So I'm reading and enjoying this fun story on The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/ghost_of_christmas_future_taunts
where The Ghost Of Christmas Future taunts kids with 2016's Playstation 5, and I'm thinking surely things will be more advanced than that by then.
They suggest 2016 games will have "a PS5 hooked up to 2016's most popular TV, the 4'x8' Hi-Def Sony Titania" and that "you can play this against 63 other PS5 owners simultaneously" and imagines "Star Wars—Episode IX: Jedi Destiny, a game which employs the world's most advanced artificial-intelligence algorithm to place the player inside the film's climactic battle sequence on the planet Mon Jeedam".
Surely this is unamibitious isn't it? I recently dug up a copy of a comic from 1989, obscure American thing by second string creators, can't remember the name. But the outstanding thing was how poor the predicting was. Some guy had the equivalent of superpowers because he had a chip in his brain that could store, gasp, 2 gigabytes of memory. In 1989 the idea of storing 2GB was not expected to happen for 50 years. Now I can store that on my watch.
And when I was trying to write Ghost Rider 2099 in 1994 (I never got any stories picked up) I was imagining the internet, of which I had no first hand experience, as something you'd fly into like all magic with hologram worlds and chips in your heads. The scripts they went with had people sitting in front of fat computers with cabels all over the oche. Nice to draw obviously, but not that good prediction wise.
So, for this prediction of PS5 in 2016, not that I'm a game playing person, but I'd say everything's in 3D and virtual reality, so no old-fashioned TV screens involved. And.. I've just realised I can't be bothered continuing this thought, Gavin & Stacey's on.
Friday, 25 December 2009
A child's Christmasses (in, as it happens, Wales)
On having just read, for the first time, A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas, which we found a copy of here at my inlaws house in Bodelwyddan, North Wales, which we sought out having watched Mark Watson's A Child's Christmasses in Wales and wondered how close the two were to each other (the answer, by the way, being not very).
I have random memories from random Christmasses, which I jot purely in note form (I may be many things, none of them a poet).
Nick & I went Christmas carol singing with our guitars. It can't have been that cold because, well, because we had guitars, we were outside and we could play them. We clearly didn't want to impose upon anyone as we sat on a bench outside the church and sang our songs there. We did our group's version of White Christmas (I have subsequently mastered Nick's guitar solo which, at the time, seemed daunting and impressive) and anything else that could be sung using E, A and D or C, F and G.
When my Illustrated Picture Diary was getting into its stride, which began when I was 11 in the last week of what the kids would now call year 7 and fizzled out in the first year of art college, I devoted a double page spread to illustrating my Christmas presents. They included that year's Giles annual. Sigh, I am old enough to have been able to get new Giles annuals, while he was still at his peak.
The first Christmas at Heather's in Basildon was my first away from home and I was disturbed by all the thing that were different. Or, as I saw it, wrong. Christmas dinner was at the wrong time, the presents weren't opened first thing in the morning, the crackers were ornamental and not for pulling, and there was crying. Crying? Nobody had ever cried in my family's household at Christmas (and, I think, has not yet). Since that first Christmas away from where I'd spent my childhood Christmasses I can no longer remember when things were supposed to take place, or how or why, but I'm pretty sure they've never been quite right. Being a kid, who would no doubt be diagnosed as having OCD or ADHD or Arseburgers (I know I know) these days, was very bliss.
I have probably not laughed so much before or since as I did at Jasper's Carrot's Twelve Days Of Christmas. I still have the recording we made of it. VHS had not yet been invented, not in our house leastways, so I pointed a microphone at the telly from my cassette recorder. The loudest thing at many points is our laughter, particularly mine and Mum's. "Three clack and bangly wogglies, two niddly niddly woddlies, and a piddle up your poggle woggle." They don't write em like that any more.
For many many years there were Christmas records that you just couldn't get. In the long lost wilderness years before Now The Christmas Album there were songs that you'd heard on the radio or seen on the TV, but there was no way of getting your hands on them. Bing & Bowie's Little Drummer Boy was no unlikely that I had arguments about it, swearing blind I had seen them perform together on TV in 1977 and being soundly and roundly disbelieved (it finally came out as a single in 1982, which settled the argument). Anne Nightingale had played Bruce Springsteen's live version of Santa Claus is Coming To Town, once in the late 70s, but no-one had ever seen a copy on vinyl, until finally it snuck out as a b side in 1985. The most elusive was The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping. Simon Mayo would play it every year, but I could never find a copy. And it had never been on an album at the time, and singles were deleted pretty fast, especially Xmas singles that never even made it into the charts. Finally it popped up on a CD compilation in 1993, around which time everything seemed to become available and a little bit more mystery was lost forever.
