, exactly what did happen in the episode, but I can't honestly say that it did. What I can honestly say is that it would have been much better if it had.

As it turned out, events went like this:

Act 1) Brother introduced, seems charming. 'Beka' is suspicious of him. Kevin Sorbo smiles faintly smugly at everyone. Several of the worst actors ever to be paid money to act talk about religion extensively and excruciatingly.
Act 2) Neill turns off television, literally unable to bear it any longer.

That's right. Reader, I gave up. I made it through approximately 22 minutes before I abandoned my sacred reviewer's duties, thought to myself "seriously, I'm not getting paid for this" and threw in the towel. I think that we've established on this blog that I have a pretty high tolerance for crap, so believe me when I say that this was something special. Suffice to say it displayed every cliche of bad science fiction, which would have been forgivable were it not for the fact that those cliches were literally all it was. I'm not even going to talk about it any more, as it would only depress me and annoy you. Let's all go and have a nice cup of tea and try and forget it ever happened. Does that sound nice? A nice cup of tea?

1/10

¹ I'm just kidding. I know exactly who he is, he's Kevin "Hercules" Sorbo.

Buy Andromeda - Season 1 on Amazon now!

...no, hang on, DON'T.

Space Pirates

2008-11-09T16:27:00.002Z

(Children’s TV Show)

JAMES says:

Space, a hackneyed setting for children’s television. These are the voyages of the starship Gusto, it’s 22 episode mission to present a selection of music interspersed with general comedy “business” as a means of distracting children and possibly, hopefully, providing parents with a few precious fleeting moments of peace. In what must be the least prolific pirate radio station in space, three songs are played each week, a video, a live performance and an interpretation by the puppet-rat Jingles. Proceedings are managed by the fortuitously christened Captain DJ (played by Marcus Brigstoke, despite what Debbie and the end credits say), assisted by a crew including a robot parrot microphone and a sentient fungi living on the hull of the ship who provides travel and weather.

Despite the stratospherically high concept of a pirate radio station run by actual pirates in space, it maintains interest through that rarity in children’s TV, actually quite funny comedy. This is provided by the captain, a slightly pathetic specimen beaten down by his overbearing mother and his failed dreams of becoming a Blues musician. He’s a bit like Harold Steptoe. In space. With an oversized comedy moustache. Also the music is incredibly catchy, and I often find myself humming the theme to the Zorst Report to myself in my idle moments.

It’s not all good news. For pirates there’s little in the way of drunken debauchery (I think there was a bottle of cough syrup in one episode), and it’s always slightly embarrassing when an actual live human who made the effort to come into the studio is beaten in the best song contest by a bunch of muppets singing ‘Sexual Healing’ or an old Spice Girls video. Worst by far, however, is the usual Achilles Heel of children’s TV, children. In this case it is a couple of urchins called Honk and Tonk who mooch around the place overacting and generally irritating me.

And yet, for all this, Space Pirates has become something of a beacon of hope to me. As someone who is not afraid to use CBeebies as a momentary distraction on the unstoppable parasitic momentum of a one-year-old it stands as a shining example of quality amidst the black ocean of poorly animated blobs with cynically youthful trappings and jovially grating Scotsmen that threaten to corrode my very soul.

8/10

The Silver Surfer

2008-11-09T15:29:00.006Z

(Former Herald of Galactus)

JAMES says:

The Silver Surfer is basically a silver guy who files around in space on a surfboard, essentially in the nude, looking for planets for his boss to eat. Now you’d think this would be the coolest job in the universe, but you wouldn’t know it to listen to the guy. Since he was made redundant he spends his time sitting around on mountains moping about something or other in a tediously overwrought fashion. You really just want to slap the guy. Unfortunately this would do you no good because, as he is constantly reminding everyone, his skin can withstand comets/suns/the endless black cold lonely depths of space that stretch in front of you to eternity like the darkness in the heart of mankind. Actually, if Stan Lee wrote all my dialogue I’d probably be a bit bummed out.

The Silver Surfer was merely the most successful of a number of “sports in space” characters, including the skiing Black Racer (like death, but with fondue afterwards), Gaard (an alternate version of the Human Torch who protected a portal in space by playing hockey) and Kur-Lin (a symbiotic binary being, compose of a giant rock creature who spits asteroids at his foes and a feathered alien that flies in front of the asteroid whilst cleaning space with his tail so that it travels more smoothly, and who surprisingly is the only one of these I made up). So it could have been worse I suppose.

Also, Silver Surfer: Parable (by Moebius) rocks.

5.1/10

Buy Silver Surfer: Parable on Amazon now! Although apparently it's out-of-print and is just ludicrously expensive, so y'know. You'd have to really want it.

That's Not My Dinosaur

2008-11-06T11:10:00.014Z

by Fiona Watt and Rachel Wells
(book)

NEILL says:

That's Not My Dinosaur is an early result of the creative partnership between Watt and Wells that would produce such seminal collaborations as That's Not My Digger and That's Not My Bear, and which many critics feel reached its zenith with 2007's Richard & Judy Galaxy British Book Award-winning masterpiece, That's Not My Penguin.

From the very first page, the reader's expectations are wrong-footed as an unnamed first-person narrator guides us through a delirious, kaleidoscopic rollercoaster ride of Dinosaurs That Are Not My Dinosaur. We are kept guessing right up to the very last page, where events reach a satisfying if slightly predictable conclusion as we meet (SPOILER warning) a Dinosaur That IS my Dinosaur. (It's Spines are So Soft.)

That's Not My Dinosaur is the work of two authors still finding their voices, testing the limits of the form of which they would in time become the undisputed masters. The storyline and cast of characters feel slightly bland when compared to some of their later works; who could forget the ambiguous sexuality and roguish charisma of That's Not My Pirate's Pirate who is Not My Pirate, His Cutlass Is Too Glittery? Or the sheer emotional sucker-punch of the ending of That's Not My Robot? ("It's Antennae Are So Sparkly" will surely be remembered as one of the most haunting closing lines in modern British literature.)

Furthermore, That's Not My Dinosaur flirts with some radical and highly unconventional scientific theories of which some may question the appropriateness in a book intended for children. Admittedly the fossil record from the Cretaceous is highly incomplete and scattered, and due to the processes of taphonomy and fossilization questions such as dinosaur skin colouration and texture will always involve a high degree of speculation. However, to postulate the existence of what is apparently an ankylosaurid whose "Tail is Too Fuzzy" strays so far from palaeontological orthodoxy as to undermine the credibility of the work as a whole.

5/10

Buy That's Not My Dinosaur on Amazon!

Shark in Venice

2008-11-02T10:50:00.018Z

Dir. Danny Lerner, 2008
(Film)

NEILL says:

There are doubtless people in this world who, upon stumbling across the existence of a film titled Shark in Venice could simply smile wryly, shrug their shoulders and walk away. I am, regrettably, not one of those people. Before we go any further, I am aware that coming so soon after some of my recent posts, what follows may seem like I am recounting some strange fever dream experienced after eating too many anchovies late at night. I wish to assure you, this film is entirely real. Look, here's the poster and everything.

Admittedly, that looks like I could have knocked together in Photoshop in about twelve bored seconds, so does not really help my case. Let me just repeat: this is a real film. Real people spent substantial amounts of real time and real money making this film. Just hold on to that thought.

Shark in Venice opens with a team of divers in Venice's canals being attacked by a shark. Or rather, a team of divers in a swimming pool somewhere in Bulgaria going "Aargh", intercut choppily with stock footage of a shark swimming around the ocean somewhere. This horror is witnessed by a team of observers on a nearby boat, who helpfully remind us that we are supposed to be in Italy by uttering lines of dialogue like "Dio Mio! Grazie! Marco Polo!". (That is, almost unbelieveably, a direct quote. I spent the rest of the film waiting for someone to start shouting "Carbonara! Bambino! Gino Ginelli!!!").

We cut to San Francisco, where we meet nature's least-loved Baldwin, Steven Baldwin, cast in the not-entirely-suitable role of a university lecturer. A kindly dean informs Baldwin that his father has disappeared mysteriously while searching for a treasure hidden beneath Venice during the crusades by three knightly brothers. Hang on, what? No, he really did just say that. If the scenario sounds oddly familiar, that's because it is at this point that Shark In Venice boldly throws off expectations and turns out not, in fact, to be an incredibly low-rent rip-off of Jaws. No, it is actually an incredibly low-rent and frankly quite demented rip-off of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. But with sharks.

Baldwin shuffles through the film doughy-faced and glassy-eyed, delivering his lines in a disconnected mumble that was possibly intended as a shot at 'brooding' but mostly just gives the almost-certainly-correct impression that he is on some really quite substantial medication. At one point about halfway through the film he actually comes close to emoting for a few seconds (well, he shouts a bit, anyway) and then - and I remind you yet again that I am not making this up - has to sit down, apparently exhausted. Despite his figure-hugging 'sexy' t-shirt, Baldwin largely fails to convince as an action hero. This is not least because of his peculiarly uncomfortable-looking walk, the unmistakeable sign of a man whose girdle is done up slightly too tight. Baldwin's character is accompanied to Venice by his fiancee, who is described as "an expert." (Long pause.) "In medieval literature." She fulfils the odd role of having heated conversations with all the other characters on Baldwin's behalf while he sits there staring into the middle distance. The curious result is that she seems less like a girlfriend and more like some kind of psychiatric care assistant.

The plot proceeds to go off the rails in the most fantastically bizarre and spectacular ways. The villain of the piece is a mafia boss who, it turns out (SPOILERS) unleashed a swarm of man-eating great white sharks into Venice's canals to prevent anyone finding the treasure, and then becomes increasingly frustrated as everyone he sends to retrieve the treasure is killed by man-eating great white sharks. He tries to strongarm Baldwin, kidnapping his girlfriend to force him into finding the treasure again. About halfway through the film he apparently decides this plan is not exciting enough, and sends a squad of uzi-wielding motorcycle ninjas to assassinate Baldwin for no clearly definable reason. I tried to put down in an ordered, logical way the villain's stated motivations, but only managed to give myself a tremendous tension headache. Often in recent years I have had the impression when watching a film that the screenplay has been generated by some kind of computer program, the producers having merely selected character names, setting and genre from a series of drop-down menus. This is the first time it has felt like that program has thrown some kind of fatal Logical Exception Error and crashed.

