After more than six months, hundreds of witnesses and millions of words in evidence, the coroner is today delivering verdicts on the victims of the deadly 2005 terrorist attacks on London. What have we learned from the inquests?

1. The line between life and death is very thin, and very arbitrary

Patrick Barnes and Philip Beer travelled together from Borehamwood every morning, but on 7 July 2005, the service was slow and they got to the Piccadilly line 15 minutes later than usual. They were standing face to face, holding on to a bar, when Barnes felt as if he had been hit on the head with a brick. It was a moment or two until he came round to hear the screams. Barnes shouted through the smoke for his friend, whom he couldn't see: "Are we going to die?" "No," said Beer, "everything's going to be fine."

In the smoke and confusion, Barnes was able to stagger from the scene, but he couldn't find his friend. Beer, wedged tightly against him when the bomb exploded, died in the carriage.

Again and again, the shattering testimonies of the witnesses to 7 July have underlined how very thin the line was between life and death, and the apparent arbitrariness of who survived and who did not.

Catherine al-Wafai, sitting five feet from the suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan on the Edgware Road train, walked off the tube in a daze and made it all the way home, wearing only one shoe. Philip Duckworth, standing next to Shehzad Tanweer near Aldgate, was blown from the carriage and staggered from the scene, with just a small piece of the bomber's shin bone in his eye. Others who were further away from the bomb sites, however, did not make it.

In some cases survival depended on the chance intervention of others. Martine Wright and Andrew Brown both lost legs in the Aldgate bomb but their lives were saved because they were sitting near the carriage door, and because Elizabeth Kenworthy, an off-duty police officer who climbed into the carriage, was able to reach them, tie tourniquets around their limbs and keep them calm. The young man rolling on the floor a little further into the carriage appeared much less badly injured, so she was "very, very upset" to learn that Richard Ellery had died.

Others made it thanks to reserves of will that they probably had no idea they had. Philip Patsalos, a university professor, recalled feeling his leg after the King's Cross blast and finding it "rather mushy". "I started thinking to myself, I've got to stay alive, I'm going to die here." He concentrated on counting his breaths in and out, keeping himself calm. When the emergency services arrived, he was so still they walked past him, thinking that he too was dead.

"I said, 'Sir, help me, I'm dying,'" he told the inquests. "Did he respond?" asked the lawyer. "Yes."

2. 7 July was a global atrocity

For much of the past five months, a number of news organisations have reported the 7 July inquest largely in their London news bulletins, as if only the capital had been attacked. But it is not merely the fact that this was the biggest terrorist assault in British history, barring Lockerbie, that makes 7/7 an atrocity against the entire country – and much further afield. The timing and location of the bombs, attacking commuters at rush hour on London's socially levelling transport network, meant that they killed both bankers and students, cleaners and consultants, many from far beyond the capital.

Ellery, a shop assistant at Jessops in Ipswich, was visiting for a one-day course. Michael "Stan" Brewster worked for Derbyshire county council and was in the capital for a conference. Jennifer Nicholson commuted from Reading, James Adams from Peterborough, Adrian Johnson from Nottinghamshire. Marie Hartley died on a day trip from Lancashire.

The attacks also acutely illustrated London's status as a global microcosm in which, with brutal irony, different cultures habitually live, work and travel together in peace, side by side. The dead of 7 July had origins in at least 23 countries: Montserrat and Mauritius, Kenya and Poland, Sri Lanka and New Zealand and Ghana.

Sam Ly's family had had fled Vietnam for Australia as refugees in the 1970s; he had travelled to London on a working holiday. Atique Sharifi's parents were killed by the Taliban when he was a child; he came to Britain in 2002, unable to speak any English, to earn money to support his younger sister in Afghanistan. Gladys Wundowa had worked in a salt mine as a child in her native Ghana to raise money for her siblings; she became a maid for a Lebanese family,  moved to London, found work as a cleaner and had embarked on a course in housing management when she died. Two thousand people attended her funeral in her home village in Ghana.

It wasn't only London that mourned.

3. Crises turn some people into heroes

How would you react if the railway carriage or bus in which you were travelling was destroyed by a suicide bomb? Would you flee, mindful of your family and your own survival? Would you dare walk down a tube tunnel towards a loud bang, not knowing whether the line's electric current was off? Would you climb into a smoke-filled carriage filled with scenes of unspeakable carnage? For those following the inquests, those questions have been unspoken but ever present.

It is not easy to predict what makes a hero. Certainly many of those who risked their lives to help on 7 July had experience, or some professional training, in trauma situations. Adrian Heili, whose intervention almost certainly helped to save the life of Danny Biddle, who lost both legs, an eye and his spleen in the Edgware Road blast, had served with the Austrian army in Kosovo. Group Captain Craig Staniforth, an RAF wing commander, smashed a window in his undamaged train, which had pulled up alongside the bombed Edgware Road carriage, and swung from the handrails to climb into the wreckage to help desperately injured survivors. He talked to John Tulloch, who had serious head injuries, telling him about his daughter's university applications in a desperate bid to stop him going to sleep.

Others, however, were not professionals. Events organiser Steven Desborough was being evacuated from the Aldgate train, when he turned – "I don't know why" – and climbed into the wrecked carriage. He cradled 24-year-old Carrie Taylor in the moments before she died.

"There were people that walked on and I don't blame them," Desborough was careful to say, and of course many of those who left may have calculated, rightly, that they were unable to help and would only be in the way. Others were in profound shock. It is difficult to explain the impulse that prompted a number of passengers at Aldgate to pause to take photographs of the scene even as Dr Gerardine Quaghebeur was fighting to save lives; they may not now be able to explain it themselves. But given the scale of the atrocity, and the challenges facing the emergency services in arriving at the bomb sites, there is no question that some, perhaps many, passengers' lives were saved directly because of the actions of their fellow commuters.

