Finally The Clown Has A Good Idea.

A bus stop poster near my house proclaims, 'eat like a king, not a clown,' and if you ask me, no marketing declaration since
'they're waffly versatile' has been more appropriate. Seriously, you could grill them, bake them, fry them AND eat them.

Anyway, Burger King. They rule the fast food world with their King Fries and their massive flame grilled burgers, and now they know how to do a PR campaign too, unlike McDonalds. Apparently, McDonalds put the word out that anyone who wrote a rap about a Big Mac would get a prize or something. And the amount of urban poems submitted? Zero. Paying Pharrell Williams a few million dollars to write you a jingle is one thing, but trying to be all street by getting the kids to rap about your food is...Well, you can fill in the blank.

Burger King's PR company ought to pat themselves on the back for this poster, because despite their flame grilled flavour being basically painted onto their, ahem, beef patties, they taste deee-licious and I want one now. I couldn't care less what they're made of. I'd take an XL Bacon Double Cheeseburger over a Quarter Pounder any day, and you should too, even if you're a vegetarian. Sadly though, Burger King's epicurean dominance doesn't begin until exactly 10.30am Monday to Saturday and 11am on Sunday.

That's because McDonalds stop serving breakfast then. If I was on death row for crimes against, I don't know, fashion or something (let's not get too morose), my last meal request would, I kid you not, be a Double Sausage & Egg McMuffin. Really. I don't think there's a better realised use of offal and grease anywhere in the world.

I've often wondered why McDonalds insist on abandoning their culinary pièce de résistance, as the Japanese say, every morning in favour of food that can only be described as utter filth. I'm not loving it.

So when I read that McDonalds are thinking about serving breakfast all day I nearly McSoiled myself. Goodbye toes.

Questions

I have questions:

Back in 1990, Snap had the power. What did they do with it?

2Unlimited knew no limits, so how come their pop career was so limited?

How come all herbal tea tastes bitter and fruitless, despite smelling delicious and exactly like the fruit it purports to contain?

What did she look like with a chimney on her?

Why aren't Olympic champions called Lords of the Rings?

How come not one of the scenarios in Alanis Morrissete's song are remotely ironic?

Why is the carrot considered the smartest of all the vegetables?

What does 'tomorrow never knows what it doesn't know too soon' mean?

How come everyone who crosses their arms into an X shape on X Factor is certain to be rubbish?

Wouldn't all things be cheap at half the price, assuming the initial price is reasonable?

How come I've never found 50 Cent in any club?

Why is Kerry Katona on the front cover of every issue of OK! Magazine?

Why is Kerry Katona famous, again?

How come Jay Kay forgot he was a hippy as soon as he could afford his first Ferrari?

How come there's no smart thinking inside the box?

Think on.

Gonna Cry Now

This story is old now, but I thought I'd spread the joy here because I was happy when I read it. If you can't be bothered with it, basically the story goes that one of the statues commissioned for Rocky III (three statues were made) has been placed back where it belongs, on top of the steps which lead to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Some of the Philly art stiffs, though, have branded it a mere movie prop, arguing it doesn't belong among proper art.

That's all well and good, but I bet they'd consider it art if it depicted a fat woman with a tail and a horse's head and was sculpted out of fossilised cat cack. Plus, I'd guess the statue already has, and will continue to, bring more visitors to the museum than any of the real art inside.

So Fifi and Trixibelle are choking on their organic berets now, but it's nothing that chopping a cow in half won't solve. If I was a thoughtful writer I'd say something terribly cheesy about another triumph for the underdog, but I'm just not that good.

Beard Science Trilogy Pt.3

About a week ago I realised that there were two ridiculous things happening in my life, both of which I should be embarrassed about. Firstly, I was growing a beard and secondly, I was writing about it in the public domain. This was indicative of a fundamental, albeit short-term boredom problem.

I was at work the other day, bored an scratching my face, when it dawned on me that not only was I indulging in a sport both painful and ugly, but I was gleefully documenting it as though it was in some way entertaining to anyone. Plus, as well as actively promoting my strawberry blonde heritage to everyone, it led me to a new and entirely unwanted milestone; grey.

Indeed, on the right side of my chin, just below my mouth, was confirmation of my ever-relinquishing youth. My wife spotted it first, and for days I tried to convince her it was an 'albino hair' until I spotted another, then another, then another. Added to black, brown, ginger and blond, grey was just too much - the beard had to go.

So it did. I took some photos on my phone, but the grainy quality and toplessness made them look a bit, well, creepy, so I deleted them. I couldn't, however, resist doing this, which I've posted as a kind of punishment to myself for being so moronic as to bother writing about having some facial hair for a couple of weeks. Is there nothing more interesting or noteworthy in my life? The photo's funny though, what?

This episode, as well as a conversation with my homie D Dawg in McDonalds, has prompted me to reconsider my presence on the blogsphere (I think that's what proper internet people call it) so I'm thinking I might shift my page elsewhere and go underground. Let's be honest, unless I'm living in the celebrity hyperreality nobody cares what I do or what I think. Maybe I'll apply for Big Brother next year.

You'll find a picture of me in all my bearded splendor here if you want. Initially I posted the picture on this page, but it was a bit weird seeing myself so I took it off. And so it ends.

Beard Science Trilogy Pt.2

You know, you think of something ridiculous to blog about and it seems like a great and novel idea until you realise it'll be really boring. Growing a beard is one such thing.

It's a bit longer, obviously, but at the moment I look like I've been hit with an uglier stick than normal. Itchiness is minimal thus far, although I'm still in the shadow zone in which you can see my beard but the hairs haven't grown enough to start doubling back into my face like ginger torpedos.

I won't put the pictures up yet because they're embarrassingly similar and make me feel like less of a man, but you'll see them all in good time. Don't cry.

Actually, to be honest I'm thinking you should just leave and go here instead. At least he's got something to say.

Bye for now.

Beard Science Trilogy Pt.1

Over the years man has undertaken some seemingly insurmountable challenges. A few years ago someone wearing a monocle probably looked to the sky one evening and said to his associate at the men's club, "you know old chap, I think one day our boys will fly to that glorious bright crated globe up there in some sort of flying vessel and land on it."

Of course, his gentlemanly acquaintance, Cyril, will have spluttered out his brandy in uncontrollable horror, aghast at such a proclamation of unattainable fantasy, before branding his former friend a witch and sentencing him to forty lashes. But, as we now know, Cynical Cyril would have been proved very wrong.

Similarly, ten million years ago when God's human prototypes, monkeys, ruled the Earth (obviously), if one of them had shrilled to the other, "hey, you mark my words, in a few million years we'll be able to talk quietly and walk upright," he would have been beaten to death with his banana.

Yet here I am. Plus, if I get 999 of my friends together we'll eventually be able to write some Shakespeare. But those things are nothing compared to a man's greatest test, a test I'm about to undertake; growing a beard.

I've tried to grow a beard a few times before, and each time I've failed before I hit the two week mark due to uncontrollable itching and the recurring realisation that someone in my family was ginger. I've got nothing against strawberry blonde at all, but I fail to understand where this ginger facial growth, in stark contrast to my hair, comes from.

Regardless, this time I'm determined. I was at my friend's baby dedication soiree last week when the topic of conversation turned to beards and my friend, Heidi, jokingly suggested I should grow one. My curiosity coupled with an interest in undertaking an extreme challenge prompted me to take up the bushy gauntlet.

Then a few days ago it dawned on me that I didn't have to do it alone, so I decided to share my experience with the world by keeping a public journal of life with a beard. I'm calling it my Brilliantly Excellent Accessible Regular Diary, or BEARD. So keep checking for updates over the next six weeks or so, because after that I'll probably get rid of it to avoid upsetting my wife too much, and to avoid having spare change thrown at me by passers by.

I had my final shave on Monday, a proper thorough one which harnessed the full power of my Mach3 Nitro, prior to letting the scratching commence. It'll be an arduous journey, but I'm chasing the dream and nobody said it would be easy. All the most noble and distinguished men in the world have beards, men like Abraham Lincoln, ZZ Top, and Giant Haystacks, so the way I see it at least if I'm judged by my cover I'll be considered wise and honourable.

Ok then, here I go. I'm away to buy some sandals and some light brown socks.

...For You And For Me And The Entire Human Race

How many games consoles does it take to heal the world?

According to this article the PS3 will not only be the premier games system to own come Christmas, it'll also be helping find a cure for Alzheimer's and other diseases thanks to its vast processing capabilities. Apparently, linking 10,000 PlayStation 3s together will create a computer capable of a thousand trillion calculations per second which can be used to research protein folding in the human body.

