Just wanted to post on February 29th. Post, post, post.

Now that the days are beginning to feel vaguely spring-like on this side of the Atlantic, we thought it would be nice to introduce the Prawn to the Great Outdoors. Namely, the bit of it that exists just across the street from our flat on the village green. While the Prawn already has one spring and summer under her belt, this will be the first outdoor friendly season that she will be mobile, so we thought we’d get a head start on Sunday due to really quite bizarrely mild temperatures.

We thought the playground might be a good place to start as the Prawn has shown a fondness for rough and tumble play. I had afternoon tea with my friend the Danish Muffin last week and saw that her little boy, Cone-ass the Barbarian, had one of those canvas tunnels that he enjoyed crawling through. The Prawn looked positively enthralled, but slightly reticent to join in due to the fact that Cone-ass is a year older and much more rambunctious that she is. (He was all like, “What the hell are you doing? Crawling? What’s THAT about? On your feet, soldier!” and kept trying to drag her around by her hands.) At any rate, I thought she’d enjoy a tunnel of her own, so I picked one up from Argos for about 10 quid. After an initial flat refusal to enter, putting the Sky remote at the opposite end had the desired effect. I swear that TV remotes act as crack for babies. They simply can’t get enough of them, no matter WHAT banquet of expensive playthings is laid out before them. She loves the tunnel now and comes charging through, laughing like a mad thing if the Rock Star or I pokes our head through at the other end.

There’s something vaguely depressing about an empty playground, especially on a weekend afternoon. The combination of the rugby and the football saw to that. There were 4 urchins kicking around a football that had seen better days, but other than them, we had the place all to ourselves. However, we hit upon a snag almost instantly.

The Prawn hates playgrounds.

I imagine that this is a phase that will pass, cause dude, kids LOVE playgrounds. I have many a fond memory of palms blistered from hours on the monkey bars or being sick during language arts because I spent all of recess being spun round and round on a tire swing. Good times. My guess is that we took Her Prawness slightly to close to nap time and were therefore assured the crankiest possible reaction. The swings, as you can see, produced the most definitive result. Even after both the Rock Star and I demonstrated that swings obviously rule by swinging on them ourselves, the Prawn was unconvinced and ratcheted up her dislike to LipCon 5, as you can see.

Now, I totally want to instill great virtuousness in my child and laughing at others pain is certainly not something I want to encourage, but it is difficult to stifle guffaws when a person the size of a wastebasket pulls a mug like this.

Things got no better when we decided to let her have an explore on her own. I suppose, for someone who’s never really put their full body weight on damp ground before, the experience might be less than pleasant. The Prawn steadfastly refused to move an inch on the dirt, raising her chubby little arms above her head in order to be liberated from her predicament.

Admitting defeat, we finally traipsed back inside, dreaming of warmer weather and a bi-pedal Prawn who will enjoy the outdoors. Maybe minus the mud.

Google Analytics is a godsend for the insecure blogger. Due to this wonderful invention, it’s easy to tell whether your readership still loves you and has just gone deep and silent or if you’ve had a drop off because you spend a lot of time discussing your bellybutton of something. GA lets me know that, yes, you guys are still out there, and thank you for coming.

I used to get a lot more comments, but that was due to the fact that a lot of my comments weren’t so much from people that read my blog, but rather wanted me to enlarge my penis. Or look at pictures of the Olsen twins naked. I suppose there is a time and a place for naked, anorexic twins, but my blog is neither that time or that place.

May I just sing the praises (briefly) of Akismet? For anyone using WordPress, I would highly recommend it as a spam filter. However, the Rock Star informed me a few days ago that it was trapping legit comments, so I’ve spent some time trolling through 19 pages of some pretty unimaginable filth to pick out the 3 or 4 that were unfairly cast into the net with the rest of the smut.