"I don't think you can sum up my debt of gratitude," Wright has said of Kenworthy. "People like that don't come around that often, and if it wasn't for her I would be dead."

4. The bombers were ordinary, silly young men, as well as evil murderers

Shortly before 1am on 6 July, Jermaine Lindsay, who the following day would murder 26 people on the Piccadilly line train, received a text message from Khan, the plot's ringleader. The message, though menacing in retrospect, is almost comical in its content. The pair, their texts showed, had taken to referring to each other as characters from the 1980s television programme The A Team, and riffing on tough guy BA Baracus's fear of flying.

"Yo BA big nackers," texted Khan, "you on dat plane or wat. fool."

Lindsay replied: "I ain't getting on no plane fool."

Khan may not have known at the time that Lindsay, who was married with a young child, had invited his 17-year-old girlfriend to spend the evening of 6 July in a hotel with him in London, where he promised her they would "spend some quality time together and . . . have some bad boy room service".

The pair had met at a boxing club in their home town of Aylesbury after he winked at her. They had been on a handful of dates, going for a drive to a nearby lake in his Fiat Brava, or to Milton Keynes to wander round a shopping centre. On that occasion he asked her if she knew how to get hold of a gun, since he was going to London with some mates "to teach some people a lesson".

Throughout the inquest a vivid and unsettling picture has emerged of the four bombers, who – as well as being murderous plotters directed by phonecalls from an as-yet unidentified terrorist mastermind in Pakistan – were also banal, sometimes silly, often very ordinary young men.

Tanweer also had a secret girlfriend whom he had met as a teenager, and courted by taking for late-night drives in his car. She knew of his obsession with cricket and jiu-jitsu, but thought he wasn't particularly religious. They had moved apart but stayed in contact, and got together again in early 2005. She felt he loved her, she said, and they made plans for the future, though she was puzzled by the blond tones in the hair on his head and arms – in fact, they had been bleached by the hydrogen peroxide he had been preparing in the bomb factory. The night before the bombings he played cricket with friends in a nearby park.

Khan, too, was a complicated character, greatly respected in the primary school where he was a learning mentor, though teachers had expressed concerns about his hardline views. The man regarded as a father figure was at the same time using his position to try to convert children as young as 11 to his brand of radical Islam.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the inquests heard, when he was still a young teenager, Hasib Hussain had passed a note to his fellow school pupils which read: "You're next."

Hussain, 18 when he died, had told his teachers that he wanted to go to university, but dropped out of school a week before it was due to finish at the end of June 2005. A week after that he murdered 13 people on the number 30 bus.

5. Though many individuals were heroic, the emergency response fell short

PC Dave Hill, normally employed as a diplomatic protection officer for the Metropolitan police, was driving with colleagues along the Thames when they heard reports of unexplained explosions at Edgware Road. They raced to the scene where Hill entered the tunnel and climbed into the mangled carriage – "because I was there". The officer, who wept while recalling the scenes he had witnessed, may have directly saved a number of lives through his actions; he was far from alone among emergency-service professionals in acting without a second thought to save others.

But, however inspiring the individual acts of heroism preformed by police officers, firefighters and paramedics, the uncomfortable truth is that the emergency services' response to 7 July was hampered by delays, communication failures, tactical confusion and a jobsworth adherence to protocol that at times defied common sense.

Again and again, survivors spoke of the appalling wait for rescuers, even as they felt themselves slipping ever closer to death. Fire crews did not arrive at Edgware Road until an hour after the attacks. The first paramedic on the scene called urgently for ambulances; he learned later that ambulances from two stations nearby had not been dispatched. Paramedics intended for Russell Square were sent to the wrong location, meaning they also arrived almost an hour after the attack.

Firefighters arrived at King's Cross station at 9.13am but did not go to the scene of the blast until 9.42am because of communication protocols. Police and firefighters were forced to use runners between tunnels and station concourses because their radio system at the time did not work underground.

Most worrying, perhaps, was what emerged at the inquest about the "Gold" command centre at London Ambulance Service headquarters. This was a scene of barely contained chaos, in which staff could not log on to computers, messages were scribbled on pieces of paper and subsequently lost, and a single operator was handling every 999 call and radio message relating to the four bomb sites. Three hours after the first attacks, the inquest heard, those in charge of the ambulance response were still unclear about how many bombs had exploded and where. Ambulances were not even dispatched to Tavistock Square, scene of the bus bomb, until 52 minutes after the blast.

The ambulance service was also forced to admit that it "did not provide a complete picture" to a London Assembly inquiry in 2006 into the emergency response, giving an account which suggested a speedier and more efficient response than had actually taken place. "There was no intent to deceive," insisted an ambulance spokesman.

6. We may never know how much MI5 knew before July 7

One of the most dramatic images to emerge from the inquests was not an image of a bomb scene, but a grainy, black-and-white surveillance photograph of Aldgate bomber Tanweer, which MI5 sent to US secret services in the months before the attacks to be shown to a key al-Qaida informant. The informant, Mohammed Junaid Babar, had not identified the image as being significant, it emerged in evidence – perhaps unsurprisingly since the original, which very clearly showed the bomber with Mohammed Sidique Khan, had been cropped so badly as to render Tanweer unrecognisable and cut out Khan altogether. Babar had been involved in training Khan in a terrorist camp in Afghanistan.

MI5 had no explanation for the poor quality of the image. "One of my children," tartly noted inquest counsel Hugo Keith, "could have done a better job."

Witness G, the security service spokesman giving evidence anonymously, acknowledged in court that MI5 had allowed a committee of MPs to be misled over its classification of suspects, and had not told the MPs about the original, good-quality picture.