It takes a certain kind of chutzpah to make a film about killer sharks using only stock footage and occasional bursts of CGI so spectacularly bad that they are actually preceded by the screen becoming all grainy and pixelated like a YouTube clip watched over an old person's dodgy dial-up internet connection. But that kind of chutzpah is evidently to be found in abundance in Bulgaria, where the end credits reveal this film to have been produced, funded and directed. Somehow that seemed to explain a lot.

4/10

Buy Shark In Venice [2008] on Amazon! If for some reason you think that is a good idea.

Still don't believe me? Look!

See?

La Ronde

2008-11-01T12:31:00.004Z

by Arthur Schnitzler
(Play)

JAMES says:

This fin de siecle comedy of sexual manners follows a very strict formula. X meets Y, they chat, Y says it’s too bright/dark to have sex, and besides they need to get home. Then X has sex with Y anyway, they chat a bit and the scene ends. In the next scene Y goes through the motions with Z, and so on, and on the whole the characters are about as well rounded as the letters of the alphabet here representing them. In the production by Love and Madness that was my exposure to this play the sex was replaced by a highly charged Tango which was quite impressive to begin with but when I tell you there were 10 of these encounters you may understand that the novelty soon wore off. In fact, like sex itself, the whole thing quickly became tedious and repetitive.

Part of the problem is the play itself, which gives you little reason to maintain an interest. There was no sense of ‘Will they/won’t they?’ as you knew that they definitely would, within a matter of minutes. But the production didn’t help matters, changing the gender of some the characters to create an edginess but instead leading to absurdity. Would a 19 year old bloke really be worried that his mother didn’t know where he was? Also the neat circular nature of the play was ruined by the fact that a character who was male in the first scene had become female by the last. The acting was generally of a high standard, though the old bloke with the beard was a bit rubbish (and the section where he was sucking someone’s toes was just yuck). Most unforgivably the advertised ‘moments of nudity’ never appeared. There were bras and pants, which were alright I suppose, but don’t put it on the posters if you’re not going to go through with it.

As it is, this is a play that would only appeal to erotic group theorists, if such a thing exists.

3.4/10

Neill Fights The Zombies

2008-10-30T10:04:00.008Z

(Dream)

NEILL says:

This 2008 production follows the action-horror template familiar from films such as 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead and recent Will Smith turdfest I Am Legend, in that it follows the story of a world ravaged by a virus-based zombie apocalypse, and the efforts of one survivor (in this case 31-year old comics illustrator Neill Cameron) to survive. The story opens with our hero finding himself as the last man in a zombie-overrun New York, and having to fight his way home to his wife and child in East Oxford through endless hordes of the shambling undead.

Utterly derivative in conception, this dream relies upon and indulges in every zombie-movie cliche there is. The plot is largely abandoned for long stretches where Neill simply shoots at zombies and makes their heads explode, a spectacle that offers certain visceral thrills at first but begins to pall after the 1,000th repetition or so. Worse than this, however, are the frequent bizarre lapses in narrative logic. The protagonists tense struggle to survive is suddenly forgotten for an extended sequence where he boards a Concorde flight from New York to London and spends an interminable amount of time deciding what to have from an absurdly opulent onboard buffet. Later in the story events take on an even stranger turn when our hero apparently forgets the zombie threat altogether and spends an inexplicable amount of time running around a London Underground station searching for a place to urinate. And just when this quest is building to a climax, the story ends abruptly, with no sense of closure or completion to events whatsoever.

Sloppy, uninspired and shambolically executed. Still about 70 times better than I Am Legend, though.

5.4/10

The Avenger-Archers

2008-10-27T13:42:00.009Z

(Soap opera storyline)

NEILL says:

I woke up this morning thinking about the recent 'superheroes' storyline on popular Radio 4 agrarian-based soap opera The Archers, and thinking 'ooh, I must write a review about that'. I thought it might be of interest to some of our readership to hear about this unusual ongoing plotline, in which several popular Ambridge residents gained superpowers loosely analogous to those of Marvel Comics' premiere superteam The Avengers (David Archer was the thinly-veiled Captain America analogue, Emma Grundy Spider-Woman, and so on). In this everyday tale of superpowered village folk, they banded together to fight crime and global terrorism, with a particular focus on corrupt agribusiness and evil genetically modified crops. And of course, lots and lots of parish council meetings about it all.

And then I woke up a bit more, and thought "the Archers' recent 'superheroes' storyline? Have I gone fucking insane?"

Still, it really was a cracking dream.

4.2/10
(Points deducted for not actually existing.)

Facebook

2008-10-26T14:08:00.005Z

(Social Networking Site)

JAMES says:

Facebook is very similar to Reality, the original social networking site. You end up friends with lots of people you don’t actually like, and seem to spend all your time dealing with them as opposed to those people you genuinely have affection for. Also, you only get out what you put in, yet if you’re anything like me you put in the absolutely bare minimum and then spend your time annoyed that everyone has more friends than you. Finally, like life it is fun to begin with but soon becomes a bit of a chore. And it’s ultimately pointless and a waste of time. Have I run this metaphor into the ground enough yet? It’s also full of trivia and boasting but empty of anything approaching significance. That ought to do it.

4.7/10

A Slight Return

2008-10-22T19:46:00.008Z

Many years ago two naive and insightful young men started a website, with nothing more than a domain name, a pirated copy of Photoshop and a burning desire to categorise the relative merits of every single one of God's creations. Thus was born Unified Review Theory, and it succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Assuming their wildest dreams were that not even their wives would read it.

Which they weren't.

Eventually, however, these brave young arbiters of taste reached a stage in their career where they no longer had enough spare time at work to trawl the internet for pictures of Luke Cage, Power Man. Loathe to waste their own free time on the site, it eventually petered out in a whimper of mediocre guest reviewers and lazy one liners. And, for a while, silence.

Seasons past, mortgages were arranged and babies were born. But the reviewing urge, once awakened, is not so easy to put back in the box. With no legitimate outlet for these tendencies they found themselves furtively giving their co-workers marks out of 10, debating the finer points of each new wave of McDonalds limited edition burgers into the small hours and being overly critical of their own children's achievements. Eventually they could fight it no longer, they must resurrect URT.

So, prepare yourself to have your opinions belittled as Neill and James return in...

Unified Review Theory II: The Harrowing

The Thirteen Problems

2008-10-20T19:33:00.008Z

by Agatha Christie
(Collection of Miss Marple Short Stories)

JAMES says:

“I have a problem for you to mull over” Colonel Twodimensional leant back in his armchair as the rest of the group of unlikely friends held their breath in anticipation. “Some guy disappeared and everyone thought it was some other guy that had killed him and stuff”

“Well, “ said the token female smugly, “I think it was actually that other guy’s friend”

“What about you Miss Marple?”

“Don’t ask her, she’s just a silly old woman”

Miss Marple’s cheeks turned pink. “I may be just be a silly woman but this very much reminds me of the time a very implausible thing happened to Mrs Green the Grocer’s Wife, that didn’t really make any sense when you think about it, and it was actually that midget that you mentioned briefly at the start who killed him and stuff”

“Well, actually I improbably ran into the midget a bit later and he told me that was exactly what happened. And then he died”
Repeat x13

I think you take my point.

2/10

October 2005 - October 2008 (inclusive)

2008-10-19T08:21:00.001Z

(Period of time)

NEILL says:

Bit of a mixed bag, really.

8/10

Toilet Paper

2005-10-03T08:20:00.000Z

NEILL says:

The best thing in the world, ever. And if think you disagree, you have never experienced the alternative.

9.9/10

Screen 4, Odeon George Street, Oxford

2005-03-08T11:18:00.001Z

(Cinema Screen)

NEILL says:

Screen 4 at the George Street Odeon is, apparently, the dumping ground for the not-quite-blockbusters, the movies that are fated to garner neither record-breaking opening weekends nor awards-ceremony glory, but which will probably pull in a few punters on a Saturday night. The ‘Van Helsings’ of this world, basically. The general atmosphere is of squalor and disappointment; the whole place smells like a male locker room, you can hear the ‘click-click-click’ of the projector over any quieter scenes in the film, half the seats are broken and worst of all, the ultimate degradation: there are no cup-holders. I’m sorry, I have to hold my own cup? If I wanted to hold my own cup I’d go to the Phoenix and watch an artistically challenging Algerian movie about Lesbians being stoned to death. I’m here to see a big explosive Hollywood piece of crap, and by God I want a place to set down my absurdly large beverage! The whole place sends a message to the cinemagoer that says “you wanted to see this piece of shit, this is all you deserve”. Which is fair enough I suppose, but dash it all, surely paying seven quid to watch ‘Hellboy’ is a harsh enough moral lesson for one evening.

3.6/10

Blogs

2005-02-22T08:55:00.001Z

(Online Diaries)

JAMES says:

Curious by the ‘next blog’ button at the top of this very page, and slightly bored one afternoon, I decided to take a random trip through the many people who, like us, have decided to make www.blogspot.com/ the home for their random witterings. It is an enlightening experience, almost like a voyage into the collective unconciousness, and you can’t help but learn a few things about the human condition.

Firstly, the standard of written English has deteriorated considerably in the first few years. Secondly, if given a public forum, the vast majority of people will use it to talk exclusively about themselves. Maybe unsurprisingly given the nature of the medium.

Unfortunately there seem to be more people writing than people reading. The whole thing is one-way, it is a collection of ‘0 comments’. But it doesn’t really matter. That these things are written, have a reality, however ephemeral, means they have an existence even without anyone observing them.

At first there is very little of interest. People talking about their own lives are never that interesting, whether in the office or on the internet. However, the cumulative effect is fascinating, and it was quite hard to stop my travel in blogland. You are drawn in by all the raw emotion, the anger and joy, then pain and suffering. It is hard to look at all this and not feel a compassion for humanity, for all its sham and drudgery. Much like the character in Nathanael West’s ‘Miss Lonelyhearts’

So, what can we tell about humanity if we extrapolate these findings? Basically, people are self-obsessed, tragic but basically loveable tykes. But be thankful that you have found the exception to the rule, a blog with interest, humour and punctuation. And the occasional rant.

4.3/10

Black Mischief

2005-02-22T08:51:00.001Z

by Evelyn Waugh
(Novel)

JAMES says:

The effect of reading Waugh to a hardened Wodehouse-phile such as I is very disconcerting. The style has many similarities, and the milieu of feckless upper class young folk between the wars adds to the sense of familiarity. This just means that certain things end up feeling plain wrong. For instance, people have sex in Waugh books, something not even really hinted at by Wodehouse. Though we all know what went on with Jeeves and Wooster behind closed doors.

