EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

Seasons Greetings From Warren Ellis:

Happy Valentine’s Day to all. And to those who hate the day, I say this: Valentine’s Day is a Christian corruption of a pagan festival involving werewolves, blood and fucking. So wish people a happy Horny Werewolf Day and see what happens.

Feh.

It should be obvious to regular readers of the blog that I am becoming an old school irascible git. Therefore the very idea of me settling down in front of BBC Three on the day of it’s relaunch as an up-to-the-nanosecond web-friendly zetgeistfeed should be laughable. Surely I should be comfortably plumped in front of UKTV Drama with a strong cup of PG and a couple of HobNobs, watching Tom Baker Doctor Who re-runs. Which I do, but that’s not the point here. I like BBC Three. It’s good, light entertainment programming with it’s own voice and it’s own style.
Or rather, it was. On the strength of last night’s viewing, I’m likely to be spending more time sighing over Elisabeth Sladen.

Let’s start with the basics. The cute interstitials with the monolithic Three logo and the talking blobs have gone. A shame. They had a quirky charm that got the point of the channel’s irreverant approach across well. They’ve been replaced with, of all things, a real-life continuity announcer. Sat in front of a desk and a backdrop and everything. A girl who’s maybe had a day’s worth of front-of-camera training, because she clearly looks scared out of her wits. I notice Three is running a competition to find new presenting talent, and if this is the best they can come up with, then I hope to god the competition isn’t over. At least the 60 Seconds newsblurt hasn’t been too monkeyed with. A new title, and a greenscreen background that somehow looks cheaper than the fake studio they had to use. Still, at least they haven’t tried to cut it down to thirty seconds, or speed it up.

Onto the programming. First up, Phoo Action. In theory, this should be a win-win. Based on a little-known Jamie Hewlett strip, directed by Euros Lyn of Doctor Who fame, starring Jaime Winstone in a fetching array of hot pants. Result. Right?

Did anyone see the movie version of Tank Girl?

Let’s put this in context. Get The Freebies was created by Jamie Hewlett after the collapse of Deadline, the magazine that had brought the strip to fame. It was a single page strip running on the inside back page of The Face, that enabled him to relax and stretch out creatively again. Hence a talking basketball as a villain, a freewheeling anarchic sensibility and a ton of 70’s TV and film references. The surly, spunky heroine was a spit away from a plagiarism lawsuit, but hey. It was very silly, good fun but it was doing nothing new. No-one paid a blind bit of notice. It quietly expired after a year.
Welcome to 2006, and all of a sudden Hewlett’s visual lyricism means he can do no wrong. Some dim bulb at the Beeb digs out an old copy of The Face, and sees a tentpole opportunity. BBC Scotland throw a ton of money at the idea, hire an experienced SF director, and rub their hands gleefully for being so clever.

The thing is, in one way they have genuinely succeeded. The programme on screen last night was the purest live-action replication of a comic that I have ever seen. The production design is spot on, it motors along at a decent clip, the performances are broad without being particularly cartoony, and the casting is pretty much right. Jaime Winstone does grumpy teenager with a good chunk of flair, and whoever thought of casting Carl Weathers as the police chief deserves a solid wet smacker, because he’s great.

But. Look. Okay. It’s an hour long. Anyone that isn’t so high on sugar that they’re foaming candyfloss out of their tearducts has got the patience for an hour of blipvert. And the money that’s been spent on it doesn’t disguise the rubbery nature of the villains, which instantly breaks any kind of spell. To my mind, it would have been much better as a week-long chunk of ten-minute episodes, complete with cliffhangers and previouslys, with maybe an omnibus on the following Saturday for those of us that don’t mind the visual equivalent of being yelled at by a five year old with a bullhorn. With a compressed time frame, the faults become much less easy to pick at. I’d gladly sign up to that kind of broadsheet programming. As it stood, I was bored by the forty minute mark, and back on my laptop before the end. Hardly the sign of a gripping piece of innovative TV. I hate to snark, but it just left me feeling a bit hollow and disappointed, when it could have been so much more.