But if the spokesman, under cross-examination, did shed some light on MI5's involvement, to many of the bereaved families his evidence was distinguished more by what it did not reveal. It was known before the inquest, for example, that Khan came onto MI5's radar on at least eight occasions before the bombings, dating back as early as 2001. The witness cited limited resources, unsophisticated computer systems, even Khan's common name, as explanations of why the dots had not been joined. Repeatedly, he said the service had improved its systems since the attacks and would be unlikely to miss such connections again. But he did not elaborate how and why.

At one point, almost as an aside, Witness G told the court that he was confident Khan could have been identified as a trained jihadist in March 2005, four months before the bombings, had agents chosen to investigate a major lead. They did not, he said, for a "proportionate and reasonable" reason. However, he was unable to disclose what that was, he said, "for national security reasons".

7. Inquests have their limits

After a process of more than six months, during which more than 300 people have given evidence in person and a futher 200 by statement, 1,173 pieces of evidence have been disclosed and at least 16 separate legal teams have had their say, all involved will hope that the coroner will have made significant strides towards uncovering the full story of 7 July.

But however admirable, in the minds of many bereaved families, Lady Justice Hallett's management of the inquest process has been, questions are certain to remain even after she delivers her verdicts. Legal rules tightly circumscribe the powers of coroners, whose principal role, of course, is to rule on cause of death. It is not yet absolutely certain how much scope she will consider she has under "rule 43" to make recommendations to prevent further deaths.

Some of the bereaved families believe that the end of the inquest should represent the close of the period of inquiry. But others have pressing questions that they insist still have to be answered. A number of family members feel that the security services were allowed to sidestep important questions during the inquest process, and that the witness who gave evidence on MI5's behalf was not pushed by the coroner or her barrister to give full answers.

Some relatives question Witness G's assertion that the failure to follow up intelligence about the 7 July bombers was due to limited resources, or question why Babar, who remains the only person to be convicted in relation to the bombings, served only four years in a US prison before being released.

Some years ago lawyers representing survivors and the bereaved families launched legal action to force the government to hold an independent inquiry into the attacks. Those proceedings were stayed while the inquest process was ongoing; they could be reactivated, dependent on the coroner's findings and potential recommendations. It may not be over yet.

Long revered as one of England's finest songwriters, Ray Davies, curator of this year's Meltdown festival, remains shy, insecure and steadfastly old-fashioned. And his biggest regret? The family life he never had…

Ray Davies has now been famous for close on half a century, and yet the experience seems to have changed him hardly at all. He still lives barely a mile from where he was born (Fortis Green, in north London). He is still friends with people he knew at school. In a pub, he can still "disappear", a talent that enables him always to drink his pint in peace ("it's a pleasant surprise for people, when they find out who I am, and what I've done"). Then there is his interview technique. Davies dislikes doing interviews, and gives relatively few, but if you get lucky and find yourself alone with him, the surprise is that he answers every question with so little guile. Naturally, this is thrilling; I'm a journalist, after all. But it's also unnerving. You expect men of his generation and class to be blithe, and a little butch. He is neither. Quiet and self-deprecating, he has trouble, sometimes, meeting my eye. Is he shy? "Yes, immensely," he says, exhaling. It's as if he is relieved that I have spotted this.

We meet at Konk, the Kinks' recording studios. It's a nondescript building in a nondescript street in a down-at-heel patch of Hornsey: straight out of one his songs. A part of me is, I guess, still expecting Davies to be wearing a paisley cravat or, even better, velvet trousers. But when he appears, deep in the bowels of the building, he is in a baggy navy sweatshirt, jeans and a pair of white trainers as big as barges. He is thin, slightly stooped, and his once luxuriant (and now rather unexpectedly brown) hair has retreated over time so that his famous forehead appears higher than ever. Until he grins, and you catch sight of the old gap-toothed smile, he could be anyone: a university lecturer, an electrician. I can no more imagine him high-kicking on Top of the Pops than I can myself. How, I wonder, does he ever screw up enough courage to propel himself on stage? "Well," he says. "There's an element of voodoo attached to what I do. It's something that happens: a kind of energy. I remember playing Glastonbury, the year before last. The acoustic tent. It was raining. I didn't want to play. I was so miserable. Worse than I am now! I didn't even get changed. I put my wellingtons on, and I just walked on, and from that moment something happened. It was one of the best shows I've ever done."

Motivation, he admits, can be a problem. Davies is curating this year's Meltdown on the South Bank, and though he's pleased to be doing so – his line-up, which includes Madness, Harrison Birtwistle and Anna Calvi, is quirky, stellar and enjoyably English – he nevertheless had to sell the idea to himself before he was able to sign on the dotted line. "Whenever I'm asked to do something, I have to motivate myself by coming up with a vision of what it will be like. I'd heard it was a big job. Patti Smith, one of my predecessors, exhausted herself doing it." It was the fact that this Meltdown forms part of the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain that swung it. Davies visited the festival – he was seven – and still remembers it vividly. "My dad took me. It was so different. So futuristic." The Skylon!" He frowns. "What was the Skylon supposed to do exactly?" I tell him that, so far as I am aware, it didn't do anything. The frown takes a while to fade.

Unlike most people, who think of the 50s as rather brown, Davies looks back with fondness. "I was born after the war," he says. "So I never saw aeroplanes overhead. But I used to play on bombsites. All the kids did. Iremember the 50s as sunny and bright. My dad was a market gardener, so we always had lots of veggies. I don't remember doing without [rationing did not end until 1954]. I always seemed to get what I wanted." Was this because he had six older sisters? I bet they spoiled him. "No, I don't think it was that. I just got everything I wanted. I don't know why."