Also, while Wodehouse took in the world with a good hearted gaze, there is a distinct misanthropy, and certainly racism, underlying Waugh. While I certainly wouldn’t condemn a book this old for it’s attitude, it can impact on enjoyment.

If I were able to take Black Mischief on it’s own, then I would probably think it a fine book. It is certainly funny, and an engaging read. It also has the added benefit of informing you about the mood of the times, and making the period come alive. However, the darkness, especially in the ending, just seems so wrong that this book actually disturbed me. It was like finding the mutilated corpse of Richard Briers.

5.9/10

Jive Turkeys

2005-02-17T08:52:00.000Z

(Suckas)

JAMES says:

Simply the most tiresome people. Try to avoid being partnered with them for Bridge.

1.4/10

My Bus Ride Home on Monday Night

2005-02-14T14:34:00.002Z

(Journey to the Heart of Darkness)

NEILL says:

A sense of uneasiness was first aroused when I noticed that I had been standing waiting for the bus for nearly an hour. So engrossed was I reading my work manual on common errors in user interface design that the time just magically flew by, as I’m sure you can imagine. Still, there comes a point where a fellow starts to wonder if it mightn’t be nice to hurry the show along, actually get home, have a spot of dinner, and so on. For me that point comes when it starts to rain. However, there were possible explanatory factors. It was, after all, the first day of the St. Giles’ fair, an annual event of extraordinary magnificence whereby a huge and stately stretch of historic central Oxford is given over for a couple of nights to flashing lights, dodgy food and rides of questionable safety run by gangs of thieving squinty-eyed pikeys. This obviously causes certain upheavals for traffic flow around the town, so I was in (relatively) forgiving and understanding mood when the number 6 finally lurched into sight around a corner of hot-dog-and-nougat vans. This, I thought, must be the reason it has taken an hour for the bus to travel the 500 metres from the station to here.

As it turns out, I was only half right. There was another factor, which quickly became apparent, which was that the bus driver was a semi-coherent newly-arrived Russian immigrant woman with no idea of the geography of Oxford, how to drive, or what buses are. There were many and varied high-points to this Ride of Terror. There were, for example, the comical looks on the faces of people waiting at bus stops along the roadside as we sailed by, oblivious to their outraged cries. There was the rather exciting moment when, swinging round a corner with delirious abandon, we ‘clonked’ a bollard. But the absolute high-point was when we drove up completely the wrong road, went round a roundabout the wrong way and ended up stuck in a three-way dead end at the bottom of Jericho with no way out but to reverse painfully slowly for about ten minutes back up the road while a long line of confused and outraged traffic behind us followed suit. Now the famous red flagships of the Oxford Bus Company are many things; spacious, accommodating… red. One thing they are not, and I can tell you this now, is manouverable.

The end of the journey afforded one final bit of fun. By this point I had realised that the captain our captain had little understanding of or patience for such trivial notions as ringing the bell, or what ‘bus stops’ mean. So there was a certain bizarre satisfaction in the moment when, as the bus careered past our stop, my fellow passengers and I rose to our feet and cried out, with one voice: “What the FUCK??!!!”

Please don’t think that I am in any way biased against women drivers, or for that matter Russians, immigrants or the mentally ill. Or even mentally ill Russian immigrant women bus drivers. No, my quarrel is with the employers. This may be pickiness on my part, but I would have thought that at some point in their training courses, the good chaps at the Oxford Bus Company might have seen fit to include such topics as ‘Driving’, or ‘Buses: What They Are And How They Work’ and so on and so forth. Still, what the hell do I know? Well, I know one thing: driving from one side of Oxford – Oxford! Not Mexico City or the Russian Steppe, Oxford!! – should not take two hours.

1.2/10

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

2005-02-14T14:31:00.001Z

by Jon McGregor
(Novel)

NEILL says:

I don't think I have ever actually thrown a book across the room in exasperation. Who would bother? But I recall coming pretty close with this, the debut novel by Bermuda-born, Norfolk-raised (wow, unlucky break) novelist Jon McGregor. Put it down slightly more forcefully than usual, perhaps; maybe tutted a bit. Anyway, this should not be taken as evidence that this is in any way a bad book; on the contrary, it is a very good book. A very good book indeed. My reaction should merely be taken as further proof, as if it were needed, that I am basically a bit of a fucking mook.

What I had failed to appreciate, you see, was that for some books, just as for formal wear or self-abuse, there is a time and a place. (There is never a time OR a place for self-abuse IN formal wear, of course. That would just be tacky.) My exasperation was caused by trying to use 'If Nobody Speaks...' as my bus-to-work book*. It is not a bus-to-work book, and this elementary mistake caused all sorts of irritation and disappointment. I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated by the book's style; it is packed full of tiny details, all dripping with portentousness, but with nothing ever seeming to actually happen. Furthermore it has a cast of hundreds, almost none of whom seemed to have names, and who I found it impossible to remember, distinguish between or care about. I persevered for about three return trips to work, but eventually events came to a dramatic head with the dropping-forcefully-and-maybe-tutting-a-bit episode I alluded to earlier.
Several months passed before eventually I gave it another chance. This was due to a combination of factors: it's mocking presence on my bookshelf, my own natural stubbornness, and hearing glowing praise of it from someone whose opinion I actually, kind of, you know, respect. A bit. So I gave it another try, this time in the context of a medium-length flight from Estonia, and... well. It just goes to show. Sometimes, even Neill gets it wrong. Maybe. A bit.

So then, 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things', by Jon McGregor. I'm a bit worn out after all that preamble, so I'll keep this short. Suffice to say, it's an excellent book. Remarkable, in fact. It rewards your concentrated and sustained attention with an entrancing richness of detail and thematic complexity. It is structurally extremely brave and innovative, and has a humanistic touch and a love for its characters and setting that is really quite moving. It's desperately sad, rather beautiful, and, in the end, genuinely affecting. If it was a song, it'd be by the Delgadoes. And one of their good ones, too.

8.1/10

* The bus-to-work book, since you asked, is about halfway on the literary spectrum between the Toilet Book (short, sharp bursts of reading, light tone, no sustained narrative: classic examples being Richard Herring's 'Talking Cock', or 'TV Go Home' by Charlie Brooker) and the Day Off Work Book (just get your head down and plough through the bastard: classic examples being Albert Camus' 'The Plague', or 'Soul Mountain' by Gao Xingjian... actually that's more of a Month Off Work Book - give it a go next time you have a serious spinal injury or advanced-stage venereal disease). A good bus-to-work book would be 'Carter Beats the Devil' by Glenn David Gould, or anything by Kurt Vonnegut or PG Wodehouse.

The Dutch

2005-02-04T16:40:00.001Z

(Race)

NEILL says:

I don't really know anything about the Dutch. Apart from the fact that the financial institutions they developed in the early modern period, which were brought over to Britain in the years following the Glorious Revolution, revolutionised public finance, granting the British crown unprecedented revenue-raising abilities which allowed for the massive naval development which was to prove decisive against France in the Seven Years War, thus indirectly but significantly leading to the establishment of the British Empire and hence the recognisable modern world in all its glory and horror.

That and the fact they all smoke weed and like pornography.

5.8/10

JAMES says:

And they wear those crazy wooden shoes! All I know about the Dutch, and indeed all foreigners, came from the spectacularly racist comic strip 'Worldwide School' from Whizzer and Chips. Ah, they were more innocent times!

8.3/10

Being the Best Man

2005-02-04T13:29:00.001Z

(Singular Honour)

NEILL says:

Being the Best Man: is it really the great life-affirming experience that bridal magazine propaganda and american TV would have us believe? Or is it, in fact, just a thankless and exhausting collection of dogsbody running-around, foolish costumery and - worst of all - public speaking? The answer, as that opening should have made clear to anyone who has ever used this singularly cliched bit of rhetoric themselves, is of course that it's a bit of both. I had plenty of opportunity to discover the highs and lows during my stint as Best Man at the nuptials of my pie-faced younger brother and esteemed co-reviewer James. On the one hand, it is of course a singular honour, to stand at your compadre's side, shoulder-to-shoulder as he embarks upon this bold new leg of the great voyage of Life. On the other hand, it involves public speaking. The worst part is the reception; you'd think that once you'd managed not to lose the rings, got the groom to the church on time and stopped him running away / passing out / having panic attacks waiting for the bride to show up*, people would let you have a bit of peace. But no! Every man and his dog seems to see nothing wrong with snapping their fingers and shouting 'Best Man! Best Man!' and sending you on whatever trivial and half-baked errand enters their overheated free-booze-sozzled brains. And then there's the public speaking.

Ah, I'm just kidding. It was all quite a laugh really. Besides the whole 'singular honour’ thing and the 'lots of free booze' thing, I take from my Best Manly experience several gifts of memory and experience that I shall always treasure. These are:

I learned that public speaking is not, in fact, the worst thing that can possibly happen. Actually it was sort of fun.

As a thank-you for my half-assed efforts, James gave me a bona fide original Optimus Prime toy. For the first time in my adult life, I almost cried.

I got to go to Estonia and watch [CENSORED][CENSORED] rubbing their [CENSORED] all over [CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED]. Which was pleasant.

If I hadn't been a Best Man, I would never have had the occasion to read 'Stag and Groom' magazine, and the world-famous legendary Crime-Fighting Duo 'Stagg and Groome' would never have been born!

Ahem.

8/10

* I tried to keep him distracted with Fun Comics Trivia questions, but he was rubbish; unfocussed, distracted... almost as if his mind was on something else. The poor sap couldn't even remember the names of Supergirl's parents.**

**Zor-El and Alura. Obviously.

Pub Lunches

2005-01-14T14:57:00.000Z

(Lunches from Pubs)

JAMES says:

There used to be no stauncher supporter of pub lunches than me, what with all the meat and cheese and beer they usually involved. Plus, cheap as slightly nasty chips, and no awkwardness with tips and service. If you’d have told me that I might get a bit tired of pub lunches I would’ve laughed in your face and very possibly challenged you to a duel. But such is the position I find myself in.