Proteins in the body that don't fold correctly are understood to cause diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and various cancers, although it is not known how or why this process occurs. Unfortunately, the average PC, according to the BBC, would take 10,000 days to simulate just one fold, a fold which would take ten millionths of a second in the body. Intel ought to be ashamed of themselves.

At present the solution is to link thousands of computers together, harnessing their spare processing ability so that each can undertake a fraction of the calculations needed to simulate a fold, before pulling the data together via the magic of the interweb. Scientists can then view multiple simulations relatively quickly to ultimately find cures for the diseases.

Cynical marketing stunt based on a technological coincidence, or genuinely benevolent scientific pioneering on the part of Sony, then? Hmm. Nonetheless, Sony claim to be working on a piece of protein folding software that will run on the PS3 when it's launched later this year. Furthermore, the PS3's graphics chip, 'designed for advanced gaming', will eventually support a graphical interface that will allow scientists to 'view the protein from different angles as it folds in real time.'

Er, real time? Please tell me if I'm being stupid here, but did I not just read that a fold takes place in ten millionths of a second? I hope the interface has a slow motion function. In any case, I'm sure a PC graphics card will come out soon which will be able to draw the protein a nano-fraction smoother, making the PS3's life-saving capabilities a bit rubbish and pointless anyway. In the meantime, though, PS3 owners have a reason to feel good about themselves while they're swearing through their headsets at hapless German adolescents for pummeling them 4-0 with FC Weder Lufthausen on Pro Evo Online.

It might be overpriced and underpowered, but the PS3 could save your child's life one day, so be careful what you say about it, ok. By the way, I heard Nintendo were approached about using Wii, but after linking 25,000 of them together the resultant supercomputer, codenamed NintenCure, still couldn't work out how to stop a nose bleed. They had a lot of fun trying though, much more than they'd had with the PS3, and it was really simple to operate too.


Watch out for the Apple version, iProtein Pro, which will make the proteins dance as well as fold, all right out of the box.

iPout

You know, I think that to bore people more than I have already about my new baby would be to commit a crime against cool, and I've never done that before in my life, not once. I can even refer to myself in the third person, like, "M Dawggg wants a fawty," and retain my dignity. For M Dawggg to go on about his new found wireless networking capabilities, Intel Core Duo power, DVD Superdrive and Magsafe power cable would be wack, so he won't.

What I will say, though, is that this magic box I'm typing on now (really badly - stupid tiny keyboard) is, I reckon, built mostly for MySpace use. It has a little camera above the screen which seems to serve no purpose at all other than to pout at and take photos of yourself with, which is exactly what EVERYONE on MySpace does. Why, M Dawggg asks himself? How come everyone on MySpace has this overwhelming urge to grab a camera, hold it in front of them as far as they can reach, usually from above, and pout? Anyway, with this thing I can do that with both hands free, leaving me able to do other things, like enjoy a brew:


You'll note that I can add zany effects to my picture for that touch of class. I won that cup for being Angel of the Month at Office Angels, by the way, and like I said to a friend recently, when I drink out of it I know exactly what it must be like to drink champagne out of the FA Cup, sipping from the chalice of achievement.

Anyway, I didn't write this so I could pout into my iSight camera (see what they did there?) or to tell you about the tiny remote control I can operate it with, but to spread some sensational irony. I came here to self-indulgently lament self-indulgence on this blog because of the season in my life I'm about to go into, the season that prompted me to ditch desktop dallying and opt for mobile, er, movement. What I'm saying is that I'll shortly be doing far more by way of purposeful writing, leaving me with far less time to splatter the kind of inwardly-focussed verbal diarrhea I usually deposit on this page. As such there are two was my blog life could go:

1. It could die.

2. It could become a more purposeful and interesting pursuit, tied inextricably with the 'proper' writing I'm doing at any given time, making it more useful for me and more entertaining (hopefully) for you.

As always, a number two is more satisfying than a number one.

I need to be real, however, and stress that this could all be folly because I might turn out to be a bit rubbish when it comes to the crunch and find myself devoid of any meaningful journalistic nous. One thing I'm certain of is that come September I'll be busier, but whether I'll be able to bag some decent writing assignments is anyone's guess. There are some cool things on the horizon though, so I'll just have to play my cards right and see what happens. I need to learn how to use this keyboard properly for a start.


And spend less time pouting.

Now I Can Fry An Egg Anywhere

When I wrote the blog preceding this one I knew I'd need a laptop at some point before going back to university in September. I also knew I liked Macs, and now so do you, but I didn't think my dream would become a reality so imminently and be so glorious in splendor. But, shrewd financial wheeling and dealing in association with my friends at The Student Loan Company has afforded me the luxury of purchasing a shiny new Intel based 2.0GHz MacBook. And I'm excited. Very excited.

Instead of yacking now I'll wait until I pick it up then bore you with it properly. Watch this space.


In the meantime, look at the shiny picture an be happy for me. I think it has a flux capacitor.

Mac. Better.

So I think it's time to throw my cards on the table, or rather my hardware. I use a Mac and I love it. In fact, so desperate was I to get my hands on one that I bought a base level eMac at a price which would have afforded me a well-specced PC, one that would have lasted a good, oh, three months before becoming obsolete. And five before spyware rendered it totally unusable.

I love Macs because I'm a real person, by which I mean that I choose a personal computer in the same way I choose any other luxury item. Firstly, of course, I think, 'will it look good on me/near me?' Then I wonder, 'will it work?' And only then do I think, 'and can I afford it?' So, when I want to buy a car, the answer to the first two questions points me to a Lamborghini, but the safety net third question takes me straight to the used car lot at Reg Vardy. In our post-modern, material driven, celebrity-ridden age, true happiness is removal of the third question entirely, but sadly that's not the case for most of us.

I know very little about computers really, but when I came to buy one, Apple seemed to offer me a positive response to each of my three commodity questions, outworked as follows:

1. Do I prefer the shiny white, compact, sweet looking, fully integrated single unit Mac or the huge grey slab of noisy plastic accompanied by a mass of cables, a tiny monitor, twenty software discs and eight uselessly inaccessible USB ports ?

2. Which will I be more likely to have to pull apart under the instruction of a call centre worker in India at a cost of £1 per second because my files have disappeared? Again.

3. My last PC cost £1,000 plus anti-virus software, a firewall and call charges to Asia. That good looking white thing is £200 cheaper even after I buy Microsoft Office. Why am I even thinking about this?

So minutes after walking into John Lewis I was walking out with a Mac under my arm. Even the box looked cool.

The hilarious thing about the Mac vs. PC debate is that people bothered enough to argue about it always battle over specs, operating systems, processing speeds, software stability and games. Who cares? All I asked of my new purchase was that it let me print a letter and find out quickly when another hot celebrity buys a tiny dog, yet it's now in danger of becoming my actual best friend. My wife thinks it is already. My eMac has been discontinued now, yet to this day it allows me to do those things quickly and efficiently, plus I can edit a film, download a song, upload a photo, transfer anything into my PSP and record songs. All straight out of the box, all easily, and all with only one button on my mouse. Phew.

It seems to me that Apple know what most people want from a personal computer, the same way as they know what people want from a portable music player; something that looks good, is easy to use and works properly. Sadly, not many regular people know much about Macs yet, but hopefully Apple's marketing department will catch up with its design team shortly. Their latest ad campaign is a start, I suppose:



Yes, they're quite haughty, and yes, after you've watched a couple they get a bit annoying. But, they've ENRAGED the PC crowd, and that can only be a good thing, if only to provide some tech-tastic comedy spleen venting on the forums. Here's a brutal parody by someone who loves his graphics cards:



...And I'm gonna go play Burnout with a real person I can see who can't lie to me about their gender. LOL, as they say.

The thing is, most people don't really NEED a computer, do they? But computers can perform such amazing wizardry these days that we choose to spend our lives making them impress us ever more. I don't need to transfer my CD collection into iTunes, don't need to make short films about my band, don't need to write this blog, but I like to because it's all made easy for me. I'm sure that 95% of people who own computers, including me, couldn't give a monkeys how their computer actually does stuff. Most couldn't care less about their clock speed and MB of RAM, but if the magic box will allow them to knock together a comedy home movie one day and a slideshow of their cruise to Magaluf the next, they're satisfied. If it'll do that while taking up minimal space, being quiet, not crashing and, most importantly, looking cool, that's just dandy. My Mac does all that really well. My PC didn't.

Macs are computers for style-conscious computer-illiterate buffoons. And designers. They're for people like me, who cringe at the thought of knowing what a Java Applet is, whose only knowledge of HTML code is < br > and who think a CODEC is what your dad takes pictures with. People with games consoles. Argh.