I remember my dismay when, in 1981, a friend's family said they'd watched a video on Christmas Day. The thought of not watching the same Christmas Day TV as the rest of the country was anathema.
The big TV advert of Christmas 1983 was for Laserdisc. Two policemen walked round a deserted Trafalgar Square, explaining that there were no crowds this year because everyone was at home watching their Laserdiscs. No they weren't. I know the one person who bought one. His name's Steve. He only ever had two discs for it: Grease and Lenny Henry Live. I don't think he watched either.
Last Christmas we were in Edinburgh, in a flat on the Royal Mile, looking out over the snow free rooftops. Our tree was areal one, walked from the foot of Broughton St all the way to the High St. A number of people asked us where we'd got our tree from, as if we were locals and the only people who knew where to buy a tree. It ended its life being smuggled among the trees outside the Spiegeltent in Princes St Gardens. I wonder if anyone ever noticed.
There are more Christmas memories, but that will do for the moment.
I have random memories from random Christmasses, which I jot purely in note form (I may be many things, none of them a poet).
Nick & I went Christmas carol singing with our guitars. It can't have been that cold because, well, because we had guitars, we were outside and we could play them. We clearly didn't want to impose upon anyone as we sat on a bench outside the church and sang our songs there. We did our group's version of White Christmas (I have subsequently mastered Nick's guitar solo which, at the time, seemed daunting and impressive) and anything else that could be sung using E, A and D or C, F and G.
When my Illustrated Picture Diary was getting into its stride, which began when I was 11 in the last week of what the kids would now call year 7 and fizzled out in the first year of art college, I devoted a double page spread to illustrating my Christmas presents. They included that year's Giles annual. Sigh, I am old enough to have been able to get new Giles annuals, while he was still at his peak.
The first Christmas at Heather's in Basildon was my first away from home and I was disturbed by all the thing that were different. Or, as I saw it, wrong. Christmas dinner was at the wrong time, the presents weren't opened first thing in the morning, the crackers were ornamental and not for pulling, and there was crying. Crying? Nobody had ever cried in my family's household at Christmas (and, I think, has not yet). Since that first Christmas away from where I'd spent my childhood Christmasses I can no longer remember when things were supposed to take place, or how or why, but I'm pretty sure they've never been quite right. Being a kid, who would no doubt be diagnosed as having OCD or ADHD or Arseburgers (I know I know) these days, was very bliss.
I have probably not laughed so much before or since as I did at Jasper's Carrot's Twelve Days Of Christmas. I still have the recording we made of it. VHS had not yet been invented, not in our house leastways, so I pointed a microphone at the telly from my cassette recorder. The loudest thing at many points is our laughter, particularly mine and Mum's. "Three clack and bangly wogglies, two niddly niddly woddlies, and a piddle up your poggle woggle." They don't write em like that any more.
For many many years there were Christmas records that you just couldn't get. In the long lost wilderness years before Now The Christmas Album there were songs that you'd heard on the radio or seen on the TV, but there was no way of getting your hands on them. Bing & Bowie's Little Drummer Boy was no unlikely that I had arguments about it, swearing blind I had seen them perform together on TV in 1977 and being soundly and roundly disbelieved (it finally came out as a single in 1982, which settled the argument). Anne Nightingale had played Bruce Springsteen's live version of Santa Claus is Coming To Town, once in the late 70s, but no-one had ever seen a copy on vinyl, until finally it snuck out as a b side in 1985. The most elusive was The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping. Simon Mayo would play it every year, but I could never find a copy. And it had never been on an album at the time, and singles were deleted pretty fast, especially Xmas singles that never even made it into the charts. Finally it popped up on a CD compilation in 1993, around which time everything seemed to become available and a little bit more mystery was lost forever.
I remember my dismay when, in 1981, a friend's family said they'd watched a video on Christmas Day. The thought of not watching the same Christmas Day TV as the rest of the country was anathema.
The big TV advert of Christmas 1983 was for Laserdisc. Two policemen walked round a deserted Trafalgar Square, explaining that there were no crowds this year because everyone was at home watching their Laserdiscs. No they weren't. I know the one person who bought one. His name's Steve. He only ever had two discs for it: Grease and Lenny Henry Live. I don't think he watched either.