The office I work in is a bit too pub lunch focused. Every Friday I am perfectly happy with, but then you have to add in people’s birthdays, after meetings, particularly sunny days, particularly boring days etc. Last week, no word of a lie, I had four pub lunches in a row (over 4 days, I hasten to add). After a while the constant cycle of fish and chips, bangers and mash and burgers oppresses the soul and the stomach. Don’t get me wrong, I try to resist. ‘I have bought sandwiches’ I cry, ‘pah’, they respond, ‘you can eat them tomorrow, you big girl.’ ‘But, I’m skint’, ‘it’s only £3, sure’, ‘I’m getting fat’ (I’m not, of course, but I was clutching at straws), ‘yes you are’, they lie in perfect harmony, ‘but burgers taste nice’. And there’s really no answer to that.

All I have to look forward to is a big pile of food, a couple of pints and a sleepy afternoon. Which isn’t so bad, I suppose.

6.5/10

Civilisation

2005-01-14T14:44:00.000Z

(God Sim)

JAMES says:

This PC game is now in it’s third incarnation, but the basics are the same. You start of with a little village then it grows til you have a big empire and can go and beat up the Iroquois. It is one of those games that if you have a certain type of personality can take over your life, even though a lot of what you’re doing is actually a bit repetitive, building mines and churches etc. until you start to feel autistic. And I rather stupidly installed it on my computer right before starting to study for my next set of exams.

There are two ways of playing civilisation (or civ as me and my cool computer game friends like to call it). Either you can play it on easy so you’re the baddest guy around and there’s no challenge, or you can play it on hard and spend your whole time getting your ass kicked by the Americans, which is not my idea of fun. After devoting approximately a year of your life to it, you can actually complete it on hard mode, but you’re just another year closer to death and unfortunately it’s hard to transfer your new skills of building vast armies and crushing your enemies beneath your jackbooted heel to the real world. Unless you work in HR. That joke makes no sense.

I do hate feeling this way, as once I no longer get a kick out of dedicating my life to becoming the supreme ruler of a fictional computer world I have few joys left to me, but it just all seems a bit pointless. It is still the best computer game ever, though.

8/10

URT REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2004

2004-12-21T14:11:00.004Z

Everyone else has one, why can't we? Merry Christmas everybody!

BEST ALBUM

NEILL says: White People - Handsome Boy Modelling School. Handsome music for handsome people! Everyone should buy this record, but unfortunately not everyone is good-looking enough. 8.7/10

Runners-up: The College Dropout - Kanye West (8.2/10), The Concretes - The Concretes (8/10)

BEST SINGLE

JAMES says: 'Take Me Out' by Franz Ferdinand. Although it has been out for about a year and I did start to get sick of it around August, when it first came out it was a stomping busting piece of nonsensical greatness. 8.6/10

BEST OTHERWISE GREAT HIP-HOP ALBUM RUINED BY AN ENTIRELY UNNECCESSARY FINAL TRACK WHERE THE RAPPER BANGS ON FOR TWENTY MINUTES ABOUT EVERY BLOODY THING THAT EVER HAPPENED IN THEIR CAREER IN A FRENZY OF GRATUIITOUS SELF-AGGRANDISEMENT

NEILL says: The College Dropout - Kanye West. 8.2/10

Runner-up: Speakerboxx - Outkast (6.6/10)

BEST GIG

NEILL says: An Evening with Jurassic 5, LIVE at the Kentish Town Forum (July)- I don't know when I have ever experienced a moment of such pure and complete happiness as when they launched into 'A Day at the Races'. 9/10

BEST CRISP

NEILL says: Walkers' Sensations Peking Spare Rib flavour. Innovatively, they actually taste like the thing it says on the packet. And that thing is Ribs! 7.2/10

JAMES says: 'Tesco Great British Roast Pork and Apple Sauce flavour crisps'. While all focus is on Walkers, the actual breakthroughs in crisp flavour technology is occurring at the smaller Tesco lab. These crisps are twice as good because they actually taste like two different things, distinctively. 7.7/10

WORST ADVERT

JAMES says: So many to choose from, but I'd have to go for William Shatner's Bran Flakes radio adverts. Partly because they're on at the moment, and annoyance diminishes with time, but mainly because of the way he pronounces 'yoghurty'. I implore all readers to join me in boycotting bran flakes while these adverts continue. 0.3/10

Runner-up: Those ones for Argos or whatever it is with that cunt Richard E Grant. 1/10

BEST YEAR

JAMES says: 2004 was clearly the year of the year. Everyone was talking about 2004 this year. 8.2/10

BEST SATIRE

JAMES says: My satire of end of year reviews, just then. 2.3/10

BEST RESTARAUNT (FISH)

NEILL says: The Seafood Cafe, St Ives. A fiercely contested category, to be sure, but I would have to say this edged out any other Restaraunts (Fish) I have been to this year. 8.6/10

www.seafoodcafe.co.uk

BEST RESTAURANT (MEAT, BIG JUIICY PILES OF MEAT)

JAMES says: Bodean's BBQ, Soho. As previously mentioned, Bodean's is still so the place to go for big juicy piles of meat. Wouldn't you agree, Neill? 8.8/10

NEILL says: Mmmmshrggrrrmmmpphhm.

WORST BEDINGFIELD

JAMES says: Daniel. Fighting off unusually stiff competition, Daniel maintained his worst Bedingfield crown for 2004. How's he gonna get thru this? 0.7/10

WORST HUMAN BEING

NEILL says: My ex-housemate Kate. Evil, psychotic, hateful and just generally not the sort of person one would want to go for pretzels with. Mentally and physically repulsive in equal terms, her stunted social skills and freakish appearance earned her many affectionate nicknames such as 'Grandma Death', 'Skeletor' and 'That Fucking Mental Bitch'. Still, at least she'll die alone and unhappy. Hurrah! 0.1/10

Runners-up: Dick Cheney, Daniel Bedingfield, me...

BEST THING

JAMES says: My iPod, not just this year but ever. By crikey but I love music piracy. In a detached, aesthetic way. 9.4/10

NEILL says: The Portfolio Review session at the London Comics Festival, October 2004. By crikey but I love having my ego massaged. 9.4/10

WORST THING

NEILL says: Same as it ever was: Having a Rubbish Job. 0.2/10

...did we miss anything?

The Tain

2004-12-08T11:24:00.001Z

by The Horslips
(Album)

JAMES says:

Prog Folk Rock band produce concept album based on Irish legend about some people stealing cows from some other people. Oh, you know you want it! I bought this album (or had it bought for me, I can’t remember) as part of my short-lived Glastonbury-inspired Celtic Rock period. Which consisted of two albums. You really can picture them coming up with the idea (or concept) for this album. Head Horslip says to drummer ‘If only there was some way we could combine our twin loves of overblown po-faced rock music and old stories about people fighting.’ Drummer: ‘Maybe there is, pass the spliff’.

Anyway, the only way you can tell this is based on the Tain, apart from the title of the album, is in the helpful sleeve notes which retells the story interspersed with selected quotes from the songs to show you what they’re really talking about. To quote; ‘Maeve’s army moves South with the stolen bull. The Ulster men rally and with Cu Chulainn back in their ranks they give chase. “But before you hit off, let me say this time you bit off more than you can chew.”’
Anyway, this is quite a fun album in an ironic way, which might be the only way I can enjoy anything these days. There’s a great bit where they represent a fight between two champions by an extended fiddle/guitar with far too much reverb duelling banjos style section.

There are also some lyrics that are pompous enough to raise a chuckle, such as ‘Now we’ve got time to kill/kill the shadows on our skin/kill the fear that burns within/killing time my friend.’ And at least it isn’t all shouting about how good it is to kill policemen and disrespect ladies. Proper music.

4.3/10

Walking from London to Brighton

2004-12-08T11:06:00.001Z

(About 50 Miles)

JAMES says:

Not as quick as taking the train.

7.2/10

Being too busy to update this site

2004-11-11T14:57:00.000Z

(Regrettable State of Affairs)

NEILL says:

I would just like to humbly apologise to our loyal, charming and uncommonly attractive reader base for the shocking lack of activity going on around URT manors lately. James is very busy at the moment learning to be an accountant, and I am similarly busy learning to be a comic book artist. Wow, I win that one, huh? All this career-focussed busy-ness is of course very commendable and sensible and all, but the regrettable side-effect is that you poor chaps end up staring at my review of 'Sense and Sensibility' for a full month. And, you know, it's funny, but it's not THAT funny.

Who am I kidding? It really IS that funny. But, um, sorry anyway.

To tide y'all over until things calm down a bit and we can get back 'on project' (likely to be around end of November), why not amuse yourself with some CLASSIC REVIEWS from the archives... scroll down the right hand side of the page, it's all there, every single bit of trivial blithering we ever saw fit to clog up the internet with. Or alternatively, here are a few of my personal favourites, in a little feature I like to call...

URT GOLD!!!

Ahem.

NEILL's favourite reviews by JAMES:

Brainiac

Just Between Us, by Cathy Kelly

Dawson's Creek

Comparitive Review: Violet Berlin vs. Sir Isaiah Berlin

Minced Beef

JAMES' favourite Reviews by NEILL:

Having a Giant Robot

Comparitive Review: Hulk vs. Thing

Xander off Buffy

Death by Daiquiri

Premature Baldness

Look, we promise not to do this again. Um, for a while.

2.5/10

Neill and James review Neill and James

2004-11-09T10:01:00.000Z

Neill Cameron
(Person)

NEILL says:

Reviewing oneself; amusing gimmick or soul-crushing excercise in humiliation that could have been lifted from page one of 'Scientology for Beginners'? That may have been a slightly loaded question. I suppose it's really just a question of verbalising what I in fact spend most minutes of most days doing, in one way or another. If there is one source of more misery and human suffering in our society than anything else, I dare say it is the regrettably widespread practise of comparing oneself to others. That or 'Hollyoaks', anyway. Or maybe I'm just comparing myself to the wrong people; I spend a lot of time berating myself for not being a walking combination of Bertrand Russell, Brad Pitt and Oscar Wilde, whereas in fact perhaps I should try to focus more on feeling thankful that I am not a walking combination of Herman Goering and Bernard Matthews. Actually, that was probably a bad example.

The goal of course is to put an end to such comparisons altogether; to eliminate the endless cravings of the unquiet 'I' through genuine self-knowledge and acceptance. The only problem with this plan is that, unfortunately, I'm not actually Buddha. I just look a bit like him.

Neill Cameron: nice guy, quite polite, makes a mean Hawaiian Omelette.