See, before I bought my little bundle of joy I operated two PCs, my own and my dad's. Both sucked, and sucked badly. You already know that I had to take mine apart and phone a call centre, which is to know enough. And my dad's. Oh dear. It spat its dummy out within ten minutes of being first switched on and never picked it up again. I used it a couple of weeks ago and, I'm not kidding, it took about fifteen minutes to turn it on and open internet explorer. Fifteen minutes. I think he only persists with it to annoy me.

But I fear that I'm getting too close to all out PC-bashing territory now, which would land me in hot water because I wouldn't have a prayer in a spec war with a hardcore PC-upgrading Mac playa hater. I'm blissfully ignorant. Intel Shmintel, I say. If you're happy with your PC, hey, I ain't mad atcha, you just keep perpetratin' those right-click drive-bys on the Mac crew and I'm not going to argue. The point I'm trying to make here is that most people just want the coolest stuff they can get these days, and the coolest stuff right now is the stuff Steve Jobs and his posse are making. If the good looking thing happens to have a bit about it under the surface too, great. Why do you think Carol Vorderman is so popular?

Here's my vision of the future. The iPod Generation, or whatever you care to label them (I prefer 'neo-walkmanites'), will be buying computers for themselves soon. Obviously that's discounting all the older people who bought iPods and hooked them up to their PCs like plugging a guitar into a hi-fi. Once the younger ones get spending on their very own MySpace Facilitators, PCs will become the new Macs - a misunderstood minority group, except without the cachet and the backing of dancing pop stars.

Apple, on the other hand, will be stemming a tide of viruses instead of making software that works properly and ruing the day they put form ahead of function. How are you supposed to shoot aliens on your typewriter when your mouse has only got one button?

Meanwhile, Half-life will move exclusively to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo's new console, the Pu, will aim squarely at the lucrative and untapped 65-90 age bracket with an innovative novelty control device shaped like a walking stick.

As Yoda allegedly said to Luke: Once Mac you go, never back you'll go.

The Second Greatest Steve We've Ever Had In The Band

So, having made a video promoting the new lineup, the band is once more thrown into that familiar languid chasm, four strings short of an ensemble. The bass player's provisory position came to an abruptly premature halt two days ago, rendering a nameless entity incomplete, a road eroded, a title superfluous.

Er...Steve's left the band. And now we've officially turned into Spinal Tap, except, fortunately for me, it's bass players we keep losing and, fortunately for them, none of the losses have involved bizarre gardening accidents or choking on someone else's vomit. Here's a little history:

Dan played bass for us first and introduced me to John and Dave, effectively forming the band. Then he left. And that's all I have to say about that.


Then Simeon came in, all Funkmeister Flex with his 5-string Warwick and baggy pants. Great musician too. Before that he'd played cello for us on a recording we started with Dan but never completed. He left to work in Sheffield.


Then Oli stepped up, another Funkmeister and very talented indeed. I suspected it wouldn't work out though, and it didn't. He does relief work in Asia these days, which while not as worthy a cause as being in a band, is still admirable. Just.


Then came a long break while we did other things. John amassed a collection of tools and DIY equipment matched only by Tim 'The Toolman' Taylor and began to build. Dave organised some sort of giant post-grad party, which I assume involved kegs, paper cups and plastic-covered furniture. They broke a projector. And I developed an addiction to The Happy World of Haribo. My doctor says the regular stinging sensation is because of the sour coating.

So, Steve. We love him for his personality and his playing, so he was an obvious choice. His personal circumstances meant he could only be a temporary solution for us, although we'd all have liked it to become permanent, but sadly Steve didn't quite click with the music. Euphemisms are rarely used literally, but there were actual musical differences, and because Steve was officially temporary it seemed futile for him to go through the time and expense of continuing to rehearse with us.

I understand Steve's plight because I've been there. The boys already know this, but when I first began to play with the band I didn't get it either, and I would drive home from practices wondering whether to stick with it or not. I think the friendships I was developing with John and Dave kept me there, and the fact that there was something interestingly unusual about the music that I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was this element I believed would make the band a success, and still do. Most importantly, the lads share my belief in God and the desire to communicate that belief through music. I love the music these days too - it's grown on me like a third nipple, a useful one that I want all my friends to see.

We still love Steve. He's a fine, fine bass player, but his 80s pop/rock roots presented a latent inevitability. He told me that he hoped to be jealous of our next bass player. In the nicest possible way, I hope so too, and the search is on.


Oh, the blog title. Quite simple really. As great as Steve is, he'll never eclipse his namesake, interestingly also called Steve, our band mascot. Steve is bright orange and thinks Kylie is 'just fabulous', but he's separated from Dale Winton by virtue of his percussion expertise. Booyakasha.

These Chicks Don't Even Know The Name Of My Band

There are no chicks, but if there were they wouldn't know the name of my band because there isn't one. There's a band, well, three quarters of one, but no name. Ach, just watch the video:



Here's the story. John writes good songs and has done so for some time. Dave plays guitar in between all night LAN FPS sessions and lays down a riff almost as efficiently as he eliminates a headcrab. Together they made a demo using a drum machine which was good, but lacked punch. The producer of that demo mentioned that he knew a real drummer, one that would speed up, slow down, make mistakes and everything. So he introduced them to me. One 34 minute tribute to Mike Portnoy drum solo later, I was recruited. Dan the producer played bass and we set on course for small local venue domination using the name Heath.

The song you hear on the above video is taken from the one recording we did together, which sadly marked the beginning of the end for Heath. 'Musical differences' arose and the band decided to split up after trying a succession of ill-suited bass players, all ill players, but unsuitable nonetheless. About a year passed and I did a demo of my own involving both John and Dave, along with a bass player I have worked with for years, Steve, known and loved by literally handfuls of church congregations across the region.

For whatever reason, the timing seemed right to put the band together again recently, although that arguably proved untrue because it couldn't have come at a worse time for Dave, who is currently finishing his PHD and updating his blog. Despite that, John and I recruited Steve and began to practice a few weeks ago in preparation for Dave's ceremonious return. When he does, gigs will happen, and we hope big things thereafter. I'm confident, too.

Man Of Steal

I went to see Superman Returns last Saturday. It was too long.

Superman was a childhood hero of mine, so in many ways this film was fighting a losing battle from the start because I consider the 1978 original a classic and don't think a new film was necessarily needed. Watching the original the following day confirmed that fact, although Reeve's costume now appears slightly more camp as a result of the new darker one.


But I was never opposed to an update. In fact, I couldn't wait for the new film to come out from the moment I heard about it. Updates can be done well; a new Batman film wasn't really needed either, but Batman Begins did something completely different and it worked well. Sadly, Superman is for all intents and purposes a remake of the original because it shamelessly refers to the 1978 film at every possible opportunity. And there's definitely a stronger Jesus allegory this time around.

But imitation doesn't itself make this a bad film. In fact, it's a very good film, just not a classic. Brandon Routh plays both Superman and Clark Kent very well, managing to separate the characters enough to make them both believable, but never with as much flair as Christopher Reeve did. Kevin Spacey, on the other hand, is a pale shadow of Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor. All the bumbling comedic flair that Hackman added to the character is lost on Spacey who, although good, is too sinister in the role.

I'm certain that I'll like Superman Returns more the next time I see it, I might even come to love it, but for the moment I just can't get that enthused. Some of the scenes are amazing, the actors are well chosen, the directing and effects are great, and there's a controversial sub-plot that I'm surprised I didn't find out about beforehand. For me, though, it's missing that something special to drag it into the realms of the Spider-man films, which in my opinion are both outstanding comic book movie benchmarks.

That said, I'd certainly recommend it. Just buy large snacks, and don't leave your wallet on the counter when you do, as I did. It took me two days to realise too, yet I didn't get robbed. Incredible.

Flop Trumps

I received an email yesterday telling me that the new official Playstation 3 website has gone live. It's a typical Sony affair, heavy on marketing and very nicely designed, but light on all the things that I, and presumably most people, actually want to see - screenshots and video. I didn't spend too long there, but I don't think there's any game footage at all.

The specs are all in place, but they mean nothing to me whatsoever. I recall reading in Edge, the forerunner in pretentiously anal gaming journalism, that the PS3 will have 'one teraflop floating point performance'. What? Having been gaming faithfully with Sony for ten years now, with a few Nintendo flirtations on the side, none of which have satisfied or lasted very long, all I care about is one question: Will it trounce Microsoft?

The answer, of course, is yes. But I wish Sony would stop being all Japanese and just tell people that. (Note I haven't considered Nintendo's effort. Wii'll see how it does, but I think everyone knows what the outcome will be. Flush?) I've spent some time with an XBOX360 recently and the graphical capabilities are remarkable, but none of the games I've played so far have added anything to my PS2 experience but a few smoother lines. Granted, it's early days, and I expect that lack of innovation will be the thorn in the PS3's side too until developers fully grasp the capabilities of the machine's 'cell processor'.