Did his sisters seem sophisticated? "Boyfriends always came to the house. I was very interested to meet them, to listen to their music. We used to watch them dancing in the front room. It was magical. I was a serious child, quite quiet, but I enjoyed picking up parts of their culture: big band music, romantic songs from during the war."

Some of his peers kicked against this sort of thing – sentimental ballads, the prettified shackles of tradition – but Davies was always a little out of kilter with the mood. When he went to art school in the early 60s, for instance, he could feel that "culture was going through a radical change… I mean, people went off to be artists rather than to get proper jobs. Previously, art school had been for the upper and middle classes. Then working-class culture started coming in: in the theatre, in films, in music. There was this feeling that art was moving in that direction too. John Bratby [leading exponent of what David Sylvester called the "kitchen sink" school] was the painter everyone was talking about." Did Davies, product of a secondary modern, find this liberating? No, he did not. "I wanted everything to be as it was," he says, with a kind of yelp. "I liked the Old Masters. Russian icons. That's how I wanted to paint."

It seems odd, then, that on leaving art school he decided to become a rock singer (he formed the Kinks with his guitarist brother, Dave, in 1964), though his critics would argue that his achilles heel as a songwriter has always been his tendency towards nostalgia and whimsy. "Yes, it's a little miracle, really," he says, quietly. Not that global fame was ever his goal. "I remember when we made our first hit record. My producer and I were walking down Oxford Street, and he said: 'This will be the last time you walk down this street without people talking to you.' I asked him why. He said: 'This is going to be No 1.' I didn't really understand what he meant. I thought I'd remain anonymous – and I was right, in a way. I knew a famous actress once, I mean world-famous, and she told me she could turn it [the ability to attract attention] on and off. We went to a bar, and she proved to me that you can go somewhere where there are crowds, and not be noticed. Some people like tabloid culture. They like to be seen by everybody. But I've been reserved about it. There are still people who say: 'Ray who?' and that's OK."

A few years ago, when he was still touring with the Kinks, the band was due to play in Providence, Rhode Island. Davies arrived late. When he turned up at the stage door, no one recognised him.

Didn't fame change his relationships with his family and his friends? When "You Really Got Me" went to No 1, he was only 20. "I wasn't aware that it did. My sisters were supportive. I didn't lose friends, though I did lose touch with a few. Recently I've been getting back in touch again. They turned up at my show, I took their numbers, and we emailed. It's nice. They knew me before I did what I do. So when you sit down, they know you for what you really are, and sometimes it cuts through all the stuff with the music."

The chief shock associated with fame was realising that being creative would take up only 5% of his time. "I had to find out about contracts, how all the machinery works. I hate it to this day. I wasn't ready for it. We were only the second, maybe the third, generation of British rock'n'rollers. It was new territory. These days you can do a degree in how to be in the music business. But we were virgins. We're still fighting for royalties we haven't been paid." Does this get him down? "Yes. It becomes overwhelming. I try not to think about it."

Davies has always said his songs are peopled by characters, and that it is imagining the lives of these characters that gives his lyrics their heartbeat: "I write songs about people, and I happen to feel that the suburbanite kind of person who's not much noticed is quite interesting." Everything goes into these songs. "I had a partner once, and when we broke up, she said: I've never understood it. I've listened to all the music you've written while I've been living with you, and I never would have thought you'd think of anything as nice as that, that you could be as sensitive as that." He is smiling, but he doesn't look particularly happy. "It's not that I write in secret. I'm not an Emily Dickinson. But it's a private world for me… not so much now, I'm more open these days. But when I started out I was shy about it because I suddenly had ideas that people were actually listening to. It was quite a big thing."

He doesn't disdain the way people connect him, thanks to songs like "Sunny Afternoon" and albums like The Village Green Preservation Society, to a kind of Englishness, but nor is he certain where this fondness for writing about stately homes and strawberry jam comes from. Perhaps, I suggest, it's to do with homesickness: some years he wasn't in the country for more than a few days at a time. He thinks about this. "I wasn't aware I was homesick. I thought that was my life: the road, the hotel rooms, the diners. It's only since I was forced to stay in England over the last few months [last year he fell ill with a blood disorder, and was not allowed to fly] that I realised I might have been homesick." He thinks some more. "All my most famous songs were written in England, but maybe you're right, and there is an exile inside me."

His other spur to creativity is – or was, until the Kinks split in 1996 – his younger brother, Dave. The story goes, for all you Freudians out there, that all was well in little Ray's world until, in 1947when he was three and a half, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a screaming baby whose name was David. When they were in the band, their rows were legendary: brutal and prolonged. But a few weeks ago Dave gave an interview in which, once he'd done listing Ray's faults (meanness, vanity, narcissism, emotional greed), he said: "I love him to death." So is their feud on or off? Davies smirks. "He's my little brother, what can I say? Some people say he's a jumped-up upstart, but I say: take him as you find him. He feels it's his duty to have a swipe at me occasionally, and that's all right. We've come a long way from the crib. Only, sometimes, he can be negative for the sake of being negative. I've had to bang my head against the wall so many times with him. He is such a bright lad but he lets himself down.

"When we were together it was aggressive, violent, powerful, but we triggered off each other. We don't see each other much, but this morning I found two songs we recorded together at my house on my computer. It's unforgettable, his sound. I might develop them. In some ways he is more adult than I am. I remember when my mother died, I was in New York cutting a record, and he was by her bedside, and he rang me and he said: 'She's dead.' I said: 'Will you check?' And he said: 'I've checked already.' He took care of all the things I should have taken care of. He's more grounded than me, but in other ways… he's out there with the fairies."

He laughs. "I won't read the piece you mention, though, because I'll get upset."

