JUNE 29
OH YES - Eddie Izzard at the Coronet Theatre in LA! Well done to Ev for holding on the phone for about an hour in order to snaffle some tickets for this gig. The show didn't start til 11pm which explains why I'm writing this at 2.20am, but it was well worth it to see Eddie in the flesh.
He was also in normal clothes for some reason - as he said, "I'm a transvestite but I've been given the night off". The show was great - full of bees, honey, jam, history and some insightful and hysterical observations on creationsim / "intelligent design" and the idiots who believe in it.
After the show we headed into Beverley Hills to get a coffee and then back to the LBC and home. What a great night out.
JUNE 28
SO THERE I was driving home at 12.30am last night along the 5 when I see a bloody great cloud of smoke in front of me. The guy in front slows down and puts his hazard lights on and so do I and next thing we're crawling through a white mist. I thought there'd been a crash and a car was on fire, but it turned out to be some bags of cement that had fallen off the back of a truck and burst open.
I was driving home so late as I'd only just managed to finish the utter nightmare that was the Graduation Special. Yes, it's that time of year again when American teenagers dress up in mortar boards and gowns and act like they've discovered the cure for cancer. So to all the grads in Burbank, Glendale and La Crescenta, I'd just like to say: CONGRATULATIONS! YOU'VE JUST ACHIEVED THE ABSOLUTE BASIC MINIMUM EDUCATIONAL STANDARD REQUIRED OF YOU! YOU'RE ALL HEROES!!!!
JUNE 27
I DON'T understand the logic of this one. On the one hand this bloke's obviously trying to compensate for having a tiny nob, but in his desperation to prove to the world he's not a Justin he's overblinged his Dummer to the point where he may as well walk around carrying a sign reading "I HAVE A MINISCULE NOB" in 90-foot letters. Which are on fire.
JUNE 24
EXCUSE me, mate, you seem to have a forum full of crap.
JUNE 23
I'VE BEEN watching the US Paintball Championships while waiting for the France v Togo match to start. Now I've only been paintballing once but from what I can see the Yanks have got it all wrong. As we all know, for a proper paintball match you need the following:
1. A group of inept British schoolkids.
2. Mud. Lots of it.
3. A forest large enough for at least three team members to get hopelessly lost for half an hour.
4. Crappy inaccurate paintball guns. No, crappier than that.
5. At least one team member who's seen Rambo: First Blood Part II a few times too many.
Now here's the completely wrong way the Americans seem to do it:
1. A TOTALLY EXTREME!!! car park filled with TOTALLY EXTREME!!! foam barriers covered in TOTALLY EXTREME!!! sponsors' logos behind which the TOTALLY EXTREME!!! players can crouch in a TOTALLY EXTREME!!! way wearing their TOTALLY EXTREME!!! outfits covered in TOTALLY EXTREME!!! sponsors' logos while other TOTALLY EXTREME!!! players fire TOTALLY EXTREME!!! paintballs at them from their TOTALLY EXTREME!!! $2000 guns their TOTALLY EXTREME!!! parents bought them.
2. Lots of TOTALLY EXTREME!!! commercial breaks which advertise TOTALLY EXTREME!!! products such as Alka Seltzer, car insurance and Pepsi.
3. Plenty of TOTALLY EXTREME!!! close-ups of the TOTALLY EXTREME!!! audience which seems to consist of the same group of TOTALLY EXTREME!!! teen girls in TOTALLY EXTREME!!! Gap belly-shirts and TOTALLY EXTREME!!! fake tattoos.
4. TOTALLY EXTREME!!! interviews with the TOTALLY EXTREME!!! players which are done in a TOTALLY EXTREME!!! editing style beloved by TOTALLY EXTREME!!! extreme sports fans and TOTALLY EXTREME!!! 12-year-olds who think Green Day are TOTALLY EXTREME!!!
5. Players will continue their TOTALLY EXTREME crouching in a TOTALLY EXTREME!!! way occasionally firing a TOTALLY EXTREME!!! paintball at the TOTALLY EXTREME!!! opposing team members while the TV audience realises that watching a bunch of teenage twats hiding behind inflatable McDonald's logos is TOTALLY BORING!!! and switches over the the World Cup.
"ACHTUNG MEIN Führer! Der Britisher schweinhunde haz again replazed our picture mit der Scheiße!
JUNE 22
ALL THE BLOODY CATS HAVE GOT FLEAS!!!!! ALL OF 'EM!!!!
JUNE 21
I'D JUST like to take this opportunity to say goodbye to Fred, who left TCN Towers today for greener (and higher-paying) pastures. Good luck, mate, and as you take your trip down easy street to the land of milk and honey, don't forget to let me know if they need any designers.
JUNE 20
I WAS going to write about going to the Titanic exhibition at the Queen Mary on Sunday, but Jules sent these pics over so I posted them instead. For the uninitiated among you, the third pic is of a Fiat 500. It may be small, but it shifts. Thanks Jules!
JUNE 19
The irony of this one is that she's called Cat.
JUNE 18
OOPS... looks like someone wasn't happy with their new-look wallpaper.
JUNE 17
MAY I introduce Perfect Disaster Lays? Thank you.
JUNE 16
IT ALWAYS happens, doesn't it? Just when you think everything's going fine something comes along to bugger it up. Take tonight as a good example. The paper was done, sent and gone. The rest of the production team had left for home. I was about to shut my PC down when what happens? Some stupid git decides to drive a truck at a police officer and ends up getting shot. Three hours later I get home. Oh, and the southbound 5 was shut so I was once again exposed to the delight of Echo Park. Bastards.