Most were the usual stuff. Pictures of teens, pictures of asian teens, pictures of asian lesbian teens, pictures of asian lesbian teens with animals, etc, etc, etc. One wonders what the future of pornography is, really, since it’s become something that you no longer have to slink into seedy stores with blacked-out windows to obtain. It shows up in your inbox whether you like it or not. The Onion’s headline last week, “Pornography De-Sensitized Populace Demands A New Orifice to Look At” makes a good point. The Rock Star, as a web guy, spends a lot of time in the dimly lit alleyways of the internet, searching for answers to questions. Occasionally, I’ll be walking by and look over his shoulder to see a page covered by a virtual animated gif orgy and inquire just what the hell he’s looking at. He’ll look at me, startled, then back to the page and go, “Oh my god!” When you look at something for long enough, it just becomes part of the background.

The most amusing comments have to be the ones that are essentially a random string of words pasted together with the offending link stuck in the middle, so to avoid most spam filters. Such as:

My arms felt pulled out and began to eagerly maul them were C*CK DOMINATION so sure. Five bucks.

I obviously don’t put the asterisk in “c*ck” because I’m squeamish about saying it, but I certainly don’t want to risk drawing people looking for this brand of shenanigans to my site, because quite frankly, they may be a little disappointed. And you know, who needs a bunch of angry c*ck dominators hanging around your webpage anyhow?

So to any of you who’s comments might have been swallowed by Akismet, the problem seems to be sorted. The program learns, as do we all, from it’s mistakes, but it will continue to be the bouncer at the door of my comment area on the look out for lesbian teens, offers for penis enlargement and Paris Hilton’s fun zone.

A few weeks ago, I offered to Urban Cowgirl a piece of wisdom that I’ve gleaned from many years as a rabid bibliophile: “Life is too short for bad books.” You’d think, after uttering a statement filled to the brim with self-righteous pomposity, that I’d be inclined to follow my own advice. You would be wrong.

After the incredible and quite frankly baffling success of The DaVinci Code, a legion of copycats have sprung up, featuring nubile academics in a desperate race against time and villainy to uncover an ancient and explosive secret. The majority of my bile against Dan Brown stems from the fact that he forced me to read on to find out WHAT HAPPENED NEXT. The man forced me through his utterly mangled, clichéd, 12- year- old- history- buff- with- a- hard- on- desperate- to- get- the- film- made narrative in order to get to the end and find out just where in the hell all of this Jesus/Mary Magdalene booty call action was going. Damn him to the cabanas on the shores of Lake Cocytus for that.

While writers such as Kate Mosse have actually managed to improve upon this genre with the addition of historical fiction, (this did not, however, go any further toward me finishing “Labyrinth”; I got bored) JL Carrell has written an embarrassing re-hash of what is obviously her doctorate thesis and shoved it awkwardly into Dan Brown’s mold. “The Shakespeare Secret” follows roughly 3 other books that have come out in the space of a year that explore the life of The Sweetest Swan of Avon. I must confess to having read another of these books (which also cost roughly £3.50 from Tescos) entitled “The Book of Air and Shadows”, however the writing was so far superior to Carrell’s, I think I can be forgiven. The mystery surrounding Shakespeare’s life and authorship makes a worthy successor to the search for the Holy Grail due to the eminence and global reach of his work.

Carrell’s central premise lies in the academic spank-fest that is the Authorship Question. In one corner, the Stratfordians, champions of our man Willy Waggledagger, who believe wholeheartedly that Shakespeare was indeed the author of his own plays. In the other corner, the Oxfordians, who believe that Shakespeare merely took credit for the work of the Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who, as a member of the Elizabethan and Jacobean aristocracy, couldn’t be seen to be doing something so base as expressing creativity. He had people for that. (Shakespeare, for example)* In fact, there are several other candidates for authorship including the remotely possible (Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe) to the downright improbable. (Elizabeth I, Elvis, Lord Xenu, etc.) Of course, combine this mystery with a sexy, red headed academic, a broodingly handsome body man, the eccentric rich Englishman who is OBVIOUSLY THE FUCKING BAD GUY but that you have to watch lead the heroine down the primrose path for the whole novel until he is *GASP* unmasked as the villain and a breakneck race across two continents and you have yourself a kind of shoddy literary ballgame.