Unlike Lily Allen and Friends, which was so lazy and slapdash that I had to give up on it before the end. At the the point when the Chocolate Rain guy started doing a cover version of Smile.
Basically, we were presented with a studio full of Lily Allen’s MySpace “friends”, a couple of deeply bemused guests and a wedge of YouTube clips. Oh, and at least three requests for you the viewer to get involved and send in your own ideas. For which you can read, some more YouTube clips. This is the kind of thing that Graham Norton was doing five years ago, and it didn’t work then. Any show that falls back heavily on user-generated content is frankly a show devoid of decent researchers.

I ended up feeling quite sorry for Lily, who came across as very sweet and completely out of her depth. She allowed her guests to walk all over her, had to yell over the studio audience quite a few times (reports from the shoot day are that the programme was so disorganised that half the “friends” who had been specially invited to the show walked before the end) and generally just didn’t seem to have a clue as to what was happening. Much like the guests. David Mitchell took refuge in a large glass of wine, which he ended up clutching defensively in both hands, as if he was afraid that someone would take it off him for taking the piss so heavily. Cuba Gooding Jr took his top off and kept talking about his knob. Then Mr. Chocolate Rain pitched up, and I lost the will to live.

So, this is the new BBC Three. It’s kind of like chasing down a mouthful of space dust with a swallow of Cherry Coke. The rumour is that it’ll make your head explode. All that really happens is that you get a headache and a mild sense of nausea.

Brent Simmons has written a detailed account of the decisions he made in designing the series of dialog boxes that pop up the first time you run NetNewsWire.

Although it’s written primarily for other programmers, his post is perfectly readable by the rest of us. It’s not so much about programming as it is about thinking carefully about users’ needs and expectations the first time they run a strange piece of software.

Based on the recommendations of a couple of online sources, and the fact that it’s now free, I thought I’d give NetNewsWire a go. And well, let’s just say I won’t be going back to using Google Reader anytime soon. Configurable, fast, easy to use, and when you tie it into a dedicated tool like Marsedit you have all the tools you need to turn you into a power blogger. Just look at the post rate for today…

(Via Sore Eyes.)

…in movies, at least. Michael Moran over at the Times nails the cliches that still strangle most mainstream movie SF at birth. I can think of few SF films released in the first few years that don’t have at least five of these in there somewhere. Primer, maybe.
Interesting that there’s a YouTube embed in the article to Aeon Flux – which seems to have all ten!

(via the Forbidden Planet blog)

After a long lie-in, I cooked pancakes and bacon for the Clare. Then, after washing up and tidying the kitchen, I spent the morning catching up on correspondence, writing letters to the local council and my MP. As it’s a sunny day, we drove out to a couple of garden centres, where I bought bread flour, making sure it was milled with wheat from local farms. On the way home, we bought seed potatoes, which I chitted. I put some dubbin on my spring boots, and then settled down to write this blog post, with a cup of tea and a Tunnock’s teacake by my side.

Oh, good grief. If anyone can tell me at which point I turned into Richard Briers, and supply me with a time machine so I can go back to just before that point, give my past self a slap and take him out for strippers and beer, I’d be eternally grateful. Thank you so much.

There is movement on the many-headed front that is Rob’s 2008 creative push.

Following a highly successful meeting yesterday that saw the first professional reunion of the 3 Sick Puppies in 18 months, our Straight 8 project, Grey For Danger, is now officially GO. We now have a treatment, a DOP, a sound designer and composer, potentially a kick-ass location, and someone to build us a bomb. A prop bomb. Let me make that clear. A bomb with a heart of Fimo. A fake bomb. OK?
Shoot dates are still up in the air, but at the moment pencilled for the beginning of next month. Next week will see me and Clive nail down a script before we begin work on the voiceover that will form the narrative heart of the piece. That will take place next Saturday, the 16th.

Meanwhile, Decks, Dance and Videotape has developed an almost scary momentum. Dom interviewed Peter Hook last month, a high point for the project so far that I had to miss out on due to the explosive nature of my bottom at the time. However, we now have another shoot lined up with DJ Wayne Anthony. We’ve set up a location in Battersea, and a seriously cool prop – a yellow Lambourghini. Lord, we are so fly. This shoot will take place next Saturday, the 16th.