Davies has been married three times, and he has four daughters (two by his first wife, one by Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, and one by his third wife). Does he have a girlfriend? "I'm in between girlfriends. I'm easy to love, and impossible to live with." Does that mean he's better on his own? "There's nothing like having a good partner. You want someone you can go home to and say: I had a crap day. It doesn't help the day, but you've got someone to say it to.I'm rationing relationships in the sense that I want the next one to be a good one, a sincere one." What about his daughters? "That's the one thing I really regret about my career, not having been with my kids more." But are things better now? "Not really. I have a daughter in Ireland. She's 14. I speak to her when I can. I haven't seen her in nearly a year, which is terrible. I was going to go at Christmas, but then I got sick. I miss her. I could see her if I wanted to, it's just…" His voice trails off for a moment.

"The other ones I had early on. One is married and lives in Hong Kong. The other one lives in Kent. They're all right. I had one daughter from another relationship [this is the daughter by Hynde, whom he did not meet until she was grown up] and she texted me this morning, and I'll text her back later. Do they think of their father in an oh-we-despair-of-dad kind of way? He doesn't answer this.

"I wish I could have sustained a normal married relationship because seeing my friends who've been with the same partner… My friend Patrick has been with the same woman since he was at school, and I envy him that. He showed me pictures of his family get-togethers, and there's a balance there. It's an interesting phenomenon, this [being a father to] half-sisters thing. You have a child with somebody, and there's someone else in the background you're not supposed to talk about. I would like to feel more comfortable about it."

Oh dear. He seems so… subdued. "No, I'm not!" he says. So what makes him happy? "It doesn't take much: seeing other people happy, doing work that makes me think 'I had one moment of originality today'. I believe that creativity is a gift, and that everybody's got the ability to be creative. I do these songwriting courses [for the Arvon Foundation], and it's so great." This is generous. I can't imagine certain of his peers teaching thwarted teachers and postmen to write lyrics. "No, it's not generous! It helps me as well. Writing can be quite lonely."

In the moments before I leave – he must put in a phone call to the US, where his album See My Friends has just been released – we talk about the blank screen, and the way it must be filled, day after day; the way he always wonders, even after all these years, whether he can pull off the same trick one more time. "It's horrible, isn't it?" he says, softly. "The insecurity. The way it drives you." His voice is low, but very kind.

Ray Davies' Meltdown (10-19 Jun) is part of Southbank Centre's Festival of Britain 60th anniversary sponsored by MasterCard (22 Apr–4 Sep)