Last Christmas we were in Edinburgh, in a flat on the Royal Mile, looking out over the snow free rooftops. Our tree was areal one, walked from the foot of Broughton St all the way to the High St. A number of people asked us where we'd got our tree from, as if we were locals and the only people who knew where to buy a tree. It ended its life being smuggled among the trees outside the Spiegeltent in Princes St Gardens. I wonder if anyone ever noticed.
There are more Christmas memories, but that will do for the moment.
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Merry Christmas from the Socks
Hello Socks fans around the world, and seasons greetings to you all from the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre.
As a special present to you all, the Socks have uploaded a healthy handful of Christmas videos (12 Days worth, would you believe, some slightly less Christmassy than others), newly recorded just for you. In case you haven't caught them all, check out:
The 12 Days of Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPMDoKpgKGA
Christmas Songs You Daren't Sing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI2UkohTDYY
Santa's Pants (new HD upload)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBP_S-AHbfw
Away In Pret A Manger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLH8wjNmxE
Christmas Lights song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSV7eaC6IBQ
Christmas On The Farm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J29KcUNSowY
The German Market
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0-x9HRKMEA
Socks Suck at Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-IHNgVmqcw
50 years of our family's Christmas cards
White Christmas original cast
Sunset
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8tIruQ8B0s
Tiger Woods song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icwkkcyL6Ak
And a Happy New Year when in it comes
Love from Kev F & the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre
As a special present to you all, the Socks have uploaded a healthy handful of Christmas videos (12 Days worth, would you believe, some slightly less Christmassy than others), newly recorded just for you. In case you haven't caught them all, check out:
The 12 Days of Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPMDoKpgKGA
Christmas Songs You Daren't Sing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI2UkohTDYY
Santa's Pants (new HD upload)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBP_S-AHbfw
Away In Pret A Manger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziLH8wjNmxE
Christmas Lights song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSV7eaC6IBQ
Christmas On The Farm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J29KcUNSowY
The German Market
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0-x9HRKMEA
Socks Suck at Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-IHNgVmqcw
50 years of our family's Christmas cards
White Christmas original cast
Sunset
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8tIruQ8B0s
Tiger Woods song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icwkkcyL6Ak
And a Happy New Year when in it comes
Love from Kev F & the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
TV reviews of 2009
So, what did I enjoy on TV in 2009?
There's been some great TV. I think. My memory is so poor I can only remember what's been on in the last couple of months. So best new sitcoms would be Miranda, Gary Tank Commander, How Not To Live Your Life, and Home Time - plus something that I know must have been on in the first half of the year but that I've totally forgotten. Overall favourite sitcom of the year is Big Bang Theory which we discovered on Catch Up in the summer and have watched two whole series of since. Also excellent were The Thick Of It, Peep Show, Gavin & Stacey, Outnumbered and the IT Crowd. And Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Daily Show, but they go without saying. The comedy show that really was missing was The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, about which I shall try and do something in 2010.
Best drama was, I guess, Torchwood Children Of Earth, or Being Human. Surely there was something else that really stood out? Oh yeah, started watching The Wire nightly on BBC 2. Got through series 1 (the excellent series) and series 2 (the Why's Everyone White All of a Sudden? series) then during series 3 I was missing so many episodes things made less and less sense and it started to feel repetitive and boring. It remains the longest US TV drama series I've stuck with since the X Files, but still not something I'll ever see all of. (I've still not seen 24, Sex In The City, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, CSI, The Sopranos and many more, life is now officially too short for me to catch up).
On balance I must have avoided more TV than I watched, I guess everyone did. In our household we dipped into a few box sets. Best of the year was complete Bilko, which Hev picked up at a charity shop, is an excellent find. Every episode a classic, many I'd never seen, many laugh out loud funny, and the box set included TV interviews, the pilot and other fun rarities. A fave from my birthday was a Dr Who box set with Sea Devils and Silurians in (two highly enjoyable Pertwee classics, followed by an abysmal Peter Davison story, tolerable only for the commentary, where Peter Davison & Janet Fielding rip the piss out of it).
I'm happy not to have seen: X Factor (not a moment), Big Brother (first night only, the best bit of which was Charlie Brooker's Tweets), Strictly (none), Britain's Got Talent (first night inc Susan Boyle, then no more), I'm A Celebrity (not a second) and any lesser reality shows. Watched The Apprentice, kidding ourselves that it's not that bad, and the disappointing School Of Saatchi and Philip Starck thing. I was envisaging the Sitcom Trials following in the mould of the last two, but was left realising even I might not watch it if it did.