By which time Nintendo will have announced their retirement from the hardware market altogether and Microsoft will be desperately trying to churn another Halo out, hoping to recapture the magic (of an over-rated PC-lite FPS).

Console wars? It's always been more a polite exchange of statistics, but hopefully soon one of them will punch the other one in the face, steal their trump cards then run away. Now that would be cool.

Gonna Fly Now?

One of the enduring memories I carry from my childhood is my obsession with the Rocky films. That's how I can count to five in Roman numerals, and I thought I was about to learn what six looked like, but alas not because when Rocky 6 comes to a theatre near you it'll be called Rocky Balboa. Nonetheless, my cynical chums, I'm excited about it, to say the least.

One sunny day in 1990 I recall stumbling upon a shop that sold videos while being dragged through the Gateshead Garden Festival by my parents. And there, in the corner among Little Shop Of Horrors and Gremlins, was a title I'd been longing to own for years ; Rocky IV, in all its slightly fuzzy VHS splendour. Fortunately, the Garden Festival had finally given Gateshead something apart from Gazza to be proud of, so everyone who lived there, like us, went every single day. Thus, I got to bug my dad for this copy of Rocky IV on a daily basis, giving me the one and only good reason a 10-year-old needed to go to an urban regeneration site. Except for the hall of curvy mirrors, that was cool.


Rocky IV was released in 1985, so why I didn't have a copy in 1990 is beyond me, although it does explain why I regularly frequented the video shop at the top of the street for packets of super sour gobstoppers and Rocky films. Sometimes I got Superman, because I loved those films too, but usually a Rocky. I loved all of them, you see.

Eventually I badgered my dad enough to buy me the video, and that copy of Rocky IV was my most favouritest thing in the world, ahead, even, of my Megadrive. I watched it every single day when I got back from school, and sometimes I'd just watch the end fight sequence with the Russian over and over again, before running into my brother's room and beating the living daylights out of him. This nice VH1 feature explains what all the fuss was about:



Then disaster struck. A big freak from my class called Christopher asked if he could borrow my copy of Rocky IV while my mam was there, so she forced me to give it to him against my wishes. When I got it back, the sound had gone, replaced by a muted buzz. I was raging, so we had a fight the next day in the playground, by which I mean we pushed each other around a bit before the bell rang, quite unlike Rocky. Apart from the bell bit.

So, Rocky-less and alone, I had to wait until Christmas before getting a new copy, but my mam and my auntie Linda came through with all of them on VHS. Sweet.

All I ever seemed to want to do as a kid was watch Rocky. I even wanted to be a boxer when I grew up because of it, until I found out you had to train every day and getting smacked in the head hurts. I believe the roots of my obsession lie in one night in early 1980.

While my mam was heavily pregnant with me, my dad took her to see Rocky II. To this day they both maintain that it was the best cinema experience they've ever had, as every single person in the room got up from their chairs and jumped up and down to cheer Rocky on as though his title re-match with Apollo Creed was actually unfolding live. It was absolutely unlike anything they'd ever experienced before, and there I was, listening to it all immersed in amniotic fluid. In fact, there are only two times I remember ever going to the cinema with my dad; once to see Schindler's List during which I fell asleep (which is no indictment on the film) and the time he took me to see Rocky V, which, despite the horror of the film, remains a warm memory of time spent with my father. Actually, before Nicola miscarried, our baby was due on the release date of the next Rocky film, which I thought was cool.

The first Rocky was released in 1976 to widespread critical acclaim, winning 3 oscars. According to Stallone, who was an unknown actor and about to sell his dog Butkus for food when he wrote Rocky, the producers who wanted the script initially offered to buy it for $25,000 on the proviso that a big name star play the central role. Robert Redford, James Caan and Ryan O'Neal were mooted as possible Balboas, but Stallone's unwavering desire to play the part himself saw him refute a final offer of $360,000 before the producers caved.


With $106 dollars in his bank account, Stallone was used to being poor and saw Rocky as his big chance to become a star, reasoning that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if it succeeded without his involvement. It was agreed that with an unknown actor in the leading role production costs should be kept low, so the budget was set at $1,000,000 and the rest, as the old cliche goes, is something that happened in the past.

The film went $100,000 over budget, but that didn't matter as it turned out. Some would argue that Rocky was too successful for it's own good, because the $117,000,000 US box office gross it took led to the inevitable glut of sequels, culminating in the artistic and financial (relatively speaking) disaster that was Rocky V.

Now, I know there are a load of playa-hataz who cuss every Rocky film past the first one for being formulaic, cheesy and cynical Hollywood churn-outs with thoughtless and predictable plot lines. And they're absolutely correct (with the possible exception of Rocky II), but so what? They entertain. And the fact is that there aren't any other films quite like them, or at least none that do it so flagrantly and so very well. The first film basically invented a narrative structure that has been followed by Hollywood ever since, and it did it with integrity and artistic flair. The ones that followed, granted, had little by way of originality, but they entertained in a basic 'flawed hero gets battered but comes good at the end' manner. It wasn't the conclusion that mattered, but the way it took you there.

You can imagine my disappointment when I realised how bad Rocky V actually was. The notion of 'champ losing everything and going back to his roots' was fine, but to execute it so poorly was shameful. Let's be honest, after Rocky II the films were basically a testosterone vehicle - a training montage set to an oversized adrenalin-inducing RAWK soundtrack followed by Rocky getting the crap punched out of him then tearing his opponent apart at the last minute. Rocky V tried to do that, but it was as though Stallone had become a bit embarrassed about the obviousness of the formula and had tried to hide it by getting someone else to do the training / fighting bit. Just in case, though, he had a quick rumble with his protege at the end and pummeled him for being an ungrateful little mug.

Stallone knew it was rubbish and admitted it later, but the damage was done. There was no way he was going to let an American icon go out like that.

And so comes Rocky Balboa. As you can tell, I could write about Rocky all day, so you can imagine my merriment when the rumours of a sixth Rocky were confirmed. I can totally understand what the geeks must have felt like when Episode I was confirmed now.

Predictably, the movie forums are spattered with 'LOL he must be fighting with a zimmer frame' and the like, but Stallone should be applauded for even trying to make this film. Cynics will say that he's doing it mostly for financial reasons, but at 60, with many millions of dollars to his name and a recent successful TV show in 'The Contender', he hardly needs to make a comeback. His CV is littered with some truly awful films, but I would suggest that the risks involved in making another Rocky are far greater than is first apparent. For a start, Rocky is a character ingrained in American pop culture who arguably represents the American Dream itself. Rocky V is like the drunk, embarrassing uncle at the party in congress that nobody wants to talk to. Send his drunk younger brother to congress and the party might get shut down.

See, if Stallone makes another Rocky V, which he runs the risk of doing because he's already making noises about going back to the roots of the series, much the same as he did before V was released, he could ruin the franchise for an entirely new generation, and take his own reputation down with it for good. He'll also prove the ageist crowd absolutely right.

But at the moment it looks good. For one, he's actually been controversial (SPOILER ALERT) because he's killed Adrian off. Rocky's NEVER been controversial before. And then there's the trailer, which was released only a coupe of days ago and which prompted me to write this. Clearly, Stallone is aware the type of stick he's getting and is happy to poke fun at himself, yet the fight sequence looks like it'll be as viscerally satisfying as ever. Plus, this time there's no guarantee how the fight will end. So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Rocky Balboa:



Best. Christmas. Ever.

Is That Daddy’s Car?

A couple of weeks ago on a Friday night I had a dream. In my dream the world was a better place, a tranquil haven of joy and plenty in which trouble and woe melted by in a luxurious haze.

My dad has a friend called Chris. Chris is a partner in a firm called Halliwell Landau and Chris just bought a new silver Mercedes CLS500. In my dream Chris gave me his car for the evening.


So you can imagine that on following Saturday afternoon when my dad called me and said, “Mark, Chris says you can have his car tonight if you want it,” I was overjoyed. To thank him I offered him my ride in exchange, but he said no. He probably knew he couldn’t handle my dope whip’s raw power, but that's ok.

I went to my dad’s house to reintroduce myself to Chris. I’d only met him once, about five years ago for a few minutes after he’d had a few, but I remembered him as a top bloke and this gesture was magnifying that memory. It turns out he’d read my musings on the 6 Series in The Independent and wanted to know how his car compared. Well, that’s what he told me, but my dad had shown him the article and he probably just wanted me to have a good time. Like I said, top bloke. I remarked that I’d known my dad for 27 years and he’d never let me anywhere near his cars, and out we went.

He took me out to talk me through the features, like the voice activated DVD player and sat nav, heated vibrating leather seats and 7-speed automatic tiptronic gearbox with a ‘start/stop’ button on top of the shifter. Oh, and to tell me that it had a 5 litre V8 and I should push it a bit to see how it went.