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BEST DVD PRICE Target Best Buy Fry’s $16.99 $15.99 N/A Amazon [2] – $14.99 BEST BLU-RAY PRICE Target Best Buy Fry’s $22.99 $19.99 $17.99 Amazon [3] – $19.99 EXCLUSIVE DEAL: What? Free $5 Target GiftCard when you buy The King’s Speech on Blu-ray. Where? Target. RABBIT HOLE Highly perceptive and profoundly affecting, Rabbit Hole offers keen insight into human nature and the effects of tragedy — mentally, spiritually and materially. It is nuanced to the tiniest of character intricacies, greatly rewarding attentive viewers willing to take the journey. This may be stating the obvious, but it's not a journey to be taken lightly. Rest assured though, Rabbit Hole is impressively restrained, and never uses pain as a crutch. The film is too earnest to let its tragic subject matter drown the picture in unadulterated misery. In every respect, the film feels appreciably unsentimental and real, even finding a number of genuine moments of humor amongst the suffocating sorrow. There are the expected shouting matches and tear-drenched lamentations, yes, but they're the culmination of thoughtfully and fully realized human drama, not easy melodrama. It's a phenomenal movie, written, directed and acted with confidence and care. I'm not sure how eager I am to re-experience it any time soon, but I'm extremely grateful to have been able to experience it at all. Available on Blu-ray? Yes. Notable Extras: DVD & Blu-ray – Audio Commentary with the Director, Writer, and Director of Photography, and Deleted Scenes. BEST DVD PRICE Target Best Buy Fry’s $17.99 N/A N/A Amazon [4] – $14.99 BLU-RAY PRICE Amazon [5] – $19.99 SOMEWHERE Somewhere opens with a full two minutes of its protagonist aimlessly driving around in circles, mirroring the meandering cyclicality of his life. Symbolism! And lest you fail to pick up on it, Sofia Coppola ensures that the message is hammered home over the course of 100 staggeringly languid minutes of absolutely nothing of interest happening — repetitively, and slowly. Unlike most, I don't have a problem sympathizing with the plight of the overly privileged, but that's largely dependent on that plight being explored with some level of depth or precision. Somewhere offers no such thing. It's low-key to a fault — nice to look at, but with little going on under the surface. "That's the point," one might argue. "Bullshit," I argue back. If fame and fortune has reduced action megastar Johnny Marco to a hollow vessel of indifference, it's his relationship with his daughter that's meant to be the source of his redemption. Alas, that relationship is subjected to the same superficial treatment as every other aspect of Marco's meaningless (yet frequently alluring) existence, rendering the film a self-indulgent exercise in mood and nothing more. Here's Stephen Dorff glumly sucking a cigarette. Here's him playing Guitar Hero with Elle Fanning. Here's him slogging blank-faced through various publicity events. Ugh, enough already. I'm sorry, Ms. Coppola, a beautifully naturalistic arthouse aesthetic can only take a film so far. At a certain point, we need something substantive to care about. Otherwise, what the fuck makes this a story worth telling? Available on Blu-ray? Yes. Notable Extras: DVD & Blu-ray – A Making Somewhere featurette. DVD PRICE Amazon [6] – $19.99 BLU-RAY PRICE Amazon [7] – $26.99 GULLIVER'S TRAVELS Only half as execrable as some might be expecting, Gulliver's Travels at least has the good sense to play itself with a knowing and good natured silliness that makes it almost tolerable. Expecting the film to do any sort of justice to Jonathan Swift's 18th century satire is of course hopeless — Political and religious themes? Lose 'em. Pissing scene? Keep it! — but if you're looking for a few almost-clever Star Wars gags and are content with Jack Black once again tapping into his inherent Jack Black-ness, it's inoffensive enough that parents can probably make it to the end without feeling like they're suffering through it. But that sure as hell shouldn't be taken as a recommendation to seek it out for yourself. Oh, and fair warning: The final song and dance number is one of the most hideous things ever committed to celluloid. Remember the Fudderwacken dance [8] from Alice in Wonderland? Yeah, it's worse than that. And so much longer. Available on Blu-ray? Yes. Notable Extras: DVD & Blu-ray – Gag Reel, Deleted Scenes, I Don't Know...with Lemuel Gulliver, Little and Large, Jack Black Thinks Big, Down Time, Gulliver's Foosball Challenge, War Song Dance, Fox Movie Channel Presents: In Character Jack Black, Fox Movie Channel Presents: In Character Jason Segel, Life After Film School Rob Letterman of Gulliver’s Travels, and World Premiere. BEST DVD PRICE Target Best Buy Fry’s $12 $15.99 N/A Amazon [9] – $16.99 BEST BLU-RAY PRICE Target Best Buy Fry’s $22.99 $22.99 N/A Amazon [10] – $24.99 THE WAY BACK Marking Peter Weir's first film in seven years (since the terrific Master and Commander), The Way Back stars Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan and Mark Strong in an epic man vs. nature adventure tale wherein a group of prison escapees traverse 4000 miles to freedom. While not without its detractors, the film has been predominately a hit with critics [11], with both sides acknowledging its exhaustive and episodic nature. Here's the trailer [12]. Available on Blu-ray? Yes. Notable Extras: DVD & Blu-ray – Behind the Scenes Featurette. DVD PRICE Amazon [13] – $14.99 BLU-RAY PRICE Amazon [13] – $15.99 Other noteworthy DVD (and Blu-ray) releases this week… Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster [DVD [15] / Blu-ray [16]] – Glee: Encore [DVD [17] / Blu-ray [18]] – Kes (Criterion Collection) [DVD [19] / Blu-ray [20]] Noteworthy Blu-ray-specific releases this week… Mortal Kombat [21] – Sweetie (Criterion Collection) [22] NOTES: Some deals may vary by store. Some deals may be in-store only. All deals are for DVDs unless otherwise noted. $9.99 – Blu-ray sale: Serenity, American Gangster, Mammia Mia, It's Complicated, Marley & Me $9.99 – The Walking Dead (Season 1), Entourage (Season 6), Archer (Season 1), Family Guy (Vol. 8),Weeds (Season 5) $14.99 – How I Met Your Mother (Season 5), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 5), The Office (Season 6), House (Season 6), Burn Notice (Season 3), Justified (Season 1), Castle (Season 2), Mad Men (Season 3), Dexter (Season 4), The Big Bang Theory (Season 3) $19.99 – Glee (Season 1), Modern Family (Season 1), 24 (Season 8), Lost (Season 6), True Blood (Season 2) $5.99 – Red, Salt, Prince of Persia, From Paris with Love, The Last Song $6.99 – Megamind, How to Train Your Dragon, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Shrek Forever After, Coraline, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Ramona and Beezus 2 for $12 – Blu-ray sale: Hitch, The Legend of Zorro, Roxanne, Running With Scissors, S.W.A.T., Vertical Limit, XXX $9.99 – Blu-ray sale: Harry Potter (Year 1 – 6) [1] http://www.slate.com/id/2282194/ [2] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003UESJH4/film-20 [3] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003UESJHE/film-20 [4] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004AE3QYE/film-20 [5] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004AE3QY4/film-20 [6] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003UESJLU/film-20 [7] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003UESJM4/film-20 [8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwzAOV7uxw0 [9] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002ZG97WE/film-20 [10] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B002ZG97WO/film-20 [11] http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the-way-back/ [12] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87kezJTpyMI [13] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004C45AZU/film-20 [14] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004C45AZU/film-20 [15] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004I1AGTM/film-20 [16] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004I11VZ0/film-20 [17] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004D9FLJY/film-20 [18] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004P7CNYU/film-20 [19] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004JPJHKQ/film-20 [20] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004JPJHLK/film-20 [21] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004MA1K1W/film-20 [22] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004JPJHLU/film-20

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TEXTBOOK FERGUSON DEFLECTION

Sir Alex Ferguson revealed himself today as the lyrical ancestor of iconic rap outfit NWA by attacking "tha police" for their hideous bias against reds. Furious at comments made about foul-mouthed striker Wayne Rooney by a Wolverhampton-based leading member of the little-known "blogging policeman" scene, Ferguson took to what NWA winningly referred to as "tha mutha[BLEEPING] stand" to protest.

"There is a wee guy, sitting down there in the Midlands, probably never been recognised in his life, managed to elevate himself to whatever it is in the police force," he rapped. "Have you ever seen Wolverhampton on a Saturday night? Do police ever arrest anyone for swearing on a Saturday night? Dearie me. That is a good one."

Commenting on the United striker's foul-mouthed weekend hat-trick celebration on his blog Superintendent Mark Payne had insisted that "if Rooney had behaved like that in Wolverhampton on Saturday night, I would have expected my officers to lock him up". This is something he would almost certainly have enjoyed – after all, in a recent post he wrote: "I am often asked by people I meet what my job is like. If I am honest I absolutely love it, and would never consider doing anything else. I frequently have days that if they were WH Smith gift experiences people would pay to do them. There is nothing like the thrill of locking up a good criminal."