The thing that bothered me most about the book was not it’s poor execution, nor the obvious, silent plea from the author to PLEASELOOKATMEANDHOWMUCHRESEARCHIDID, PLEEEEEEESE! but rather the fact that she didn’t even bother to conceal the fact that she was desperately angling for a film deal. No one utters dramatic Shakespearian verse before hurling themselves into a canyon in full view of a police helicopter during a thunder storm IN BOOKS. NO ONE. We all know where that sort of shit happens. Reading it was like watching the world’s longest trailer; I felt like I needed popcorn.

Hollywood seems to have lost it’s original idea mojo long ago and has spent a tremendous amount of time and effort over the last few years in adapting novels for the screen. We HAVE movies. Do we really need books that read like films before they’ve even been adapted? Have we really lost our capacity to deal with a literary plot that does NOT involve car chases, prim, yet sexy academics and elaborately staged serial killings?

So, why did I read this great heap of wordy dung when it became apparent within the first chapter what manner of fiction it was?

I wanted to find out what happened. What I should have done was simply go to the Wikipedia page regarding the Shakespeare Authorship question, spent 5 minutes gleaning the information I didn’t already know, and then gone on to “McCarthy’s Bar”, which has been next in the pile of books at my bedside. But no, I spent far too many nights reading and projecting visible waves of hate across the Atlantic at the author, who was making me miss out on better books because I wanted to know if Kate and Ben would eventually find the lost play “Cardenio” in an abandoned Arizona gold mine.

I am such a tool.

*Just in the interest of full disclosure, I like to think that great genius doesn’t necessarily require great education and hope that Shakespeare WAS the author of his plays. Shakespeare has a vague New Testament Jesus problem; a lot of time between his childhood and manhood that’s kind of a blank. I like to think that he might have learned a thing or two while off the radar. That said, the work speaks for itself and whoever wrote the words gave an enormous gift to the English language, whether it was Shakespeare, Oxford, Bacon or Marlowe. Sonnet 55 says it best:

Not marble nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this pow’rful rhyme,
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.

Several years ago the Rock Star and I were on the boat one Sunday afternoon, listening to a variety of podcasts that he’d downloaded, most likely while trying to staunch a leak that had just ruined a couple of blankets under the bed or possibly all of the cleaning products under the sink. He particularly enjoyed the weekly Smokestack Lightning show that featured both new and vintage blues performances. I was always partial to a bit of “whoa, baby” from John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters or the dirtier Texas blues stylings of Stevie Ray Vaughn, but that particular Sunday, we both stopped what we were doing (3 more minutes weren’t really going change the fact that the extra comforter under the bed was ruined) when a track titled “Burning Hell” came on. It featured a Les Paul with screaming overdrive being played within an inch of it’s life and vocals that could skin a cat, causing both of us to go, “Damn.” When the track ended, the announcer informed us that the performer was Joe Bonamassa.What sounded like a 40 something black man from Louisiana turned out to be a 20-something white guy from New York City. The Rock Star was an instant converted fan-boy, scouring the internet for tunes, licks and tab.

We were lucky enough to catch a show at the Boom-Boom Room in Sutton (A rather cool name for a football club that loans out it’s space several times a month to a bunch of balding, be-ponytailed middle aged guys in leather jackets) in late 2006. Most tomes of knowledge having to do with the planting and growing of babies will tell you that around 18 weeks, a fetus begins regularly hearing sounds from outside the womb, so the Prawn, newly possessed of a set of ears, was treated to some serious ax-picking that evening. The venue was fantastic, albeit smoky. Being small, it afforded the Rock Star an up-close look at Bonamassa’s insane technique.