To be honest, though, as amazingly impressive as it all was, I was slightly under-awed as he was taking me through the stuff, even though I was about to drive a car with a £52,000 list price and every option box ticked on top of that. Nicola, on the other hand, was not. In fact, she was so gobsmacked that fear filled her from the moment she sat inside the thing, terrified that I’d prang it.

As Chris walked away, I realised that the one thing he hadn't told me was where the handbrake release was, which was a bit embarrassing as I contemplated running up the garden after him so he could show me. Fortunately I remembered that my dad’s old Merc had a foot-operated handbrake and I found the release. This could be a disaster, I thought, but I kept that to myself.

Nicola was just about shaking as I reversed away. So, for fun, as I turned out the drive I floored it.

Yes. It was like falling down Mount Everest inside a marshmallow, if you can imagine such a thing, except you could watch the telly while having your behind gently massaged at the same time, which I'm told you can't do even in the most modern Marks and Spencer marshmallows.

It only took about 500 yards for any sense of grandeur missing from my introduction to the car to slap me in the face harder than Balboa on Christmas day in Moscow. I've always thought the CLS looked a bit goofy, a bit confused, like it didn't know what it was supposed to be. I mean, Mercedes call it a 'four door coupe', which is a bit like calling your house a 'three tiered bungalow', and I've never really understood who it's supposed to appeal to. But, when I asked the journalist who took me out in the 6 Series if any car had really surprised him lately, his answer was the CLS without hesitation. And now I could see why.

It had an X factor that I couldn't quite put my finger on and it looked absolutely stunning from the outside. Pictures of this car don't get across how good it looks in real life at all, because in print it looks like someone's tried to fold it in half and bent it from side on.


I think that what I liked about it was how different and weird it was, much like the 6 Series, except the Merc is more practical. Personally, I'd still take the BMW, but if I was a bit older and needed the space, I don't think there's a better looking or cooler saloon (it's NOT a coupe) than the CLS. Granted, I haven't tried that many £50,000 plus saloons, but really, they're probably much the same at this end of the market and are largely selected based on one question: 'Which one will detract from my middle-aged spread best?'

The only disappointments were that it seemed slightly cramped for such a big car because the roof line's quite low, and the gearbox was a bit lazy when it wasn't in sport mode. That said, one man's lazy is another's comfort, and there was still plenty of room, just not as much as I expected. Most of all though, I loved it a shocking amount.

But you know when you’re doing something you really enjoy, say, watching a new episode of 24, and the phone keeps ringing so you have to keep getting up just as Jack Bauer’s about to lay the smackdown on some perp who he’s just discovered has been hiding a nuclear weapon in his shed that he bought from someone who works at the CTU? Well, Nicola was that phone. Every time I prodded the throttle, she rang. See, in her mind this was a disaster waiting to happen, and no amount of German precision safety engineering, active or passive, was going to prevent us from spinning out of control and onto the nearest cow the very moment I tickled the pedal under my right foot. So I decided to get rid of her.

In fairness, it must be quite scary being out of control in a car that is over four times more powerful than your normal ride. I had a similar experience in an Impreza RB5 with my brother’s mate ‘Big Bad Dave’. The name should tell you everything you need to know.


I dropped Nicola off at her mother’s place so I could have the car to myself for a bit, but to be honest I didn’t really know where to go, so I just drove around for half an hour, taking in the confused ‘you’re not a footballer so what you doing in that?’ looks from other road users. Then I picked my sister up (who also likes her cars) and scared the crap out of her too.

Unlike my 6 Series foray though, this time I was to experience one of the sad realities of owning a pricey car. I realised, or rather the car told me, that petrol was low, so I made my way to a petrol station to do something about it. I only had a tenner on me, so I put that much in, which I admit I was a bit embarrassed about because it’s the type of thing my mam does and I rib her for. Mind, filling this bad boy would probably cost the thick end of 70 quid, and although I’d be trying my best to keep the MPG in single figures, I wasn’t likely to use a full tank over the remaining half an hour I had with the car.

Anyway, that’s not the point, but rather what I heard when I returned from paying for said petrol. When I’d pulled up at the pump there were two chav-mobiles demonstrating, strangely enough, both the upper and lower echelons of the chav car game. One chav was in an ancient battered Ford Fiesta, the classic chav-wagon, but the other was rolling in the brand new Focus ST. Quite a motor, to be honest. Clearly fresh from tearing through town with their bass bins rattling the fascias of alco-pop riddled youth clubs on both sides of the Bigg Market, these boys had taken their lady friends to the petrol station for the after party. There was no re-fuelling being undertaken, they’d just parked up near the pumps. Classic.

But when M Dawggg rolled up in the CLS500, jaws dropped. I was genuinely embarrassed about it, because I knew that I’d stolen ST Boy’s thunder from him when all I wanted to do was put a tenner in my dad’s mate’s car. So, how does one react when he can no longer impress a girl even in his cousin’s uninsured Focus ST?

“Is that daddy’s car?” was the cry.

To be honest, it was so quiet that it didn’t register properly until I drove away. I think that might be because I was concentrating on not bunny-hopping or reversing away like Arnold in Twins, but when I glanced to my right as daddy’s 19s skimmed past the party at pump two, the look of pure hatred I got from ST Boy, all decked out in pink Top Man splendour with a haircut that said 'this party’s never going to end,' suggested he desperately needed a reason to feel better about himself at that moment. The funny thing was, if he knew the truth, that it wasn’t even daddy’s car but daddy’s mate’s, he’d have slept easy that night.

But he better make the most of it, because daddy says he’s buying the CLS in a couple of years.


Mind, I won’t get anywhere near it then.

According To His Purpose

Since Nicola and I got together it has always been in our minds to have children, as I suppose is the case with most couples, though when we were 18 we had a plan. The plan went something like; get married, get good jobs, buy a sports car each, go on two holidays a year for five years, then, when tens of thousands have been put aside in a savings account, start a family.

But life, we discovered, isn’t quite like that and despite plenty of ups, we’ve never achieved anything close to financial stability. We do, however, have a wonderful and gracious God who has not only looked after us at all times, but provided us with family and friends who we love and have shared some incredible times with, as well as getting pretty much everything we need.

The news we were given at Nicola’s first baby scan hasn’t changed our opinion on, or love for, the God who blessed us with our first pregnancy then helped us deal with losing it.

About three months ago we discovered that Nicola was pregnant, a result we’d been hoping for after realising we’d never reach the kind of stability we used to believe common for people in their twenties. Besides, God told us to start a family so who were we to refuse, especially as we wanted one anyway?

Three weeks ago Nicola experienced what seemed a minor complication while out shopping, but was advised to go to casualty nonetheless. It was discovered that she had an infection and, as a precautionary measure, she was sent for an early scan the following day. She was eleven weeks pregnant and due her first scan shortly, so it seemed a sensible thing to do.

We both went to the hospital the next morning with a sense of excitement, expecting to meet our baby for the first time, mostly brushing aside the previous day's incident as a not too unusual thing to happen. After waiting a while, and dealing with a sickening smell coming from a nearby toilet, we went into a small room with two nurses for the scan. I sat next to the bed Nicola was on and watched the screen as scan was taking place, most of the time trying to figure out what I was supposed to be seeing. Because I didn’t know what to expect, and the nurse scanning the baby was quite straight faced throughout, I just sat there waiting for her to show us which of the dark shapes on the screen was the baby.

After a few minutes she stopped looking a the screen and turned to us. Very calmly, she explained that the baby had stopped developing at about seven weeks old and had died. At that moment everything fell apart. The nurse fixed her eyes on Nicola, having just broke her heart, and the other nurse, who was stood up next to the bed, turned to look at me with a sympathetic gaze. I glanced past her and turned to look at Nicola as she began to cry, and the nurses both left the room to let us take in what had just happened.

As I stood up and held Nicola in my arms crying, a moment I’ll never forget, she said one word to me: “Why?”

From the excitement of looking forward to meeting our baby for the first time that morning, we suddenly realised we wouldn’t see it until the day we meet in Heaven. And that was where our comfort came from.

Sympathy and offers of help have come pouring in since that day, and it has reminded us of the amazing family and circle of friends we have. What has impacted me most is the love our friends have shown towards us, giving us space but offering support in a genuine and non-melodramatic way. We moved in with my parents for the two weeks following the miscarriage, just to go into a different environment and be around family through the worst of it, and it’s been helpful.

To be honest, the hardest thing for me to deal with was seeing Nicola so upset. There were days when it seemed she thought she’d never feel happy again, but that’s how grief works. You grieve because you can’t deal with the pain inside and can’t see the day it will end. I’m certain Nicola never once felt hopeless, always knowing the love and comfort of God, but there are flashes of despair when the enemy truly robs someone of their hope, even though God restores it in an instant. Nicola is far, far stronger than she thinks she is, and this will add to that.