Many would think that Ferguson, whose own detailed knowledge of weekend life in downtown Wolverhampton is believed to have been gained from repeated visits to Sensational Saturdays at Oceana nightclub, where for just £4.88 (£6.50 on the door) he can enjoy all his "favourite RnB & Funky House tuneage" and swear with law-flouting abandon, would have better things to worry about than obscure and over-opinionated Midlands-based bloggers. Apparently not.

Meanwhile on his Twitter feed, Superintendent Payne said: "Emergency incident in Birmingham city centre now over. Crane partially dismantled and stabilised. No injuries. Roads re-open. Please RT."

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I have never given my side of the story, but the truth is that he started the fight and I finished it. Frankly, Ousmane [Dabo] is a little pussy. It's him who hit me from behind with his hand. When he did that, I hit him back. It happened just like that, bang, bang bang and it was over. But I am no monster. I don't like fighting, but it's human to defend yourself. The problem was I hit him three times. Of course, it was not the best response, but I grew up in the street and when I am attacked, I defend myself and when you fight, there are no rules" - Joey Barton talking to French Magazine So Foot about his violent attack on Ousmane Dabo back in 2007.

"At the end [of the practice game], the defendant continued to be aggressive towards Mr Dabo and shouted at him: 'You're fucking sh*te.' Barton walked towards the player and continued shouting and swearing, the court heard. 'In the words of Ousmane Dabo, [Barton] was snarling at him and he believed he might attack him,' Vardon said. He said Dabo pushed Barton by the shoulders to get him out of his personal space but was then punched to the right of his face and lost consciousness. Dabo was taken to hospital, where he was found to have a trauma injury with severe bruising to his eyelids. He could not sleep for a week and suffered headaches" - how the Guardian reported Barton pleading guilty to the attack in 2008, after which he received a four-month suspended sentence.

AND THE AWARD GOES TO ...

So, Gareth Bale, who has whopping seven league goals and one assist to his name this season, has been named in the shortlist for the PFA player of the year award. You give footballers the chance to prove they're not snarling, camera-assaulting, money-obsessed halfwits, and this is how they repay you. By nominating Gareth Bale - a player with the same amount of league goals as Theo Walcott and who has been snuffed out by Phil Neville, Lars Jacobsen and Rafael da Silva. Sure, he ran rings around Inter, but, come on, even Raul's quicker than their defence, and the Fiver had been labouring under the impression he retired in 2004.

Not that Harry Redknapp is complaining. "In all honesty for me he would win the award," he said, thereby craftily adding an extra few millions to the entirely reasonable £80m price tag he slapped on Bale earlier this week. Bale's not the only Tottenham player to have made the cut, but remarkably he's not been joined by the man that makes them tick, Luka Modric, but Rafael van der Vaart, who tires more quickly than James Corden going down an escalator.

Van der Vaart, who has spent the last few weeks flouncing like a teenager given an early curfew by his parents when substituted, is also joined by one-man bands Charlie Adam and Scott Parker and Samir Nasri, Carlos Tevez and Nemanja Vidic. They'll do, even if Vidic did pick up the dubious honour of becoming the first defender in history to fall for a Carlton Cole stepover last Saturday, which is a bit like losing a staring contest with a mole.

As ever, however, there are glaring absentees. There really is no good reason why Dimitar Berbatov, the league's top scorer, has been left off the list, and there's also no place for the impenetrable Vincent Kompany. Most glaring is the omission of Nani, who has contributed 14 more assists than Bale and Nasri combined. Nani is hardly the most endearing of players, but then isn't a high school popularity contest. It's about identifying who's been the best at kicking a ball around a field.

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FIVER LETTERS

"Re: Wayne Rooney's assertion that 'unlike others who have been caught swearing on camera, I apologised immediately and yet I am the only person banned". Can someone please explain to him that 'being caught' isn't that difficult when the culprit stares directly into a camera and shouts obscenities to a live audience of millions? Stick to aggressively abusing referees Wayne, you've been getting away with that for years" - Rob Sheehy.

"Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact that Tabloid Wayne quite audibly swore during the Wales match, jumping on to Darren Bent following his goal and screaming, 'Yeeeo, you [BLEEP!] beauty!' or something along those lines. Or am I imagining this?" - Tiarnan o Muilleoir.

"In recent years the key developments in advanced robotics have centred around the concept of artificial intelligence and learning from experience. Essentially robots of the future will modify their behaviour based on past their mistakes. Peter Crouch is obviously not this type of robot" - Alex Winter.

"Re: Mike Richardson's letter yesterday, 'Chelsea have the best defensive record in the Premier League for a reason you know' - yes, Branislav Ivanovic" - Adam Jackson.

"Player of the Year? Gotta be Joey B hasn't it? Best English midfielder around isn't he? Or so he tells us" - Jim Harris.

"With yesterday's Fiver already resting nicely in my inbox for all of 37 minutes is it safe to assume the full complement of 'St James' Park Break In/Stolen Cups From The Canteen' jokes have already made it your way?" - Simon McCartney.

"Re: 'Hundreds of pounds of damage after a break-in at St James' Park' (yesterday's Fiver). What – did someone make off with Newcastle's entire first team?" - Mike Wilner.

"To the reader who wondered why Crouch wasn't given a two-game ban for swearing on TV (Fiver letters passim). Does he not see a difference between being caught swearing while on the TV not necessarily aware that the camera is on you at that particular moment and looking directly into the lens of said camera and shouting eff off, twice?" - Jeremy Adams.

"I think all Liverpool supporters will welcome LeBron James to the club, but we'd rather see him in the back four than in the ownership mix. Any warm and tall body will do back there right now (of course, Carragher is the walking dead and thus doesn't count)" - Colin Seiler.