7.4/10

James Cameron
(Person)

JAMES says:

What to say about me that hasn't been said before? I certainly have my good points. I'm reasonably trustworthy and thoughtful. I'm great at accountancy exams. Really, absolutely top notch. I also bow to no man in my table football skills, though only if I'm allowed to play in defence. Actual football is another story, but anyway. I like to think I'm quite a creative person. My major weakness, other than kryptonite, is a complete lack of motivation. If it's a choice between getting off my arse and actually doing something, or watching an episode of the Simpsons I've seen 50 times, 60% of the time it's Simpsons. I'm also vain, as you might come to realise, and yet not overly concerned with my manner of dress. Also, for a number of years in the nineties I had a goatee and played in a metal band. Still, when it comes to thinking of a mark you've really got to consider the rest of humanity. They are by and large ignorant scum. I would certainly put myself in the upper 20%. Therefore my mark is going to have to be a whopping

8/10

URT Mission Statement

2004-11-09T09:58:00.002Z

We’ve all had the same thoughts – ‘What is better, Norway or Swivel Chairs’, ‘Should I buy the Dolph Lungren box-set or spend the money on fried chicken?’ Well, wonder no more! In this ongoing project (estimated completion date – 2106) Government appointed arbiters of taste Neill and James Cameron, and their descendents, will review everything in the world, and give it a score out of ten.

Thus, we will finally get the answer to the question what is the best thing in the world, ever (it’s swivel chairs).

To aid in the easy dissemination of our findings, we have prepared a handy table of results so far, which throws up such fascinating insights as the fact that Cartesian Dualism is worse than 'Varsity Blues', but they're both better than Julie Burchill. That's a scientific FACT!

Sense and Sensibility

2004-10-13T08:42:00.001Z

By Jane Austen
(Novel)

NEILL says:

I must confess, I am only two-thirds of the way through this book. Ordinarily I would of course always wait until completing a novel before reviewing it, in order to be able to form a full, complete and balanced opinion, but frankly I have something to say that will not wait.

Jane Austen rocks fucking hard. Seriously, Jane Austen rocks the motherfucking cock. I can’t remember the last time I was so obsessively gripped with a story, let alone one that revolves around two 18th-century girls of good breeding and refinement and their respective attempts to make a good marriage. As we speak, Willoughby’s just turned back up – that godless fuckbastard, Willoughby! – and I’m finding it considerably difficult to cope with the tension until I find out what the black-hearted ill-born cock-smoker could possibly be after now. After what he did to Marianne! Not to mention the unfortunate young lady in Colonel Barton’s care, Eliza. MotherFUCKER!

I’m considering faking sickness so I can get away from work this afternoon and finish the bastard.

Jesus Christ. Jane Austen. Who knew?

8.9/10

Some Other Sucker's Parade

2004-10-12T13:35:00.001Z

by Del Amitri

JAMES says:

Hopes were high for Del Amitri with ‘Some Other Sucker’s Parade. Their last album, ‘Twisted’, had been a critical success (well, I liked it), and they seemed about to make the big push into mediocre but well known MOR rock band. Like Crowded House, maybe. But not quite that big. Anyway, the point is, they didn’t, largely because of this album. ‘Some Other Sucker’s Parade’ isn’t bad, and I’m sure it has it’s fans, but it lacks the edge that made ‘Change Everything’ and ‘Waking Hours’ quite good, I suppose. It just seems to reek a bit too much of middle age desperation, not a good reek by anyone’s standards.

It starts off with ‘Not Where it’s At’, where singer Justin Currie wonders why the kids don’t dig him, and instead are off listening to shouty music. Well, not in so many words he doesn’t, but that’s the general vibe. After that there are about 13 songs which kind of blend into each other. ‘High Times’ has a nice high pitched singing bit, and ‘Medicine’ is memorable for having a line dropped from the single version after Princess Diana died (I could never work out which line could possibly cause any offence. Maybe it was ‘Stupid Junkie Whore/I’m glad you’re dead/Princess Diannnnnnnnna’), but apart from that you put on the album, then it finishes, and nothing really happens in between.

It’s a shame, really, because Del Amitri had the talent to produce something more than this. ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ and ‘Driving with the Brakes On’ are as fine heart-breaking songs as you’ll ever find, and their Scottish World Cup Song ‘Just don’t fuck up quite so badly this time, please, please, do it for wee Timmy’ was a refreshing change. They could write also brilliant lyrics like ‘I turned on a T.V. station and/Lip-read with the sound turned down/It was Pro-Celeb mouth-to-mouth resuscitation/With Esther Rantzen/Playing the one who's drowned’ from ‘You’re Gone’. And Justin Currie inspired me to grow my first pair of sideburns all those years ago. I still get the urge to hear their songs, and one of the first things I did when I got back from honeymoon was listen to a Del Amitri album. Not this one though.

This was basically the point when Del Amitri stopped being a band that you could just about like without embarrassment and instead became some weird wannabe country band with song titles like ‘One More Last Hurrah’ and ‘Last Cheap Shot at the Dream’. Now, the only other person I can find who likes Del Amitri is also a big Wet Wet Wet fan.

Sigh.

5.6/10

www.delamitri.com - Still Going!

You Chose Right The First Time

2004-10-11T07:56:00.001Z

By DGL and Chris Nicholas
(Comic Book)

NEILL says:

If there’s one thing better than comics, it’s necking a couple of E’s and having sex with Eliza ‘Faith from Buffy’ Dukshu whilst jumping from a fast-moving aeroplane. And if there’s one thing better than that, it’s FREE COMICS!! Especially when they don’t suck. You can imagine then my excitement upon receiving, all the way from the grand old state of Texas in the U. S. of A. a package containing the first couple of issues of ‘You Chose Right The First Time’, a comic which was not only FREE (perks of being a reviewer!) but quite strikingly and comprehensively does not suck.

Y.C.R.T.F.T tells the tale of the impressively-named Lem Bivage, who may be just about the least sympathetic protagonist to ever stink up the pages of a comic. A low-life morally repugnant murderous little shitbag with no principles, courage or apparent sense of personal hygiene, Bivage uneasily inhabits the world of Chicago in the late 60’s, a place of civil unrest, police corruption, perverted gangsters and filthy goddamn punk hippies. One of the chief joys of Y.C.R.T.F.T is how convincingly and entertainingly the creators evoke this messed-up setting. You can almost smell the piss and broken teeth. No, that’s a good thing.

The other chief joy is the art. Artist and co-writer Dave Lamplugh ('DGL') has a vivid blocky ‘woodcut-y’ style, and is not afraid of a pot of black ink. There are moments where the perspective and anatomy can be a little graceless, but these are more than made up for by flourishes of superb inventiveness and originality. There is a sequence in issue one where the art uses a kind of spotlight effect to follow the main character as he loses himself in a crowd that is incredibly effective and just plain damn cool. The cumulative effect of this comic is like reading James Ellroy illustrated by an angry bitter drunken genius. And that's got to be worth a look, right?

8.1/10

Want to read this comic but can’t find it in your local W. H. Smiths? No duh! Contact the creators direct on ycrtft@comic.com and I’m sure they’ll be happy to provide you with ordering details etc.

Having To Wear a Fucking Tie

2004-10-04T07:55:00.001Z

(I mean to say, what the fuck?)

NEILL says:

It is a testament to the near-superhuman stoical dignity of my spirit that I can adjust to many hardships in life. The early onset of male pattern baldness, living in a country where summer lasts for an average duration of an afternoon, Chris Claremont’s second writing stint on X-men in the late 90’s… these brutalities and more have I endured with an unruffled manly perseverance. But these is one thing to which I fear I can never adjust, and that is wearing a fucking tie.

What the fuck is the point of a tie, anyway? What fucking bright spark at what point in human history decided that the sight of shirt-buttons was so heinously offensive that they must forever hide their shame beneath a long pointy and completely bit of redundant flap of cloth, tied around one’s neck like a fucking leash? Which is precisely what it is; a constant visual and physical reminder that you are a dog, your destiny not your own, working your life away to increase the fortunes of distant masters who very likely are utterly worthless human beings themselves; shit-eating half-brained lunatics whose only lust is for money and power but have neither the imagination nor intelligence to do anything worthwhile with those goods on having achieved them. And probably wear braces.

The only other possible point to a tie is that it provides a convenient means by which to hang oneself from the nearest air-conditioning vent when the realisation of the above becomes too painful.

0.1/10

The London Underground

2004-09-29T14:33:00.001Z

(Mass Transit System)

GUEST LONDON BASED OFFICE GUY #3 MIKE says:

You've all heard of the London Underground, and some of you may even have been to parties where costumes must be worn named after its stations (e.g.wear a grey mac and scratch your crotch a lot for 'Holburn'). But what is this modern marvel of subterranean transport really like? The London Underground (or 'Tube') was first invented in 1842 as a way of discreetly sending loud/smelly/insane people away from the centre. As numbers of these people grew, they decided to let normal people on too. Although not many, as you can still witness today.

Friends of mine report having seen the following characters on the Underground: Prince, disguisedas a small Jewish man, moving around all the sleeping people on the carriage and making 'Gollum noises' in their ears; a particularly bad magician rehearsing his card tricks, many of which resulted in the spraying of cards all round the carriage; and a dead man. Although this last one may just havebeen the driver.

This leads me to those all important people who are required to aim thatjoystick in a straight line and press "Go!" (tricky after a night out) - the tube train 'drivers'. Unless you travel on the Jubilee line of course, which has no drivers. These space-age trains allow the punter to sit right at the front of the carriage and pretend to be the driver (I'd recommend a'Fischer-Price Kiddie-Go stick on steering wheel', and a bum bag with '£5 per person' written on it to confuse the tourists). The amount of trust put in these driverless trains really is quite odd, taking into account how often a Scalextric car flies off the track in one lap (and yes, I do imagine someone in a control tower squeezing one of those 'gun' things to make the train go round). That said, they are fun and they look cool!

Once you emerge from the Underground and decide to go for a wander, you quickly discover that all the places you've been to previously on the tube,are actually within 5 minutes walk of each other. This is because London is actually 4 miles square (the Underground lines were designed by Erno Rubik, as you can see through the choice of colours used for the different lines). Having made this discovery, you will quickly go off using the tube.

The day they invent a tube that is smaller (less room for weirdos), that can go to any part of London, is positioned on top of land (less stuffy and dark), and has a bell you can push when you want to stop, is the day I'll start using the Underground again. Until that day, I think I'll just walk.