I don’t want this to descend into pity or unnecessary sorrow, because God is good and he’ll restore everything to us and more in perfect time, but I needed to write it. God has been amazing and I know that our relationship with him has grown stronger over the last few weeks at a time when we could have let it become distant.

Nicola will be pregnant again soon, and we’re determined to handle it no differently when she is. As soon as we know, everyone else will, because God is faithful and ‘in all things works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’ (Romans 8:28)

I Want One

Earlier this week I got a phone call from a confused man. He said:

"Oh, hello Arnold. I'd like to leave a message for Mark..."

I'd forgotten, see, to erase the hilarious voicemail greeting I'd recorded one lazy afternoon using a comedy Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard. A Tim Westwood soundboard had embarrassed me similarly with someone a few months ago too, but I don't regret that one so much. I mean, when the opportunity to have Tha Big Dawg drop a greeting UK STYLE, BABY comes your way, you're hardly likely to pass on it are you?


When Arnie finally got round to getting the message to me (honestly, he's a good Governor and everything, but he's crap at passing messages on) I realised that the confused man was a motoring journalist from The Independent offering me the chance to take part in a test drive. You can imagine that a seasoned respectable newspaper journalist wouldn't be too impressed by the mobile phone japery of a daft Geordie, particularly as he was calling to offer said buffoon a drive in a £62,000 BMW.

With my tail lodged firmly between my legs I called him back, apologised profusely and said "yes kind sir, of course I'd like to tear around in a fast car for a few hours courtesy of a generous broadsheet." I threw a couple of long words in there, like ostensibly, just to prove I wasn't a complete moron, which ostensibly I was. As it turned out, the journalist, David Wilkins, was an extremely pleasant man and found the Arnold thing quite amusing, so he told me. He further seemed genuinely grateful that I'd agreed to take part in a test involving having a free BMW delivered to me, being given the keys, posing around for a few hours then saying that, funnily enough, I thought it was great. That's the kind of gratitude I'd like more of please.

So I went home, made a brew, sat behind my computer and 'researched' - I looked on the internet at pictures of cars. I learned that the car I would be driving was the new BMW 650i Sport, which has a 5.0 litre V8 engine, does 0-62 in just over 5 seconds and replaces the outgo...It was good, anyway.


The following day I agreed to meet David and my temporary paramour in the Washington Services car park, southbound, on Sunday. I'd like to say it was love at first sight, but unfortunately when I arrived I saw that the car BMW PR had bestowed upon us was finished in an horrific shade of maroon, and to make matters worse, it was convertible. I just don't understand convertibles, especially in this country where we get about one-and-a-half days of proper sunshine a year. Mind, if BMW sell a few of these bad boys in the summer the ozone layer might disintegrate, in which case we can all enjoy the thrill of top town, face-melting motoring. Stupid ozone layer making us all cold.

I'd arrived at the service station a bit early, so I went in for an overpriced coffee and, true to form, I went for the biggest size available, even though I knew I wouldn't have time to finish it. On my way out I realised that I was following a man who had also just bought a coffee and was making his way past all the other cars in the car park and towards the two solitary machines at the far end - my car and The Ugly Beast. "Are you walking towards that 6 Series?" I asked him. "Yes, I am," he said nervously, "you must be Mark then," he added, and our introduction was complete. However, on arrival at the car I think we both realised that we'd just bought overpriced coffees and were now in the unenviable position of having to stand outside our cars in the cold wind drinking them.

Actually, it wasn't the awkwardly silent embarrassment it could have been, mostly because we had a rather obvious talking point parked right in front of us, although I did find myself becoming rather too honest too early in my appraisal of the car. "That colour's horrific," I said, instantly realising the snotty way the comment could have been construed. I'm about to drive a genuine dream motor of mine (apart from the convertible thing) and the first thing I say is, 'yeah, it looks a bit rubbish really.' Idiot.

Then I had to balance my XXXL coffee on the top of my car while opening four of those tiny cartons of fake milk with my teeth and squeezing them into my cup with one hand. It was not going well.

"...We can get in the car of you want," said David after a bit of small talk. And it was then that I forgot I'm 26 and went into 'What Car?' mode. I'd asked him if I could put my jacket in the boot, so he gave me the key and I tried to open it. When I eventually worked out which button I had to press on the fob to get the daft thing open, I placed my jacket in the boot and remarked, "wow, that boot's TINY isn't it? If I was a golfer I wouldn't be impressed."


What? I may as well have got my tape measure out and measured the aperture. Who cares? But I was all 'hmmm, yes, one's golf club transportation requirements are a concern in this car class, so that scores this model down for me', as if I was the man to make or break 6 Series UK sales targets for BMW. Although, as it turns out, I'd pointed something out that David seemingly hadn't noticed, unless he was just humoring me. But regardless I quickly remembered my place and just got in the car.

And dear me, what a car. This was unlike anything I'd ever sat in the right side of before - it was amazing. I instantly forgot I had someone else in there with me and started pressing stuff, as you do. David was very blasé about the whole thing and completely non-patronising, just telling me a couple of things he thought I might like to know about the car and letting me get on with it. So I lowered my seat as far down as it would go, brought the sweet, sweet thick-rimmed steering wheel closer in towards me and pressed the big black button named 'START'.


To my surprise, the car was really quiet inside, which was actually a bit of a disappointment because I wanted it to roar like that lion who works for MGM. I expected it to, in fact. I pulled away tentatively, all the while the number '62,000' lodged in my mind, and we headed north up the A1.

I thought I'd go towards my parents' place in Ponteland because there are a few twisty roads up there, but alas, when I got there I was invariably stuck behind some Sunday driver determined to spoil my fun. After that we headed back up the A1 for a while, before stopping for a brew at some tiny little service station where I got to chat with David about being a journalist. Motoring journalism is, after all, what I'd like to do with myself when I'm a grown up.

He'd actually spent most of the way around Ponteland and up the A1 telling me about various ways in which I can crack into motoring journalism, all of which were useful and some of which quite eye-opening, and he was surprisingly willing to talk about cars, which was great given that most people must ask him about that most days. By the way, if you're after a fast hatchback he reckons you should buy a Ford Focus ST220.


After we finished our brew and headed back into the car park, David suggested we take the top down for the journey back to the coast. Why I agreed to it I don't know, but I found myself bombing down the A1 with no roof at 80mph, screaming at my passenger during normal conversation in order to be heard. At this stage I should explain that for some reason I'd decided that this would be a good day to try out a new hair product, something that would give my barnet a more natural look. The problem was, its holding properties left a little to be desired, so by the time I'd done 40 odd miles at motorway speeds my mullet was akin to an emu nest. (Do emus have nests? A big bird, anyway.) And we still hadn't taken the photos.


So we got to the coast and decided to find somewhere to take some photos of me and the car for the paper. Eventually we found a nice little spot looking out towards the sea, but unfortunately we had to park the car on a single track road which led to a car park, thus blocking off any number of motorists just so I could have my picture taken next to this poncy looking convertible. I was wearing a tank top too. A mostly pink tank top. And don't forget the hair.

Slightly embarrassed, I put the top back up - again a simple button pressing affair - and we headed back home. At this stage I decided to take the car out of automatic and try the sequential manual gear shift for a while, but it made me want to drive too fast so I put it back into automatic.

So, the car. Well, it was amazing, but to be honest I'm not sure whether it was £62,000 amazing, although that might be down to the colour / convertible combination. I reckon that chopping the top off a car takes most of its character away because it ends up just looking like a straight line from the side. Plus, convertibles are heavier and cloth roofs look a bit silly, like having a tent on your car. Before I saw it, you see, I'd imagined it would look like this:


...Now THAT'S a £62,000 car right there. Check out those gangsta rims.

The engine, it goes without saying, was insane, all 5.0 litres of it. Although it didn't turn my face inside out like I'd expected it to, it was so effortlessly fast that most of the time I genuinely didn't realise what speed I was doing. On the motorway, 70mph (ahem!) came up in the blink of an eye, but it was still really comfortable, quiet and smooth. The coolest, and probably most necessary, feature was the head up display which projected your speed onto the windscreen in front of you. Nice.

The interior was lush, too. All black leather, including the little dial for the onboard computer - the controversial iDrive system, for anyone who cares, which has apparently been simplified for ease of use. I found it no problem, although when I was messing around with it at the petrol station I couldn't actually get the radio turned on, but maybe that's just me. Everything was electric, even the head restraint, and the driving position was beautiful.


We got back to Washington Services about four hours after we left, but not before accidentally reaching an outrageous speed on the A1, and I reluctantly handed the keys back. I was disappointed to be leaving the car, which was awesome and I want one, but frankly it made me realise how quickly a car can cease to be a novelty. The purchase and running costs of that particular car would be thousands of pounds a month, and I wondered whether it was really worth it?