I must have seen more trivial filler TV than anything else. Mornings when I don't have to go into schools or get to early meetings I see The Wright Stuff, which is a well above average morning chat show. It's not quite the Today show, but it's not insulting to the intelligence. Which I can't say of BBC Breakfast, which now seems to devote its last half hour to being an advert for Strictly or a plug for bad movies or celebraity autobiographies. The One Show is actually really good fun, though I do try not to watch it, it's just there when you're too busy to turn it off, and dammit parts of it are interesting without actually being intellectually challenging. And I was on it in 2008, which still gives me a fondness for it. (That said, the Socks appeared on The Culture Show, and I find that really hard to watch. The presentation style changes so much between series that it has no continuity and always makes you nostalgic some something they used to do that they don't do any more. They should settle on a style for at least two consecutive series.)
The only must see TV in our house is University Challenge, and ,when it's on, Only Connect. The funny panel games usually entertain, with Mock The Week this year having the edge over HIGNFY and QI (which is, I think, running out of interesting facts), though We Need Answers is too shouty for me, and It's Only A Theory stutters. What The Dickens on Sky Arts is good, and Would I Lie To You has its moments.
I'm sure there was something that knocked my socks off that I have subsequently forgotten. If there is, I shall write it in these brackets here (addendum: I'd forgotten Psychoville, Harry Hill's TV Burp and Mad Men). I take that to mean I was so busy having an actual life, which I must look back over next.
Merry Christmas world.
I must have seen more trivial filler TV than anything else. Mornings when I don't have to go into schools or get to early meetings I see The Wright Stuff, which is a well above average morning chat show. It's not quite the Today show, but it's not insulting to the intelligence. Which I can't say of BBC Breakfast, which now seems to devote its last half hour to being an advert for Strictly or a plug for bad movies or celebraity autobiographies. The One Show is actually really good fun, though I do try not to watch it, it's just there when you're too busy to turn it off, and dammit parts of it are interesting without actually being intellectually challenging. And I was on it in 2008, which still gives me a fondness for it. (That said, the Socks appeared on The Culture Show, and I find that really hard to watch. The presentation style changes so much between series that it has no continuity and always makes you nostalgic some something they used to do that they don't do any more. They should settle on a style for at least two consecutive series.)
The only must see TV in our house is University Challenge, and ,when it's on, Only Connect. The funny panel games usually entertain, with Mock The Week this year having the edge over HIGNFY and QI (which is, I think, running out of interesting facts), though We Need Answers is too shouty for me, and It's Only A Theory stutters. What The Dickens on Sky Arts is good, and Would I Lie To You has its moments.
I'm sure there was something that knocked my socks off that I have subsequently forgotten. If there is, I shall write it in these brackets here (addendum: I'd forgotten Psychoville, Harry Hill's TV Burp and Mad Men). I take that to mean I was so busy having an actual life, which I must look back over next.
Merry Christmas world.
Monday, 21 December 2009
Stats updated, those Xmas Socks vids
Some of our Socks vids are really moving. And me, I'm obsessed:
50 Years of our family's Christmas cards (not Socks) - 255 (was 240)
Sunset (not Xmassy) - 277 (was 222)
Xmas on the Farm - 598 (was 524)
German Market - 689 (was 648)
Socks Suck - 748 (was 677)
Xmas Lights Song - 795 (was 724)
Xmas Songs You Daren't Sing - 937 (was 366)
Tiger Got Wood (not Xmassy) - 1308 (was 1215)
Away in Pret A Manger - 1664 (was 1572)
12 Days of Xmas - 46,284 (was 45,647)
The least interesting blog you'll read this year, sorry for sharing.
50 Years of our family's Christmas cards (not Socks) - 255 (was 240)
Sunset (not Xmassy) - 277 (was 222)
Xmas on the Farm - 598 (was 524)
German Market - 689 (was 648)
Socks Suck - 748 (was 677)
Xmas Lights Song - 795 (was 724)
Xmas Songs You Daren't Sing - 937 (was 366)
Tiger Got Wood (not Xmassy) - 1308 (was 1215)
Away in Pret A Manger - 1664 (was 1572)
12 Days of Xmas - 46,284 (was 45,647)
The least interesting blog you'll read this year, sorry for sharing.