JUNE 14
JUST when I thought I was having problems with MySpace users, this bloke's plight makes it seem a lot less of a worry. To cut a long story short, his friend had her T-Mobile Sidekick nicked from a cab in Manhattan; the idiots who stole it took pics with it; the pics were automatically uploaded to a server; the friend got the pics, their MySpace addresses and lots of other info; made contact; thieves told him where to go; and it's all fun and games since then. It's a bit of a read, but well worth it.
JUNE 13
"MEIN Führer! I regret to report zat meinen background image haz been replaced mit der Scheiße!"
JUNE 12
RYAN'S been on holiday this past week so I thought I'd brighten up his desk by decorating it with onions. No need to thank me, Ryan, it's a pleasure.
JUNE 11
LADIES and gentlemen, boys and girls, I give you the latest entry in the ongoing MySpace Sucks epic.
JUNE 10
FIVE more ways you know you're watching the World Cup in America:
1. The first half of the Argentina v Ivory Coast match was brought to me by T-Mobile, official partner of the 2006 World Cup brought to me by ESPN and Adidas.
2. The commentators have to explain that Sweden are playing in yellow.
3. Every effort is made to link the players to America in any way, even if one of them only spent a week in Disneyland on holiday.
4. Companies whose customers wouldn't know one end of a football from another are using soccer to flog cars, insurance and just about anything else.
5. Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden drew "nothing-nothing".
JUNE 9
ONE of the things that makes my job just about bearable are emails like this:
Call out Gouranga be happy! Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga... That which brings the highest happiness!
Thanks, nitaigouranga@aol.com, for cheering me up. Apparently these emails are pretty common - you can read more about them here.
FIVE ways you can tell you're watching the World Cup in America:
1. The match venue is continually referred to as "Munich, Germany".
2. The sponsor's logo is three times the size of the scorebox.
3. The commentators have to describe where Costa Rica is.
4. Halftime consists of 30 seconds of analysis and 14.5 minutes of commercials.
5. "Nil" is never used for no score; some strange word called "nothing" is used instead.
JUNE 8
WITH kick-off less than 24 hours away and the pot now standing at $135, it's time to take a look at who's got what in the World Cup Sweepstakes:
Hamlet - Netherlands
Tracey - Australia
Tammy - Angola, Ecuador, England
Edgar - Poland
Jeff - Ukraine
Ryan - Japan
Vince - Germany
Chris - Costa Rica and Switzerland
Tania - Brazil
Danette - France
Fred - Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, Rep of Korea
Jong - Croatia
Ani - Togo and Ivory Coast
Charles - Italy
Cynthia - Ghana
Jon - Tunisia
Me - Spain
Grant - Sweden
Fred & Alveredo - Serbia and Montenegro
So nothing's changed - Tania's still going to win but now Tammy's in with a chance as she's picked England. Fred, who appears to have a gambling problem none of us knew about before now, has forked over $20 and ended up with teams worth about $3.50. And still no one has managed to get the USA or Argentina.
JUNE 7
LET us all take a moment to remember Iestyn's nads, which were taken from us this afternoon.
JUNE 6
IT HAD to happen - tonight I got hit by a Friendster user, who's now got a fantastic slideshow of shit on his bloody awful webpage. On a lighter note, the World Cup sweepstake is up to 16 players who've picked a total of 21 teams between them. Fred shelled out another $10 and got Portugal and South Korea, Cynthia picked Ghana and Jon got Tunisia. I chucked my fiver into the ring and ended up with Spain. With 11 teams remaining - including England and Argentina - and two days 'til the finals kick off, there's still scope to up the ante.
JUNE 4
WITH World Cup fever sweeping the nation (well, not really) I've organised an office sweepstake. The basic rules are:
1. Participants pay $5 to enter.
2. They pick a team out of a hat (or, in this case, a paper bag from Togo's).
3. The person whose team wins the World Cup or gets the furthest in the competition (ie Brazil) wins 50% of the pot; second place gets 25%; and third and fourth places get 12.5%.
So far the pot stands at $80, with 16 teams chosen and 16 remaining. I'm hoping to get some more people involved but here's who's got what so far:
Hamlet - Netherlands
Tracey - Australia
Tammy - Angola
Edgar - Poland
Jeff - Ukraine
Ryan - Japan
Vince - Germany
Chris - Costa Rica and Switzerland
Tania - Brazil
Danette - France
Fred - Czech Republic
Jong - Croatia
Ani - Togo and Ivory Coast
Charles - Italy
As you can see, Tania's won $40 before the tournament even starts, while Ani and Chris each shelled out $10 on teams who aren't worth that in real life.
JUNE 2
THERE'S a whole new section up called "MySpace Sucks". In it I chart the fun and games I have tracking down MySpace users who are leeching my pics and wrecking my site stats and replacing whatever photo they've hotlinked to with pics of Emric's poo. So far there are seven victims, but I'm sure there will be more. Oh yes, there will.
Now, before anyone starts complaining about the fact that 99.9% of MySpace users are retards who don't understand the downside to linking to pics, here's something from MySpace's terms and conditions I found on this page:
"By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services."
In other words, thanks to these little shits MySpace now has the rights to several of my pics, so frankly giving them a taste of what I regularly find in the sink in the morning is not punishment enough.
JUNE 1
HERE'S a quick reminder: you can't spell "crap" without "rap".