Then I slapped myself and thought 'yes, yes it would be,' and I lusted all the way home. I also screamed at my car a couple of times for being so slow. It was a fantastic experience and I hope to one day be able to spend plenty more time inside similar feats of engineering, though it would be crude, inappropriate and just plain wrong to pray to God for a spare few grand every month to spend on a car.

But can I have one please? I'll be dead good and everything, and I reckon I suit it too.

AdNonSense

When I set this page up, for some reason I fell for the 'make millions with your blog' yack and signed up for AdSense. So far I've made $1.60, about 93 pence, and now there's an advert for an electric drum kit up there. Dayang!

Don't buy one! I can live without the two cents, thanks.

God Wants Us To Grow

On 21st September 1986 I wrote a story called ‘God Wants Us To Grow’, which opened as follows:

‘The unknown is always frightening but also nearly always better.’

My sister found that story when she was moving house with my mam and dad, so she framed it for me and it’s hung on the wall just above where I’m sitting.

It seems I was wiser then than I am now, although at that time ‘the unknown’ was probably an imminent trip to the Quayside Market for a new shellsuit. Today’s unknown carries slightly more significance, because it’s not whether to opt for a fake Nike or genuine Naff Co 54 I’m concerned about, but how I’ll deal with being a daddy.

About six weeks ago I discovered that in late December my wife is going to give birth to our first child, so at Christmas we'll be welcoming either Joseph Taylor or Eve into the household - little Joey or little Evey. And I’ve just realised it could be twins, but lets put that scenario to one side until I’ve at least begun to come to terms with the thought of just one.

I’m already the daddy of many things, like Pro Evolution Soccer 4, go-karting and wearing pink, but it’s not like I can practice this one first, or phase it in gradually as I did with the latter of those skills. It’s going to be a sprint from its first poop to my last one.

I know I'm supposed to say I'm terrified, but I’m really not. At the moment I’m just enjoying the simple and delightful thought that I’ll be carrying a beautiful little boy or girl around before next year, showing it off to all my friends and buying tiny Converse hi-tops for it just like daddy’s. I haven’t yet thought about the sleepless nights, the constant crying, the huge expense, the disappearing social life and the fact that it could be an ugly little mug. Obviously, that’s never going to happen though because of the grade-A gene pool it’s coming from.

Currently I’m in a state of white fluffiness in my mind, in which my little boy or girl is the best looking, coolest, most well behaved creation ever to grace God’s Earth. And I’m going to milk this phase for all it’s worth until it comes crashing down, probably about the time that Nicola is doubled up over the bog unleashing her last ‘craving’ the wrong way at 3.30am while demanding more pickled-onion ice cream.

That’s when I’ll get scared. But for now I’m loving the congratulations and the sense of accomplishment. I’m also loving how visibly happy my wife is, constantly smiling and rubbing her stomach like there's a Ferrari F430 growing in there.

There’s a thought, we don’t have a middle name for a girl yet. Ferrari? Hmmm...

Classy middle name suggestions aside, I’m going to use this site to write about the pregnancy experience from a dad’s point of view. I’ll try and write as often as I can, because if nothing else it will provide a journal for me to look back at when it’s all over. Hopefully the experience will be adventurous enough to give me something to write about while remaining relatively unproblematic. This baby is a gift from God to us, so we know everything will be fine.

Hang on…Eve Lamborghini Nichol. Now that’s a name.

Technology Hurts

I feel I need to stop a negative feeling from boiling over inside me and making me do something I’ll regret. That feeling is hatred. Hatred against the electric drum kit in particular. I’m partial to a whinge every now and again, like most people, but I don’t really hate much at all after I’ve thought it through. Yet if I was famous and asked to go on that programme Room 101 with Paul Merton, the second thing I’d put in would be the electric drum kit. The first would be England shirts with jeans, obviously.


This thing only dawned on me in late 2005, when I had the misfortune of sampling an electric kit for the first time. I’d just joined a new church and their main building at the time was a proper old church affair – high ceiling, pews, high stage surrounded by a wooden fence thing to stop the vicar from falling off during a particularly boring sermon, that sort of stuff. The result of this was a beautiful place to worship but a modern sound man's worst nightmare, I assume because most old-skool church buildings were designed to naturally amplify an organ and nothing else. In the age of the rock and roll worship team, however, this just won’t do.

So some bright spark obviously thought, ‘oh, well drums are really loud, aren’t they, so we’ll get an electric kit in because you can turn those down, right.’ And I can appreciate, even agree with, that logic, but unfortunately I’m now the sad soul who has to use it every week. How I wish that spark hadn’t been quite so bright. (That building is now our amazing 24 hour House of Prayer, but we still have a great worship meeting there every Sunday. Please don't hear anything I'm not saying within this rant - I absolutely love the church and the worship.)

I remember trying the kit for the first time, and it was a bit like test driving a new Daewoo; the very fact you’re trying something new is initially quite exciting, but you know it’ll wear very thin very quickly. I sat behind it and hit one of the pads…

‘Aaah, that sounds quite realistic’, I thought to myself as I registered the weird sensation of sensation of hitting rubber and mesh instead of metal and plastic. I think I must have been expecting it to sound like the drums on those keyboards from the 80s with 15 keys and a built in ‘backing’ function. Then, after about ten seconds, the novelty very definitely wore off.


I’ve thought about this, and I reckon playing an electric kit is equivalent to playing a guitar made out of a cereal box with a drainpipe for a neck and elastic bands for strings, but which makes a sound like a guitar when you play it through an amp. Every ounce of feeling is taken away from you completely, and no matter what anybody says, they sound nothing like a real kit. Well, that’s not quite true, but any drummer would hear the difference no problem.

But because most people aren’t drummers, the real issue is the feeling thing. Every drummer, no matter how good or bad, is separated by their ‘voice’. A drummer’s voice is made up of things like how hard they hit the hi-hat relative to the snare, the type of grooves they play, the way their timing feels, the way they hit the cymbals and how often they play fills, stuff like that. No two drummers will sound exactly the same - they might sound a lot like someone, but their voice will always be slightly different. However, every nuance of that voice is stripped away entirely by an electric kit, mostly because they only have a few sensitivity settings. Three, in fact: quiet, loud and inappropriate.

No matter how advanced they’ve become since the days of a few hexagonal pads on a metal frame, drums are absolutely not suited to electrolysation, which is my new word for making something electric. Particular to worship music, although most other types too, sensitivity is the most important thing to have, apart from Happy Hardcore. The most important thing there is speed.

When you’re ushering in the presence of The Living God, subtlety and sensitivity are needed all the time. If you’re really worshiping and the music’s kicking it’s ok to wack the drums as hard as you can, and I love that, but then when the music’s just a background thing and God is moving, you need something different, something appropriately restrained.


However, there’s a big difference to playing something in a restrained and sensitive way and just playing quiet. This is the fundamental difference - when you hit an electric pad softly, it still makes the huge great ‘wack’ or ‘thump’ sound covered in swathes of reverb, only it does so with a few less decibels. It sucks. At the other end of the spectrum, the maximum level of sensitivity can be achieved by hitting the pads with a quite average level of force, after which there’s nowhere to go. That too sucks. If only they went to 11 like The Tap’s Marshalls, now that would be sweet. It's one louder.

The inappropriate level is again to do with sensitivity and loss of ‘voice’. In worship, there are times when a drummer is no longer just keeping a beat for a song, but adding effects. By this I mean hitting a ride cymbal to emphasise chord changes, or using a soft mallet on a crash for a nice build up, for example. Much like the snare, though, gently hit the ‘crash cymbal’ on an electric kit and all you’ll get is a big reverberant piercing “ppppssssshhhhhhh” sound, only a bit quieter.

What I’m saying is that you’re basically limited to two types of beat; loud and quiet. This is the very basic function of a drummer, to play a steady beat an appropriate level, and that’s all an electric kit will let you do, full stop. It’s like playing a football game on your PlayStation that’ll only let you pass and shoot.

Finally, there’s the pain. Not content with causing consistent mental anguish and frustration, my friend Roland obviously hates me enough to cause me physical pain too. This is a three-fold problem which I’ll explain briefly:

Firstly, the kit is set up on a rack in such a way as to only allow comfortable play for some kind of drumming midget. The hi-hat pad, for example, sits a maximum of about six inches above the snare, so you have to kind of twist your arms a funny way to avoid bashing your sticks together like some sort of amateur giant. Once you've hit it a couple of times it moves anyway, until coming to rest on top of the snare. Great.