Sunday, 20 December 2009
I love my statistics
This year's Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre Christmas videos, in order of popularity on YouTube (in reverse order, our own Xmas Top 10):
Sunset (not Xmassy) - 222
50 Years of our family's Christmas cards (not Socks) - 240
Xmas Songs You Daren't Sing - 366
Xmas on the Farm - 524
German Market - 648
Socks Suck - 677
Xmas Lights Song - 724
Tiger Got Wood (not Xmassy) - 1215
Away in Pret A Manger - 1572
12 Days of Xmas - 45,647
Stats which tell you little. Songs You Daren't Sing, mouldering at number 8, is there with a bullet being the last one we uploaded and bound to leapfrog most of the others shortly. 12 Days has reached its great heights by dint of being a featured video on YouTube in its first week. Quite how people get those million viewings I have yet to figure out.
Anyhoo, there they are and well done us. Merry Christmas everyone.
Sunset (not Xmassy) - 222
50 Years of our family's Christmas cards (not Socks) - 240
Xmas Songs You Daren't Sing - 366
Xmas on the Farm - 524
German Market - 648
Socks Suck - 677
Xmas Lights Song - 724
Tiger Got Wood (not Xmassy) - 1215
Away in Pret A Manger - 1572
12 Days of Xmas - 45,647
Stats which tell you little. Songs You Daren't Sing, mouldering at number 8, is there with a bullet being the last one we uploaded and bound to leapfrog most of the others shortly. 12 Days has reached its great heights by dint of being a featured video on YouTube in its first week. Quite how people get those million viewings I have yet to figure out.
Anyhoo, there they are and well done us. Merry Christmas everyone.
Saturday, 19 December 2009
Sounds awful, yet magnetic
I am both repelled and intrigued by an ad I just saw in the paper, for High Voltage, a rock festival next year "Custom built by Rock Fans, for Rock Fans" it says.
Come off it, it's custom built by old men, for old men. The only acts announced are ZZ Top and ELP so far, but you can see where it's going. It's Knebworth, it's the original Glastonbury. It's 1973, but this time they're going to do it properly.
And I have a wonderful nostalgic pang for it. Even though I'd hate it, even though a vintage bike rally (part of the experience) is less interesting to me than cheese tasting, still I love the idea of this festival of old folk playing their old music to their old fans. Because, dammit, deny it as I might, I am that old. I am a man in his forties, and if there's one thing we old folk can't stand it's the young. But we still like to party and we don't like to be hypocritical. So why, for year after year, have we had to gatecrash Glastonbury and Reading and the V Festival, bringing with us not only our kids, but all our favourite bands.
2009's Glastonbury was Radio 2 incarnate, a line up of acts whose heyday predated Britain having 4 TV channels. Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Tony Christie. Tony Christie? His heyday was 1971. Having Tony Christie on the bill at Glastonbury was like if the original Woodstock had put Al Jolson on
So good on you High Voltage. You'll have a creche, for the grandchildren. You could have the Hells Angels from Altamont doing the security, safe in the knowledge that none of them can even lift a pool cue these days, let alone smash in a hippy with it. And then maybe Glastonbury can just have new young exciting acts on, and I needn't bother watching it ever again.
And a happy new year when it comes.
Come off it, it's custom built by old men, for old men. The only acts announced are ZZ Top and ELP so far, but you can see where it's going. It's Knebworth, it's the original Glastonbury. It's 1973, but this time they're going to do it properly.
And I have a wonderful nostalgic pang for it. Even though I'd hate it, even though a vintage bike rally (part of the experience) is less interesting to me than cheese tasting, still I love the idea of this festival of old folk playing their old music to their old fans. Because, dammit, deny it as I might, I am that old. I am a man in his forties, and if there's one thing we old folk can't stand it's the young. But we still like to party and we don't like to be hypocritical. So why, for year after year, have we had to gatecrash Glastonbury and Reading and the V Festival, bringing with us not only our kids, but all our favourite bands.
2009's Glastonbury was Radio 2 incarnate, a line up of acts whose heyday predated Britain having 4 TV channels. Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Tony Christie. Tony Christie? His heyday was 1971. Having Tony Christie on the bill at Glastonbury was like if the original Woodstock had put Al Jolson on
So good on you High Voltage. You'll have a creche, for the grandchildren. You could have the Hells Angels from Altamont doing the security, safe in the knowledge that none of them can even lift a pool cue these days, let alone smash in a hippy with it. And then maybe Glastonbury can just have new young exciting acts on, and I needn't bother watching it ever again.
And a happy new year when it comes.
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