We had this concert in mind when we heard that he was coming around again this year, so The Rock Star purchased tickets at a fairly late date. We discovered the consequences of our procrastination when we arrived at the venue Friday evening to find out that we were, in fact in possession of seats in the nosebleed section and the gig had sold out entirely. There were even touts outside of the theatre, some furtively entreating passers by to sell their tickets, others shouting their intentions loudly to the world. ( They might as well have been shouting, “IVE GOT A FLIPPING GREAT WADGE OF CASH ON ME” on a Friday night in Shepherd’s Bush, which is not necessarily a good idea.) Although an annoying blight on the ticketing industry, their presence must always be a great compliment to any performer.

Despite our lofty vantage point, we settled in with some drinks and enjoyed the opening act- a folk performer called Crosby Loggins. We were informed that no, his surname was not a coincidence and yes, his father is indeed he of “Danger Zone” and “Footloose” fame, Kenny Loggins. Loggins’ set was entirely pleasant. I have an enormous soft spot for “college music” as I spent some of the best years of my life at a school that had approximately 3 musicians per every square meter. Not hugely memorable, but very enjoyable. I also have to admire anyone who can make an audience forget that all that they’re hearing is an acoustic guitar.

After a short enough break to refill our drinks, Bonamassa exploded onto the stage to thunderous applause with “Bridge to Better Days” off of his 2006 album “You and Me”. The Rock Star likes to talk a lot about tone when it comes to guitars and usually that’s about when my eyes glaze over harder than a windshield at 0°. But it was easy to understand what he meant when he said that he wanted his tone to sound like Joe Bonamassa’s. The vintage Les Paul’s sound was incredible, despite the atrocious acoustics of the Victorian concert hall.

Nights out are so rare for us, I often forget that if I have drinks, it follows on that I’m probably going to get drunk. It has also been at least 6 or 7 years since I drank cider seriously, so after getting halfway through my second pint of Strongbow, I was all kinds of happy to be there, although the concert starts getting a little blurry from that point on. I was not, however inebriated enough not to notice the intro to one of my favorite tracks, “Mountain Time” beginning, eliciting an embarrassing drunken whoop on my part. On the album, “So It’s Like That” the song is an up-tempo, almost country romp, but performed live, it is a plaintive blues ballad with an exceptionally haunting improv-ed intro.

The standout number of the evening for me was undoubted his “party” piece, “Woke Up Dreaming” that shows off the true nature of his gift to it’s fullest. A driving, furiously paced acoustic number, Bonamassa absolutely rips up the fretboard with a piece that would be devilishly difficult even on an electric. While I slept off a crippling hangover on Saturday morning, the Rock Star was trying to learn the song’s main riff at 2/3rd speed and still found it a finger crunching exercise.

After a face-melting show and 3 encores (the third seemed unexpected by the band but they managed “You Upset Me Baby” with a lot of visual cues from their intrepid leader.) we flooded out into the chilly night air feeling satisfyingly full of musical beans, and in my case, far too much cider. (this did not stop me from having yet another at the pub afterwards.) Bonamassa’s superb technique, vocals and personable manner make him an exceptional showman, worth the price of a scalped ticket.

For your viewing pleasure, I offer “Mountain Time” and “Woke Up Dreaming”. Bonamassa is a bluesman for everyman; well worth a listen for anyone who appreciates a master at work.

I have, of late, become immune to most memes that come my way. However, one that offers a chance to play with Photoshop was too much fun to pass up. Thanks to Mr. Clive Murray for the Album Cover meme:

1. Go to the Wikipedia random article generator and note the title of the randomly selected article. This is your band name.
2. Similarly, go to this random quotation page and note the last four words of the last quotation. This is your album title.
3. Now to Flickr’s interesting photos feature. Download (or screengrab if necessary) the third picture. This is your album cover picture.
4. Now put the whole lot together in the photo/graphics application of your choice. Populate your imaginary music business with exciting acts!