Secondly, a couple of the pads have dead spots so you have to hit them in an awkward place, meaning further contortion of the body. And the level of frustration it brings when you hit a crash at the end of the big fill and hear nothing makes me want to pick it up and throw it at someone, usually the keyboard player, who seems to delight in my hatred of the thing. (I don't really want to throw it at him, I’m just making a point.)

And thirdly, there’s no give in the pads at all so hitting them is akin to using a hammer constantly for however long you’re playing, which wrecks after a while. When you hit a relatively thin metal cymbal it moves, cushioning the blow, but hammering a thick static rubber pad for an hour is a different and far more painful story.

Then there was the morning I woke up and thought my ears were bleeding after using it one night. It must be the frequency of the sounds or something, but now I can't bring myself to wear the in-ear monitors, so I can never hear anything other than the thump of a wooden stick hitting a rubber pad.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to take that electric kit and torch it. What I’ll actually do, however, is keep praying to God when I sit behind it that I won’t be distracted in worship by frustration, because the kit’s going nowhere.

I wouldn’t mind one myself to practice with too.

Wrong

Yesterday a friend read my blog and concluded I have verbal diarrhea.

Well, I haven't. See.

Cars

I love cars, I really do. Some people will disagree, but to me they're among the few man-made things that have a soul, much like guitars or those robotic dogs that were so good they were going to replace actual dogs back in 1996. Oh, and Tamagotchis.

Forrest Gump's momma used to say you can tell a lot about a person by their shoes; where they going, where they been. But I reckon that if she hadn't died on a Tuesday and stuck around to see the development of the automobile, she'd have used cars as a learning simile for little Forrest. See, cars are the best way for anybody to pretend to be something they're not, and I know this because I've done it.

A couple of years back I used to 'work' for a market research company. It's a long story, but for a short while they gave me a Saab 93 Turbo as my company car which cost over £2,000 per year just to insure. The fact that I was given it solely because my boss wanted to buy a BMW but had just bought a Saab which he consequently needed to hastily get rid of it was neither here nor there. The thing was, I was 23 and driving a car better than my dad, which was great. At the time I didn’t really think about the concept of doing stuff to earn money to buy flash cars, but then neither did my boss so I didn’t care.

Anyway, when I drove that car, in my daft little head I was better than everyone whose car had cost less than mine. The laughable stupidity of that notion hadn't struck me at the time, nor had the irony of the fact that obtaining such knowledge meant many hours spent flicking through the 'new car prices' section in What Car? memorising the recommended retail prices on all kinds of hatchbacks and family saloons. What a geek. Don't get me wrong, I never actually deliberately formulated thoughts of superiority towards other drivers, but that sense of 'my car (and therefore my life) is better than yours' was definitely in the back of my mind, and it made me feel good. Pathetic, isn't it?

But that thinking is all over our roads. Cars bring out a side of people that they'd (hopefully) be horrified with if they saw themselves from the outside. I see it in myself sometimes, and even though I know it's there I can't stop it. It's the thing that makes boy racers put exhausts with ever more inappropriate girth on their Citroen Saxos and makes middle aged men buy Subaru Imprezas - ego.

Somehow, your car is an alternative personality that you can buy and wrap yourself up in so that people can judge you based on that alone. The problem is, a car rarely says what you actually want it to say, it usually just says that you couldn't quite afford what you really wanted. German 'luxury hatchbacks' particularly allude to that.

In days gone by, if people wanted to better themselves they’d buy a book and read it. Or, they’d plant bigger daffodils in their front garden than the neighbours and wait as their superiority grew in bulbous yellow splendour. These days, people just get themselves down to ‘Colin’s Crazy Autotint’ for some black sticky-back-plastic to put on their windows, or they buy a box of transfers from www.blingblingtuningmadness.com to stick to the front wing. It doesn’t matter that you can’t string a coherent sentence together, as long as you’ve got the right brands transferred onto the side of your motor when you’re doing donuts in the Blockbuster car park.

There are very, very few cars that make people look cooler than they already are, or aren’t, as the case may be. Maybe it’s just because I’m a loser who pays too much attention, but there are loads of absolutely inexplicable things people do to their cars in desperate bids for attention. A good example is the fake badge. Consider the scenario; a young man purchases terrible old / underpowered car then spends three quid in ‘Kroozin’ or some other downmarket Halfords for a plastic badge that says ‘16v’ or ‘M Sport’ or whatever, under the pretence that this will enhance his credibility among other motorists and, more importantly, girls. This is all well and good, but if he stopped for even one moment to consider the folly of his logic, he could use the three quid to buy poppers or something instead.

You see, if you think about it, anybody who knows cars at all would know that the badge is fake, that the German mechanical gurus at BMW Motorsport DID NOT power his P-reg Corsa and that there certainly are not 16 valves under that plastic ‘carbon’ bonnet. So, to the discerning motorist, both car and driver become objects of sustained mockery and pity, their dignity stripped away for the sake of a few quid. Equally, anybody with no knowledge of cars, your average girl for example (oooh), would be absolutely none the wiser, again rendering the badges a complete waste of time and money. A lose / lose situation of ever there was one.

Unfortunately, though, manufacturers do it too, manifested in the ‘sport’ editions of their cars, and suckers like me fall for it every time. I’d love to be a car salesman for a few days just to be honest with people about what they’re actually buying:

“Excuse me kind salesman, why is this car much more expensive than that similar one over there?”

“Well, sir”, I’d say, “this one’s the ‘sport plus’ edition. It has the same wheezy little 1.4 engine and awful ride, but it has fake leather around the steering wheel, the alloy wheels are a full one inch bigger and it says ‘sport’ on the back. Now, that’s one and a half grand well spent if you ask me.”

Then I’d add, in true car salesman style, “plump for the ‘sport plus extreme max’ edition, however, and yourself will also get an inch of plastic glued to the boot to increase aerodynamic efficiency, which stops the car leaving the ground under aggressive acceleration, sir.”

Yet I’d buy that car, the extreme one, even though I know I’m being ripped off, and I’d do it because it’s at least an inch better than my neighbour’s version of the same car. Let’s not go the there, though.

But what happens when all the options in the world just won’t do? A trip to ‘New Reg’, perhaps? Nothing says 'I have style and sophistication’ better than a personal number plate, especially one that looks like it might spell something that’s almost approaching either your name, or better yet, the name of your car. If a 911 just won’t do, a 911 with the plate ‘PO02RCH’ surely will. Just in case you’re not sure what he’s driving, the number plate reveals all…He’s driving a porch. Obviously somebody with a slightly less relaxed brain had gone in for ‘PO02CHE’ first.

I suppose you have to give some people respect for trying to make their cars look a bit different, but car customisation is an art that so very few people get right. I can count on one hand the number of customised cars I’ve ever seen and thought ‘wow, that looks good.’ Usually, I wonder what on earth possessed that person to spend so much money making their mam’s old shopping trolley look like it ram raided Halfords and drove around the shop covered in superglue.


Part of the package, too, is the aural experience. A well customised car not only has to look the part, it also needs to sound like Russell Grant farting in an empty Opera House after his third dinner of the evening. There are few things funnier than hearing the bellow of a fully tricked out Peugeot 106 from a distance, then turning to watch as it trundles past you just quicker than walking pace, despite it sounding like a Boeing 747.

Which brings me onto the racing thing. Why why why why why do people do it? Why? I own a one-year-old 1.2 Renault Clio, which is a decent little car, but let’s be honest, it’s only just faster than jogging. Therefore, me racing some fool in a Citroen Saxo with tinted windows is akin to two Goths arguing over who’s got the pastiest complexion – it’s a contest you should probably be embarrassed about participating in, more so winning. All you say about yourself when you race somebody at a set of traffic lights, particularly if you’re in a hatchback, is ‘I’m inadequate – join me, won’t you.’

I got a book for Christmas called ‘What Not To Drive’ which I found quite entertaining because it basically concluded that most cars are inherently uncool apart from cheap European hatchbacks, and I own one of those. Sadly, if I’m honest with myself, that really doesn’t make me feel better about having to own a cheap European hatchback. See, for all I’ve just said, what I actually want to own is something big, very fast and very bad for the environment, with tinted windows, huge wheels, an outrageously large spoiler and an exhaust that makes the ground shake. I want a car that will make light bend and turn my face inside out when I put my foot down. I’ll look like a complete idiot in it and everybody will hate me, but I don’t care.

And that’s the problem. I don’t want to race people at traffic lights (anymore) but I need to know that if I chose to, I would win. I also need to know that my car’s faster than most and that it looks better. It’s totally pathetic, I know, but it's true. The genuinely cool people are the ones that really couldn’t care less, which means that me and legions of other people who do are perpetually fighting a losing battle. A really tragic battle that nobody will ever win, but a nonetheless entertaining one for the passer-by. Now, where’s that Halfords catalogue?