4.3/10

Stealing Office Supplies

2004-09-27T13:26:00.000Z

(Unofficial 'perk')

Guest Disaffected Office Texan CHRIS (2) says:

This may be the ONLY good thing about working in an office, besides air conditioning and those times that someone brings donuts. And, while none of these things quite make up for the soul-crushing ennui of being forced to do things that you could absolutely care less about for the benefit of people you despise, just so that you may eke out survival bringing back meager table scraps to your freezing hovel, God forbid Tiny Tim needs that operation because the insurance surely wont cover it, and it looks like it’s going to be homemade cards for everyone at Christmas again this year, and that screeching harridan of a mother-in-law looking on all smug, “See! I told you he’d never amount to anything. You should’ve married blah-blah-blah, he’s a doctor now, blah-blah-bladdity-fucking-blah!”

Ahem, as I was saying, petty theft from your employer is in no wise recommended as a substitute for a real life, but it is rather nice to have a good selection of pens at home, and it does feel like some small measure of revenge. Also, since I’m the sap who orders supplies for the office I get to pick out the kind of pens I like, which currently are the Papermate X-Tends retractable. They have a nice rubber grip which doesn’t overly aggravate my “clerk’s claw”.

7.3/10

Minutes

2004-09-24T08:22:00.000Z

(Writing down what people say)

Guest Office Bod Number Four Debbie says:

Oh for goodness sake. A complete waste of everyone’s time wherebv some poor sod (usually me) has to write down everything people say in a meeting irrespective of whether they are talking a load of tosh, taking their own notes anyway, or don’t care because they only came for the free biscuits…ACTION DH - these should be deluxe biscuits for the next meeting and remember that Mark doesn’t like Jaffa Cakes.

There is a lot of snobbery involved in minute taking a general feeling that there is only one possible way of correctly recording minutes. This simply isn’t the case –at every place you work at you will find different idiosyncrasies. E.g. in my current institution, it doesn’t matter what you write as long as the minutes end up on green paper (mid green mind, not pale). In my last post I was selected above equally competent colleagues for the highly prestigious task of minuting Academic Board. I have an MA and on account of this, they decided that I would be the best person for the job. Apparently however, my highly accurate recording of what people said at this meeting was quite the wrong approach. Apparently what I was supposed to write was a piece of fiction and suddenly I realised that it was not the fact that I had an MA that was important, it was the fact that my course was in scriptwriting.

I am not taking any of that rot again and actively use minute taking as an opportunity to actively practice my scriptwriting. Nowadays I unashamedly write down everything including stage directions. BILL ANGRILY CROSSES DSL TO THE REFRESHEMENT TABLE AND SPILLS COFFEE DOWN HIS TROUSERS, BENDING DOWN TO CLEAN IT UP HE SNEAKS A QUICK PEAK UP VANESSA’S SKIRT.

You may think that such recording of detail is unnecessary but there are times that I wish I kept minutes in my spare time. It would be great to prove that James really did tell my family that he had been to Pinner Fair (even if it was in jest) because the fact that we can all remember the conversation is not enough.

By far, the worst part of writing minutes (apart from Word automatically bullet pointing bits you don’t want it to) is the collection of comments and approvals from attendees. This process always takes a month although quite why since no one actually reads the damn things apart from any mention of their own name, is beyond me. Next time I minute a meeting, I have a good mind to arrange the first three chapters of “The Famous Five go off in a Caravan” in bullet points substituting the names of the children for the attendees of the meeting and I bet that the only comments I will get back are “Looks fine to me but don’t remember drinking ginger beer or speaking to quite so many circus folk!” or “Very accurate Debbie but next time could we have more jaffa cakes”

Minutes? I don’t care, who does.

4/10

JAMES says:

But, why would I have said I had been to Pinner Fair if I hadn't? It makes no sense.

2.7/10

Trying to stay motivated at work after handing in one's notice

2004-09-22T10:35:00.000Z

(End of Type of Employment)

Guest Office Bod #2 Kirsty says:

This is perhaps the worst thing ever…especially as I have a 6 week notice period…I probably would have gone mad if it had been 3 months and then I would have really left with a bang!!!! ( I could just see myself being carted away by the men in white coats, people gossiping in the streets “OOhhh I hear Kirsty went mad in her notice period” ”OOhh yes she was dribbling profusely when they took her..”OOhh yes I hear she tried to throw herself off the top of the building”.. etc..etc..)

So anyway back to the topic in hand, it has been a long time coming what with one thing and another but finally the day came when I could hand in said notice……It felt good, really good…..especially as one feels that one is going on to do bigger and much better things…..so its raspberries to you, yes you establishment and hello to lots more money and lots more exciting projects………………..

So what is there for me to do in the next coming weeks?
Well luckily I am going on holiday for a week – so let’s see that will be 5 dull weeks left…..but after that????
The thing is is that when you are leaving no one ever gives you more work because
a) they know you don’t want to do any
b) you probably won’t get it done anyway
and
c) even if you did attempt it you would probably do a really shit job anyway and you wouldn’t even be in the slightest bit bothered anyway…..so what else is there to do apart from poking my eyes out with pencils?

I suppose what springs to mind is doing my own thing independently of the company like re-discovering the internet – sites such as unified theory review, e-bay, pout, popbitch, r-soles, f-magazine, topshop and so on….., followed by updating all e-mail addresses into my personal hotmail e-mail account, taking full advantage of playing really funky music loudly……………….

I mean I could do useful things for the next poor sucker who has to sit in my sorry shoes like writing up some kind of sensible handover notes…well yes I could do that but then what the hell would I do in my last week?

And also I have started throwing things out – you know things I don’t really want…even if they may be slightly important..I just want to cleanse my soul from the demons y’know? No? Oh fine then be like that…..
I have a huge pile of filing on my desk and everyday I look at it and wonder how much trouble I would actually get into it if I just left it there….just sitting there….what a rebel.

So really after mulling over things I am totally out of ideas to stay motivated..I didn’t have any ideas in the first place….I just can’t .. there is no point…..I may as well stick those pencils in my eyes-- it would be fun to see the blood, guts , gore ..there is no hope…..arrggggh………………I have no idea what else to write apart from the fact that I will go to the loo now because that will take at least 5 minutes out of the snoring business of working out one’s notice………………………………………………….

1.7/10

Wasting Time at Work

2004-09-22T10:24:00.000Z

(We all do it)

JAMES says:

Whether it's playing Freecell, catching up on hot gossip about who's directing the new Howard the Duck movie, playing the fun new trivia game on our messageboard , or even setting up your own website, we all need something to distract ourselves from the tedious monkey work that would otherwise fill our days. Even if it's just for a few minutes/hours, it adds a little bit of enjoyment to the grey sea of monotony that is the working week. My advice is don't feel guilty, just go ahead and loaf (assuming your computer screen doesn't face outwards. URT accepts no responsibilty for any disciplinary action or tickings off). I mean, what else are you going to do? Talk to people in your office? Write a report? Don't make me laugh!

7.2/10

P.S. if anyone at my work is reading this, it's meant ironically.

Working in an Office

2004-09-21T08:05:00.000Z

(Type of Employment)

Disaffected Office Drone DI says:

Shockingly, most of my friends work in an office. This is shocking because I consider most of them to be intelligent, enlightened, talented people. Not unlike myself. Even more shocking, is that I work in an office too. What the fuck happened?

I hate offices. I hate getting the bus / train / tube / tandem to my place of work, with everyone else, all identically dressed in black, grey or navy blue. No-one speaks, no-one smiles. We are miserable.

When we get off our vehicle of despair, we enter our offices mentally picturing the moment in 8 hours time when we will be leaving them. If the office has a nice receptionist, they will say hello and we are compelled to smile and say hello, when in fact we both want to commit suicide at that particular moment in time.

If we are particularly unlucky, we will work in an open-plan cubical/screen divided grey prison with no natural light or fresh air under flickering yellow strip lights which occasionally interact with the frequency of our computer screens causing the development of epilepsy / bi-polar disorder or the effect of sedation.

We stare at our computer screens, 75cm away from our noses, all day, stopping only to have a wee, make a cup of tea, photocopy some meaningless drivel (followed by a tense few moments un-jamming the photocopier), or horror of ultimate horrors, we may have to go to a meeting. The meeting is a particular division of Hell inexplicably overlooked by Dante. I could go on for hours, but I really only need mention phenomena such as buzzwords, taking the Minutes, Powerpoint presentations and the urge to, again, commit suicide by sticking a sharpened pencil into the nostril and hammering it into the (by now numb) brain.

Lunchtime sees people fleeing madly in all directions from the office, desperately trying to squeeze what they’d normally spend all day doing (i.e. having a life) into an hour, or sometimes only about 20 minutes. Chaos descends as office workers confusedly go jogging, run to the pub, return clothes to shops they only bought from yesterday, make frenzied phone calls to organise a mortgage or frantically book flights to anywhere that isn’t an office. The result is a kind of sad anarchy of the soul, which is the highpoint of the working day.

At 3.30pm precisely it is indisputably the worst moment of each day in the office. We are full and drowsy from lunch and have been back at our desks for two hours. Home time is aeons away, glittering like a mirage in the distance. Here is where the serious clock-watching begins. We check out the BBC website, some travel sites and leave a few messages on a message board. Only 15 minutes passes. Someone comes over with some paper and we feign interest / knowledge / a pulse. Eventually time as we know it becomes meaningless and stops altogether leaving us in a vacuum of dribbling tedium until we’re released at home time, blinking in the sunlight , helpless, clueless and lobotomised.

As I say, it’s shocking that I and my friends do this. What’s really sad is the total waste of talent and humanity: barely anyone I know enjoys their job. And those that say they do, I don’t believe for a moment. I’m leaving my job soon to go and have diarroeah in India. I can only urge you to do the same, before it’s too late.

0.5/10

(The .5 is for free use of internet / photocopier and the bit of paper you get at the end of the month that says they’ve paid you.)

Yes, true believers, it's DISAFFECTED OFFICE DRONE WEEK! Coming up: Rants, bitches and gripes from bored-shitless office workers all over the world! Are YOU clock-watching right now? Of course you are, why else would you be reading this? Why not stop daydreaming about handing in your notice / taking an industrial stapler to your boss's face / getting your leg over with that cutie who sits by the photocopier, and do something constructive instead? Send your very own ranting bitchy gripes to feedback@urtheory.co.uk, or just post them on the messageboard .

Fancy Shiny Grown-Up Watches

2004-09-13T09:07:00.001Z

(Chronometer)

JAMES says:

As a newly married man, I felt it time to make a token effort at growing up. Nothing drastic like stopping playing computer games or reading Superman or going to McDonalds, but a gesture towards the fact that I was a child no more. I have therefore replaced my old digital watch with a chunky analogue one from H Samuels, at a hefty cost of nearly £50(!). And, to be honest, if this is growing up I want no part of it. Sure, it looks a lot better, and I’ll probably get laughed at less in important meetings, but at what cost?