Science Fair was formed in the early noughties, hoping to cash in on the “geek rock” trend, made popular by groups such as Weezer and Cake. “He May Become Disturbed” had only one major hit attached to it-“Test Tube Lovin”- a pop serenade to the process of in-vitro fertilization. Rolling Stone called the track “Tastelessly catchy” and Science Fair themselves “a band who should slip into the sinkhole of pop oblivion at their earliest convenience.” The review proves prophetic as 6 months later, the band split to finish up their MBAs at the University of Ohio.

At 10 months and 3 weeks, the Prawn has finally said her first definitive word.

Several weeks ago, The Rock Star was ready to call it for “Dada” and I had to admit, there was compelling evidence. The Prawn pointed at him and said, “Dada!” However, as the days went by, it was apparent that she was rather indiscriminate with the word, using it to describe not only her father, but her pacifier, BB King and the oven, so The Rock Star grudgingly agreed to take back his earlier, “official first word” call.

However, today, it has become much more obvious that she now has a word for a common household object.

Well, at least it’s common around OUR house. The fact that it’s her first word is not all that surprising.

“Gee-ta!”

“Tee-ta!”

“Tar-tar!”

I think The Rock Star is almost as pleased as he would have been with “Dada”.

I like to have a pop at consumer culture every year around this time, as Valentine’s Day seems to create the sort of pant-wetting hysteria, last seen when the Beatles were touring, among usually level-headed people in romantic relationships.

The floral industry is always a good starting point and as usual, it only took one click to find something utterly ridiculous. Available this year from Interflora, (who last year, persuaded customers to part with their cash over this) may I present the “Infatuation” bouquet? This little beauty will be emptying the hothouses of Colombia and Ecuador faster than you can say “gross excess and startling crime against the environment.” A whopping 100 long-stem roses for a mere £500, the price of at least 2 very nice meals at expensive restaurants or even a weekend city break. (Or the price of finding safe drinking water for hundreds of people.) Ironically, there is a slightly smaller bouquet called “Devotion”, made up of 50 roses. Devotion obviously lacks the well meaning, yet misguided ardour of Infatuation.

The Rock Star and I will be celebrating quietly this year. Partly because we’re a bit skint at the moment (so no Infatuation bouquet for me) and partly because we’d probably have to pay just about as much to bribe a babysitter for the evening. However, we are looking forward to our evening because of the scrummy chilli dinner that awaits us. We discovered the gorgeous alchemy of meat and spices last year at Valentine’s Day, so it has been christened Valentine’s Chilli. As a public service, in case you too are short of a penny or two this VD, here’s the recipe.

3 pounds beef mince (we use the leanest stuff we can find. It’s not like this recipe needs any more fat)

3 cloves of garlic

4 tbs chilli powder (obviously, you can use more if you want your head to fall off)

5 tbs flour

1 tbs oregano

3 tsp cumin

3 beef bullion cubes

3 tbs brown sugar

3/4 cup red wine

3 cups tomato juice

Combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl and blend together. Cook the beef until brown. Add garlic and continue to cook for 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients and cook for 4 minutes. Add tomato juice and wine, turn down the heat and cook for a further 15 minutes. Serve over Basmati rice with tortilla chips.

I’ve always been kind of a sucker for movie musicals. In recent years, I’ve had only “Moulin Rouge” and “Chicago” to sustain me, so imagine my rapture when I discovered that Tim Burton was in the process of directing “Sweeny Todd” for the big screen, starring Johnny Depp, who just about everyone possessing a certain amount of oestrogen has unnatural feelings for and anyone who admires the cinema cannot help but hopelessly admire for his prowess in bringing life to the peculiar and the quirky.

The Rock Star wanted to spend a quiet evening alone with his guitar, so I got a hall pass to get out and see the film with BoyRacer and Trumpet, who is equally filled with squee at the thought of a big screen musical.

