Weather Maps & musicals - a month's random Facebook posts

BBC WEATHER MAP

Feb 9: Hooray! After years of me (and no doubt many others) moaning about it, the BBC has corrected their weather map. The country is now the right shape again - and green! - after a decade of being beige and tilted so that London looked gigantic and Scotland looked tiny. One can only assume a Scot or a Northerner has got into a position of influence at BBC News or the Met Office. Either way, well done at last BBC.

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Feb 5: Teenage Rampage - The Chinnichap Musical.

You know when you have a brilliant idea that you know you're never going to have time to write. Here's today's. A jukebox musical based on the songs of Nicky Chinn & Mike Chapman. A teenage Romeo & Juliet (only they're called Mickey and Alice) set in the 1970s with gangs of skinheads vs normal kids at a comprehensive school in the Midlands. You're welcome. Songs include:

Teenage Rampage, Hellraiser, Blockbuster, Ballroom Blitz (Sweet)
Mickey (Toni Basil)
Living Next Door To Alice, I'll Meet You At Midnight (Smokie)
Tiger Feet, The Secrets That You Keep, Dynamite, Lonely This Christmas (Mud)
She's In Love With You, Devil Gate Drive (Suzi Quatro)
Better Be Good To Me (Tina Turner)
Kiss You All Over (Exile)

Cue someone telling me this has already been done and it was a total flop

Yes! Rude Puppets are headlining this year's Obscure City Nickname Comedy Festival!

(Also taking actual booking for Edinburgh Previews, right now. No city too obscure!)

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Feb 5: Last night I had a dream that I'd seen spoilers from the new series of Doctor Who. Emilia Fox was being interviewed on a chat show about her part in the new series and they showed clips. Fox played a green-faced lady who lived in an aztec like ruin in a jungle. In each of the three clips we saw the face of a distinctive male villain with a moustache, which we saw printed on an old clay coin and somewhere else. Then in the final clip, a CGI spaceship or machine assembles itself atop Emilia Fox's jungle temple in the style of a Transformer, and we see that when it's complete it form the face of the moustachioed villain. Oh and it sounded like Rose Tyler was there, but it could have been someone who sounded like her.

Has anyone else dreamt a spoiler for a show or movie that's not come out yet?

Feb 23: Has anyone seen a good Netflix original movie?

One would be forgiven for getting the impression Netflix only makes bad films. We've watched a few stinkers now - Ricky Gervais' Foreign Correspondents, Bill Murray's Very Murray Christmas, Mascots (gave up 15 mins in), Okja (I deeply disliked), Beasts Of No Nation (so miserable we couldn't watch it to the end), and more. Added to which they've taken over the onerous task of green-lighting Adam Sandler movies, suggesting Netflix really is the new Direct-To-Video. Now they've become the box they buried Duncan Jones in. I will concede Mudbound was good if schmaltzy.

Anyone seen a Netflix movie that wasn't the sort of thing you'd catch on a plane or a waste of your eyes?

Feb 20: Are we going to get the first ever Doctor Who title sequence to feature the screen filling with lager? It's my dream come true - Beer & Doctor Who!

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Fbe 1: Watching this Top Of The Pops from Jan 1985 was a stark reminder of one of the big things that was lost when they stopped putting pop music on mainstream telly: black faces on TV. In this particular episode, every single act in the studio is predominantly black (inc Smiley Culture, Amii Stewart, Grandmaster Melle Mel, and an obscure soul act called The Limit).

And, though it's not ideal to only be represented by musicians, it's undeniable that the loss of Top Of The Pops (and the other pop music shows across the other channels) decimated the number of BAME faces on British telly.

NB, I do think most things, in this regard, are better now than they were 33 years ago.

Feb 10:  You know when you have a dumb idea you know you'll never have time to write? Here's today's - Laptops. A Romeo & Juliet story involving the little creatures who live inside our laptops and make them work (we all know they're there). One day a Mac falls in love with a PC... you can write the rest of the film yourself. (Remember where you heard it first)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Octoroon

Feb 24: Don't know whether to feel informed or tainted. Purely by chance I learned a new word. And it's offensive. Would anyone else have known, without looking it up, who or what an Octoroon was?

Feb 23: Bing sings and Walt disnae.

That didn't take long. Ten minutes ago I was gnashing my teeth finding that Google Image Search no longer works, and now I've discovered Bing Image Search. Turns out it's got functions that Google never had. From being the joke search engine that people use in TV shows, it's now my bookmarked search engine of choice.

What'll I discover next? Alta Vista?