As far as extra features go, it can just about tell me the date but that’s it. No alarm, no stopwatch, no telling me what time it is in Java. It’s also heavy, and you can’t wear it in bed. And if you drunkenly lose it in a game of dominos it’s actually quite a big deal. But, I suppose I’ll get used to it, in the way I got used to having to wear a suit every day and no longer having 3 months of summer holiday. And it does look cool.
Sigh.

6.8/10

The Day After Tomorrow

2004-09-13T09:06:00.001Z

(Movie)

JAMES says:

It is already about a month after the day after tomorrow when I originally saw this film, and life so far has been surprisingly free of wolves, giant hail stones and maverick scientists who no-one believes until everything they were talking about actually happens. So the film got the timescale a bit wrong, along with most of the science and the belief that we actually care about whether little Petey the blind boy lives or dies. Still, it kept my mind off the whole getting married the next day (yes, my last night of freedom was spent in an out-of-town Watford leisure park eating Mexican food, shooting zombies and watching a crappy American disaster film. It was great!), it taught us a valuable lesson, and it's nice to see that if there ever was major climate change over 2 weeks, everyone in the third world would be only to happy to have their countries overrun by whiney white people. The wolves were a bit over the top though.

4.8/10

Strangehaven

2004-09-06T07:55:00.000Z

by Gary Spencer Milldige
(Comic Book)

NEILL says:

Imagine, if you will, a cross between the Archers and Twin Peaks; an everyday tale of normal English village life with healthy lashings of sinister masonic conspiracy, UFO cult strangeness, amazonian indian mysticism and brutal multiple killings. With me so far? Doesn’t it sound fucking ace? Now imagine that this gloriously warped tale is illustrated with some of the most beautiful, stylish and evocative artwork being produced in Britain right now; a combination of bold, blocky line art and layered ink washes that makes the strangeness of the events it depicts all the more unsettling for grounding it in a reality of near-documentary authenticity. Okay, you still with me? God, I’m excited just describing it. Don’t you want to read this comic RIGHT NOW??? Of course you do. Right. Now imagine that you have to wait, on average, an ENTIRE FUCKING YEAR between instalments of this thing.I mean to say, what? If the Archers tried that I don’t think it’d go down too well. And, to be fair, about as much happens in a single issue of Strangehaven as in one 15-minute episode of Radio 4’s longest-running shit-arsed dull yokel soap. (The parallels don’t end there, in fact; for all his vivid imagination and astonishing artistic skill, writer / artist Millidge has a flair for stilted, prosaic dialogue that would be right at home amongst Ambridge’s denizens. Shit, this guy could dialogue for Emmerdale).

I’m torn as to whether I should recommend reading ‘Strangehaven’. On the one hand, it will condemn you to a lifetime of addiction, unfulfilled yearning and waiting… endlessly, endlessly waiting….On the other hand, it seriously is one of the best-looking things I have ever seen. On balance, I think I would have to say everyone should go and buy it so as to support such a rare and individual artist, so he can stop having to get other jobs to support himself and his family, and can get on with the important business of telling his bizarre, engrossing and utterly unique tale.

8/10

www.millidge.com - the website

Having a Quite Common Name

2004-09-06T07:51:00.000Z

(Whinge)

JAMES CAMERON says:

Do you know how much I'm going to have to do if I'm ever going to be the most famous James Cameron? Or even the 5th most famous James Cameron? A hell of a lot, let me tell you. Not for me the heady thrill of Google searching my own name, even though I have my own website. Not only do I have to put up with people informing me, when I tell them my name, that there is a film director who also has that name, but there's also a reporter, an artist, loads of people. And when I went to the doctor, upon finding out my name, he enquired if I was related to the famous James Cameron as usual, but then went on to reveal he was referring to a Dr James Cameron who pioneered autopsies in this country. And the other day I was looking in the TV listings and I saw there was a program on called 'James Cameron is a Jerk.' It's not pleasant, I tell you.

And even my first name is depressingly common. I am one of 3 James's in the office, which causes much confusion and hilarity on the phone (well, not much if I'm honest). At present it's not too bad as I'm known as 'Young James', but that position is always under threat. I had to turn down some guy who interviewed for the job as he was not only a James, but younger than me and even in the short time he came in to interview had begun to be known as 'Cute James.' It's only a matter of time before my identity becomes 'Middle-Aged James', which can't be good.

So you Quentins, Marmadukes and Neills, enjoy your individuality, and spare a thought for those poor souls destined to spend their lives mired in a sea of James Camerons.

3.8/10

NEILL says:

At least you haven’t had to spend the last twenty-seven years patiently explaining to people why you have an extra ‘L’. Which of course it would be quite hard to squeeze into ‘James’, but you take my point. Is it my fault I have willfully obscure middle-class parents? Of course, this cycle of abuse can only continue, and should I ever have a son I rather fancy I shall name the pitiable bastard Paull.

Having an extra ‘L’ – 4.3/10

Lou's Homemade Raspberry Crème Brulees

2004-09-01T08:19:00.001Z

(Pudding)

NEILL says:

I never knew puddings could be this way. The opulent creaminess, delicately counterpoised with the mischievous piquancy of the raspberries, and the whole set off by the sublime golden quality of the, um, burnt bit on top. Fucking belter!

9/10

Curly Wurlies

2004-09-01T07:53:00.000Z

(Chocolate Bar)

GUEST REVIEWER CHRIS says:

Dr Pangloss had it right, this really is the best of all possible worlds. I mean, nothwithstanding the bad stuff like wars, famine, genocide, rape, hatred, sexual abuse, natural disasters, and Tony Hawks (not Tony Hawkes the skateboarding legend, but Tony Hawks the ‘comedian’ with an annoying voice whose greatest achievement to date has been to take a fridge around Ireland). But this is all balanced out by the presence of Curly Wurlies (apart from maybe Tony hawks).

Superior to your average chocolate bar in so many ways, one of its most endearing features is its sheer simplicity. Chocolate and caramel. That’s all it is. There’s no fannying around with biscuits, wafers, mallows, or nougats. Just chocolate and caramel. Yet Cadbury’s make it taste so goooooood. What’s more, the psychological aspect of buying such a lengthy snack (8 inches at the last count) means not only do you believe you’ve had more bar than you really have, but the experience lasts longer. The braided shape just adds to the eating experience, ensuring that not too much Curly Wurly enters your mouth at any one time, unlike the unpleasant unable-to-chew-for-toffee sensation which may come from the more substantial snack bars (mentioning no names, Biscuit Boost). And as if it could be any better, it’s even tastier in cold weather, when one is forced to snap off sections of the Curly Wurly and allow the melting process in the mouth to soften the caramel. All in all, the Curly Wurly is the reason our mouths were invented.

8.9/10

Jerry Springer - The Opera

2004-08-27T12:59:00.000Z

(Opera)

CONSTANT GUEST REVIEWER DEBBIE says:

I admit that it's my own stupid fault but I thought the fact that I hate Jerry Springer-style chat shows, Fat people, Americans, fat Americans, Musicals, Opera and crude language would be a positive asset to enjoying this satirical piece of theatre. I also thought it was about time I came off my Drama Graduate/Playwright high horse and saw something other than Chekhov, Wilde or Coward for a change.

The first thing that really annoyed me was that James had found us crap seats up in the Gods. However, it turns out that this wasn't his fault and placated by the pretty toilet paper in the ladies, I settled into the show. After 20 minutes I just wanted it to end. You know, just like that feeling you get when you watch any film starring Nicole Kidman? The show offended and irritated me. I don't mind rude words, so long as they have comic value, for instance "bollocks", but I felt uncomfortable listening to such a pile of filth. My companions however seemed to revel in it which annoyed me even more. I'm an old fashioned girl and I cannot condone coarse behaviour...which might lead some to question why I will be marrying James in a few weeks, but I digress.

My only artistic criticism is that I felt they hadn't gone far enough when creating the guests - the baby fetishist was pretty good but I think they should have hammed it up a bit more. After feeling that the show couldn't get much worse and a nice ice cream in the interval, I was further offended by the blasphemy in Act II - everyone knows that Jesus wasn't a fat man!

The staging was on the whole pretty good and I was impressed by the musicians and performers, apart from the chap playing Jerry himself. I also felt that the performance suffered a real lack of direction in Act II - it was hard to make out what they were getting at.
To conclude, I cannot fault the production itself, it's just no good for a highbrow like me. It is perfectly possible to achieve entertainment for entrainment's sake without being outrageous.

This show achieved everything it set out to achieve and perhaps for this reason I would even go so far as to say I hated it more than Les Miserables. Sorry Stewart Lee, I am a great admirer of your work in general but I think you should go back to working with Richard Herring.
I am also cross that we didn't get badges at the end, my friend Louisa did and she only went a week before us!

Staging and music score 6/10
Personal Enjoyment score- 1.5/10 (this score is solely for the toilet paper)

NEILL says:

Why would you want badges for a show you didn't even like? That's mental.

8.7/10

JAMES says:

I'll probably be sleeping on the sofa for this, but I don't think it's really fair to say you were too highbrow for the show. There were some intelligent themes discussed in there, and it is a frickin' Opera after all. Maybe it would be better to say you're too refined. I don't know, I'll throw it open to the readers. Vote in the comments about whether Debbie is too refined or too high-brow.

7.9/10

Steve Wright in the Afternoon

2004-08-25T10:42:00.000Z

(Sleazy Man Blathering on your Radio)

JAMES says:

This one might be a bit of a rant, I’m afraid. I think I used to think that Steve Wright was quite cool, back when he was on Radio 1. Probably something to do with Arnie & the Terminators. Having recently been exposed to his show, this time on ‘adult’ radio 2, I feel ashamed for little 12 year old James, and if I could meet him a la ‘Disney’s the Kid’ I would be forced to shake some sense in to him, as much as it would hurt me. There are few people in the world I admire more than myself, but in this instance I readily admit I was a chump. But nowhere near as much of a chump as Steve Wright.