(Possible spoilers ahead!) One rather knows what one is getting into when walking into a Tim Burton film. Burton’s world is a Victorian nursery with peeling black wallpaper and lots of broken dolls with pale faces. I have always found this slightly creepifying, but one can hardly complain when one turns up to see a movie about murder and cannibalism. Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter, who plays Todd’s partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, are seasoned Burton veterans (Depp has appeared in no fewer than 6 previous directed by Burton) so their easy rapport with the director was guaranteed to help the film along. The director is also no stranger to a musical format, although his former experience has been limited to the animated variety.

The film definitely didn’t disappoint. Depp was riveting from his initial appearance on the screen as the deeply disillusioned and disturbed Todd, returning from a false work sentence in Australia after 15 years. Depp’s acting range is enormous, so it was only the very slightest bit disappointing to discover that his Todd was in fact, the much more evil brother of Captain Jack Sparrow. While Sparrow sailed the seas with fresh air and rum, Todd spent a lot of time alone in a dark room, pulling the wings off of insects. That aside, his capacity for portraying pathos and a whole lot of crazy drove the picture through all its bloody glory.

A lot of you know that I harbor a deep and abiding affection for Alan Rickman, who gets precious few good-guy roles. He has made a living in the bad-guy department. He excels at bad guys who are beset by stupidity on all sides. Bad guys who just can’t get good help. In this case, he and his deep brown voice are a bad guy who can’t keep it in his pants, causing the downfall of the titular Todd’s stainless bride and becoming the main object of his revenge. Rickman’s almost comically evil Judge Turpin slides and oozes his way around the picture, making the audience anxious to see him, at last, in Sweeny Todd’s barber’s chair.

Bonham Carter also put in a stellar performance as the not exactly evil, but certainly amoral Mrs. Lovett who spends her time desperately grasping for the affections of an obviously mad Todd, and for her pains, meets a rather unpleasant end. Sasha Baron Cohen also puts in a rather brilliant cameo as a rival barber who doesn’t really last longer than the first act.

The film struck a good balance between horror, comedy, musical and pantomime. As the plot depended on a great deal of graphic throat slitting, Burton managed to soften the brutality a notch by using a substance that was obviously un-bloodlike, more resembling red paint. Strangely, this went rather a long way towards preserving the theatrical nature of the film and giving a nod to its stage origins.

Due to the double standard in musical theatre that requires note perfect perfection of female players and, at best, a sloppy talk-through by the men, the history of the genre is littered with glorious leading men who were perfectly incapable of carrying a tune in a bucket. Rex Harrison of “My Fair Lady” fame and Robert Preston of “Music Man” and “Victor/Victoria” are two rather shining examples of great performers who were mostly tone deaf. Therefore, the vocal abilities of Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman (who actually managed a few moments of rather sublime harmony during the Greatest Hits of Broadway favorite, “Pretty Women”) were entirely fit for purpose.

I’ve always admired the work of Steven Sondheim and see why he’s widely regarded as the best in the business, but I often find his work hard to listen to. However, I was pleasantly surprised with how listenable the score was. (Albeit cut down for the purposes of the film.) The rollicking full numbers “A Little Priest” and “My Friends” stood out for their terrific execution.

Trumpet and I walked out, chattering a mile a minute, leaving BoyRacer to fend off the popcorn stuffed masses. We were still talking about the film when we reached the car and finally asked him what he made of it.

“Erm…a bit too much singing.”

It turned out that in our eagerness to see the film, we had neglected to inform BoyRacer of it’s musical status, so a lesson to be learned is that one must always let a bloke know if he’s about to sit through a musical, because obviously anything less just isn’t sporting.

For my money, a fantastic piece to see on the big screen.

I needed a little cheering up this morning.

While the Superbowl is broadcast in the UK, the ads, which are almost as hotly anticipated as the game itself, are not. At 2.4 million a pop, companies pull out all the stops to make the most expensive 30 seconds on television memorable.

I couldn’t tell you why this particular ad caught me off guard this year. Enjoy.