Have you noticed my minor scheduling snafu? Busiest Saturday EVAR.

In the meantime, work on The Prisoner Of Soho has slowed right down. There just isn’t the room at the moment. I think I’m just going to have to gird my loins and take the slow train into work, and use that dead hour. It’s the only way any writing will get done. I’m waaaay too distractified currently.

Oh, and I’m playing lots of guitar. And looking at buying a vintage amp. Because there’s no harm in looking, is there?

I’m taking the tube from Paddington into work less often these days. I kid myself that it’s a financial and fitness driven decision. You know, walk into work, save on the tube fare. But the Ugly Truth is that I can’t bear to look at the advert that’s currently placed opposite my usual spot on the Bakerloo Line platform.

Damn, I’m good. Don’t take my word for it. Clare was full of praise for the repast I put in front of her tonight, which has been simmering in the lizard part of my brain for the last few days. It’s poshed up fish and rice, basically, making the most of cheap ingredients. And the spec is so loose that you could take this meal up or down town depending on the mood.

We’re talking fishcakes, essentially. Not the bready British version, but something closer to the Thai take on the dish.

A staple of the Casa De LA Verdad Fea freezer is a bag of frozen salmon fillets. They’re fine for curries, fish stews and the like, but you wouldn’t want them as a star of the dish. So tonight I blitzed three of them in the Magimax, with a spring onion and a dollop of pesto, shaped the resultant fragrant glop into little patties, firmed them in the fridge for half an hour, and griddled them. Served with Rob’s Patented Rice Thing (briefly, onion, garlic, peppers and mushrooms cooked in a little olive oil, then a cup of paella rice (long grain will do) a splash of wine and a pint of stock, simmered till thick and yumshious) and a dollop of yoghurt. Aces. You could add chili to the salmon, leave out the rice and serve them with flatbreads and salad, or just dip them in yoghurt as a snack. Or try them with tuna instaed of the salmon. Then you could make bigger patties, and have them as burgers (although frankly you’d be better off wrapping them in a flatbread with a spoonful of salsa). Or maybe even mackeral or a smoked white fish.

Take the basic idea and run with it. Free cooking.

What fuckery is this? Some prime examples of the form came to light today, and the need to jump up and down and yell about them is just too strong.

First up, anti ID register group No2ID has released a Government working paper on strategies for the future rollout of a national identity card. From a quick first reading of the document in question, it looks like people’s fears that an ID card is the early stage into a full blown “database state” could be justified. It’s certainly full of fairly horrific euphemisms and management-speak that describe full-on assaults on privacy and identity control.

The full PDF of the document is here, and I exhort you to read it. I hold a UK passport that’s fully compliant with all border control standards. What exactly is the point to a new national identity scheme that by the looks of it will be expensive, unwieldily and ineffective?

Next. Mildred Von, creator of one of my regular online reads Coilhouse, has posted on LiveJournal about her partner Diz, who has been arrested and imprisoned in Dubai. By the looks of it, his crimes are being in possession of long hair, Asiatic features and melatonin – none of which are illegal in Dubai. Here’s the post. I’m not sure what’s more heartbreaking – the blatant arrogance and disregard for basic human rights, or the good humour and grace with which Matilda and Diz are dealing with the horrible, horrible situation. I wish them a swift reunion, and a plague of boils on the fuckwads that have put these innocent, law-abiding people through this crap.

Lastly, let’s offer a shout out to the California Supreme Court (I’m thinking “go play in traffic, knobends” works well) who have ruled that employers can legally dismiss marijuana users, even if they’re taking the drug in compliance with the Compassionate Use Act, they’re off duty and it’s not affecting performance at work. The ruling beggars belief for it’s lack of compassion, and flies in the face of any kind of logic or sense. Especially when you take into consideration that under the Compassionate Use act, users can now buy the drug from vending machines. On a day which seems to have a distinct lack of joined-up thinking, this is a particularly wild scribble on the crumpled shirt of sanity.