The radio DJs job is to play records and talk, in varying degrees, and while Steve’s musical taste is about as good as his face is attractive, I would gladly listen to Girls Aloud on constant repeat from 2 til 5 if it would save me from his ramblings. It’s like having the boring tedious person in the office who thinks his opinions are so great that every conversation has to be conducted in as high a voice as possible on the radio, only he’s surrounded by paid sycophants who have to pretend that everything he says is amusing or insightful, thus swelling his already formidable ego. He constantly reads out ‘Factoids’ that half the time are just rubbish gossip ,the other half old urban legends that everyone knows are made up. He thinks having an agony aunt pretending to be Elvis is so funny he should do it every week. He has an old lady on all the time. He does the kind of impressions that people who can’t do impressions do, all the time. He sleazes over his young female guests so much, I have found out for the first time the physical sensation of one’s skin crawling. He even has an astrology section.

All this could be forgiven if it wasn’t for the fact he is unbelievably stupid. His ‘Big Quiz’ is like the Richard and Judy quiz, only easier, and yet he still mispronounces most of it and gets the answers wrong. And when he tries to put one of his opinions across, it is so spectacularly ill-informed and just plain wrong that you want to give the radio a clip round the ear. And no-one does lazy clichés like Steve Wright does lazy clichés. For a couple of weeks his radio station was taken over by Mark Goodier, and it actually got better.

Now you might be wondering why even at this very minute I am listening to his show. It’s not as you might expect being inflicted on me in a work environment. I have the hallowed position of being in control of the radio at the moment. I could just change over. But if I changed over every time there was a DJ I didn’t like then there isn’t a radio station I could stay with all day, and forever changing is too much trouble. Therefore, for the sake of Wogan in the mornings and funny angry old people on Jeremy Vine’s call-in show I put up with Steve Wright. Until he just pushes me too far…

1.7/10

http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/ - Let’s get him fired!

Spam E-mail

2004-08-25T10:33:00.000Z

(Irritating phenomena of modern life)

NEILL says:

Relentlessly sunny optimist that I am, I try to look on the bright side of having my inbox constantly clogged up with endless unsolicited junk e-mails about penis enlargement, dodgy pharmaceuticals and 'shaved teens'. ‘What bright side?’, you may well ask. Well, I sometimes find there is a certain dark poetry to be appreciated in the largely unexamined field of the Spam Subject Line. Here are my all-time top 5 personal favourites, in descending order of grotesque hilarity:

5) Get more Ass than a Toilet Seat
4) Tear Her Shrimp Bed Apart
3) Chess board genitals
2) Is the Mail on Sunday more Planet Dumbass's market?
Ha ha ha! No. Thanks for asking, though. The absolute winner is fantastically, staggeringly minging:
1) Just because they're OLD... doesn't mean they don't need DICK!!!

Okay, so it's not much of a bright side.

2/10

JAMES says:

The amateur housewives were not free, and my penis stayed the same size. I'm starting to wonder if the whole thing might be some kind of scam.

0.4/10

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’

2004-08-13T08:03:00.000Z

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

JAMES says:

Fantastic 19th century short story about yellow wallpaper. I think this is going to have to be one of those times where I’m not going to tell you anything more about it so as not to spoil things. Instead I’m just going to say it’s great, go and read it. Look, there’s a link right there. You can read it right now, this minute. For free. Yeah, I thought that’d get you attention. Go on, then.

8.2/10

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/YelWal.shtml

Stagg and Groome

2004-08-13T07:57:00.000Z

(Mismatched Crimefighting Duo)

NEILL says:

STAGG is a tough, unconventional maverick San Francisco Cop! With antlers! He plays by his own rules but dammit he GETS RESULTS! This is one cop you don't want to BUTT HEADS WITH!

GROOME is a 1950's rural English Groom! With 2 flat caps - one for WEARING and one for HIDING BEHIND!!!

Together, they are the deadliest fighting force the criminal fraternity has ever seen. Together, they are…

STAGG AND GROOME!!!

Their Secret Origin: Stagg and Groome were created over the course of a long afternoon at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing in Stepney (where I won an AWARD), in the quiet spells between hordes of desparate love-crazed teenage Japanese girls seeking my autograph. Yes, amazingly enough, there were quiet spells. Of course, this was before I won my AWARD. Did I mention I won an AWARD?

The funniest part of the whole thing was people's responses. My day was absolutely made by the deadpan response of a certain independent comics publisher who didn't seem to be laughing uproariously for some reason. Helpfully, we explained it to him. "Yes," he said with a pained expression. "I get it."

Movie rights are available for negotiation! Talk to my people!

9/10

http://www.planetdumbass.co.uk/urt/staggandgroome2.jpg - Stagg and Groome Movie Poster

Everything you like

2004-07-30T08:41:00.000Z

NEILL says:

Rubbish.

2/10

Everything I like

NEILL says:

Great!

8.5/10

European Monetary Punctuation

2004-07-27T14:25:00.000Z

(System of financial notation)

JAMES says:

I’ve always found the European habit of putting a comma rather than a full stop between the big coins and the little coins rather endearing. It’s one of those little differences that make popping over to the continent more of an adventure, like a greater concentration of old red-faced men eyeing you suspiciously in the street. However, since I’ve started dealing in the world of high finance (ahem) I’ve come across the startling truth. Not only do they have a comma separating the Euros from the centimes, but they have a full stop separating the thousands and the hundreds!! For instance, 12 thousand euros and 23 centimes would be €12.000,23. Now long time readers will know my feelings about bringing nationalistic sentiment into purely economic arguments, but it must be clear to anyone with eyes in their heads that in this case our friends in Bruseels are dead wrong. A full stop marks the end of something and the start of something else, whereas a comma is the continuation of something. They’ve turned reason on its head!

1.1/10

Halls Mentho-Lyptus Extra Strong

2004-07-16T10:06:00.001Z

(Cough Lozenges)

NEILL says:

Yo, let me holler at y'all a minute. You see this shit? These Halls Mentho-Lyptus Extra Strong? Well let me tell you, this shit is the bomb. This is the real shit, the straight up dope shit. This some hardcore gangsta cough lozenge shit. Knawwhaaamsayin? Better aks somebody.

For real, yo: the menthol vapour action on these motherfuckers will knock yo punk ass out. You know, I can handle mine, knawwhaaamsayin, but check this: I dropped two of these motherfuckers and I was one doped-up smoked-out sorry ass motherfucker. Seriously, yo. Halls Mentho-Lyptus Extra Strong: this shit will fuck yo ass up. Recognise.

Don't be coming here getting all up in my shit with your 'Lockets' shit. Lockets? Bitch please. Lockets be on some silly bitch shit. And don't even start with that Cherry-flavour Tunes shit. Bitch, I pity you. I'm telling you, man, Halls Mentho-Lyptus Extra Strong be the shit. For real.

7/10

The Big Four

2004-07-16T10:01:00.000Z

by Agatha Christie
(Ripping Yarn)

JAMES says:

You may think you know what this book will be like before even reading it. Agatha Christie, you think, so vicars, unusual poisons, wills, country houses, Amazonian blow pipes. And awful dialogue. Well, let me throw a few more things into the mix. How about shadowy international Communist conspiracies, death-rays, evil Chinese masterminds, secret mountain bases and a character called ‘the Destroyer’. Not so sure now, are you? Although the dialogue is still a bit ropey. Anyway, this seems to be the book where Christie went a bit mental and decided to just take the piss. While it’s not what anyone would call a great book, it is very interesting to read if you’ve read quite a few Agatha Christies, or if you want to see just how indebted James Bond was to Poirot. The sheer genre-ripping novelty will have you snorting out loud in disbelief. Admittedly there are a few too many ‘But dash it Poirot, how could you possibly have known that?’ moments, but that pretty much comes with the territory.

6.1/10

Buy this book on Amazon

Waking up

2004-07-12T07:33:00.002Z

(Transitional state of awareness)

NEILL says:

Increasingly these days I am inclined to think of consciousness as being essentially cyclical in nature. One's thought processes on any given day will generally consist of about five or six topics which will just repeat in cycles of varying frequency, over and over and over again. These five topics can generally be broken down into a fairly small number of major categories: sex, food and work being the biggies, with a couple of spots reserved for one's current cirumstances and major preoccupations of choice. I've drawn a handy diagram to illustrate this, what I would like to call 'Cameron's Theory of Orbital Consciousness'. Pay attention now, you'll probably see this repeated in the next edition of the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy...

That's just me, anyway. The composition and relative frequency of the cycles will vary in accordance with various factors, notably age, gender, social position and level of drunkenness. The frequency of a cycle is hugely variable: to take one example: on the fateful day that young James got wed, for the roughly one-hour period that I in my Best Man-ly role was actually in possession of the wedding bands, the single thought 'Shit! Have I lost the rings?' increased in frequency till it was cycling at a rate of approximately once every two point five seconds during the final minutes before I got to give them to the vicar and breathe a massive sigh of relief. Once something has been running on such a 'hot cycle' it cannot simply disappear, and for the rest of the day (indeed, the week) I was still having sudden panics and checking my pockets, albeit with increasingly long gaps in between. It's been a couple of weeks now, and I think I'm okay, but I would not in the least be surprised if I find myself years from now, tramping up a mountainside in some far-flung part of Asia, suddenly thinking to myself 'Fuck! Where are the rings?'

Anyway, waking up: the great thing about waking up is that it is a chance to observe this process kicking in: you can take a few moments on waking to to simply lie there and pay attention to the first cycle of the day lazily running its course. By noting the first five things that drift through your slowly activating brain, you will get an exclusive teaser preview of what you are in fact going to be thinking about all day. For example, on my first attempt at this exercise, my first 5 thoughts covered the following subjects:

this girl that I like

giant robots

how to lay out the first two panels of the page I'm working on

how 'Quality' by Talib Kweli really is a fantastic album and certainly deserves a better mark than I gave it in my review

how consciousness is essentially cyclical in nature and I should really get around to writing something about it some time

That was one day at random, but to be fair, it could have been any day of my life for the last couple of years. Sex, comics, hip-hop and philosophy. You'll notice how my actual JOB doesn't even get a look-in there...

I would invite all our readers to partake of this simple exercise; it's an extremely easy and often highly revealing bit of self-analyis; a kind of quick mental daily diagnostic (although it can be quite hard to remember, as you tend to be a bit sleepy at the time.) I would further invite all our readers to post, here, on the messageboard or via e-mail, their lists of the first five things they think about in the morning. In this way I hope to compile a psychic census of the nation, or at least of our glamorous and bohemian little corner of it. It'll be fun, and when I'm on 'Richard & Judy' selling my best-selling pop-psychological book on the subject I promise to send you all a postcard.

6.2/10