Send your letters to the.boss@guardian.co.uk. And if you've nothing better to do you can also tweet the Fiver.

BITS AND BOBS

Sam Allardyce, a man who definitely does not have an axe to grind, thinks former club Blackburn Rovers are underachieving. "I'm surprised because I've worked with those players, I know what they're capable of," he said. On his own managerial record the modest former Newcastle boss continued: "I've only improved results. I know that sounds like blowing my own trumpet," he said giving a big brass instrument a polish, "but that's been the case for me."

Roy Keane looks set to follow in the footsteps of Robbie Fowler and Ross Noble by moving Down Under. Reports in the Australian media claim Keane will take charge of A-league team Melbourne Victory.

And Keane's former club Ipswich have announced that highly rated England Under-21 striker Connor Wickham has signed a one-year contract extension that will keep him at Portman Road until 2014.

STILL WANT MORE?

The Foxes' form is not so fantastic and Sven's men are already looking ahead to next season, says David Bevan.

Like being bullied by Fergie's mind-games? Why not give Paul Trevillion's legendary You are the Ref? a whirl This week starring West Ham hunk Avram Grant.

Dominic Matteo has lived the high life on U2's private jet and been brought low after a night on the tiles with Razor Ruddock. He tells Small Talk all.

Want a different perspective on this week's Champions League action. Don your shades, pretend you are Aurelio Zen and watch James Richardson's European newspaper round-up.

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LIVING FOR THE WEEKEND?

superego@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Dear Miss Rotissary Ethnicity Jackson-Houston Ross,

By the time you read this, I will be gone. Europe and North Africa are calling me and Hunky Beau, and after almost seven years of covering San Francisco nightlife for the Guardian, and 14 years in general, she needs a little break (as does her skin!) Don't fret, I'll be back soon enough, in some form, possibly this one, quidnuncking up in your after-dark business. And we'll be polishing the nightlife part of our weekly Guardian music listings, so you can keep an eye on what all the other queens are up to while I'm gone. Or just know where to go for fun dancing, duh.

Miss Ross, I leave the San Francisco scene in the creatively manicured yet still slightly crackly hands of yourself and all the other gorgeous new club terrors who've recently sprouted like neon alfalfa along the gilt gutters of our dance floors. (Although I haven't seen your name around in a hot minute and sincerely hope you're not dead.) Our local, organic, small-batch, sustainable, house-manufactured alternative party scene is the sexiest and deepest and most creative in the world right now. Don't fuck it up, loves. If I come back and it's all loathsome Britney tribute night$ and DJs/models from Vegas with two "Z"s and a hash tag in their name, I will pull out my hardcore OG Detroit techno wig — the one that's really three wigs at once, powered by an ECS RS485M-M motherboard and topped with an abandoned 1930s skyscraper on fire that rotates — and level y'all. To the ground.

But of course before I leave, I have just a few things to say. I hope I've helped break down any severely tired genre and crowd divisions in the clubs, and I've tried my best to elevate nightlife commentary to a higher level than mere celebrity rubbernecking and overuse of the word "fabulous." Nightlife is an art form, Miss Ross, and it has actually saved my life on several occasions. It has a history, and deserves respect and study. But not so much that it ceases being cuckoo bonkers coco puffs Loleatta Holloway amazing.

Finally, unlike some other outlets in this town, the Guardian's party coverage has never been for sale. I may over-gush on occasion, and I'll never actively deflect a dishy bartender's kind attentions after I've written about a party, but you'll always find "advertorial" between "shit" and "syphilis" and "circuit party" in my dictionary app. I may not look like an objective journalist when sprawled spread-eagle at Lombard and Broadway at 5 a.m. with a paper sack of emptied-out Cuervo pints in one hand and a fierce knock-off Gabrielecorto Moltedo bag of emptied-out dignity in the other, but welcome to the new media. No matter how much I adore the people involved, I'd never steer you toward a Mongolian stinkbomb for the free drinks and pocket change, K?

And now, at last, here's a gaggle of awesome upcoming special-event spring parties. Farewell, Miss Ross, for now, and goddess bless you and the children and the children's children and the host with the guest list scrawled on a crumpled-up cocktail napkin in his other pants so everyone gets in free.

Where's my lime wedge,

Marke B.

 

WED., MARCH 30

Salem Oh, hi, witch house? You've caused a lot of trouble among the no-labels crowd. But few can deny the gothic-gangsta spookiness of your haunted electronic sound. Michigan's Salem brings the crunky rap and fractured neo-Orff production, openers Soft Moon and Water Borders will hold the crowd spellbound.

8 p.m.-11 p.m., $12.50 advance. 103 Harriet, SF. www.blasthaus.com

Stay Gold Five-Year Anniversary Five years already? Well, the crowd at this mad monthly queer-jam-centric dance-a-thon doesn't look a day over three — and has grown so huge that they're moving from the Make-Out Room to Public Works. With resident DJs Rapid Fire and Pink Lightning and guests Dr. Sleep, Pee Play, and Durt.

10 p.m., $3 before 11 p.m., $5 after. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

THURS., MARCH 31

Ladies of the House NextAid Benefit All women on decks for a dubby-bubbly event in honor of National Women's History Month, benefiting NextAid, which helps out African women and youth. Icon, Dulce Vita, tamo, shOOey, and more.

7:30 p.m., $10–$20. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

FRI., APRIL 1

Kool Keith and DJ Godfather Raunchy-outrageous alien rapper meets Detroit king of booty tech? Plus two rooms full of glitchy bass and Chicago footwork? Pack me another bowl, because it's all coming true.

9 p.m.-3 a.m., $18 adv, $20. Club Six, 66 Sixth St., SF. www.clubsix1.com

 

SAT., APRIL 2

Blessed Second Anniversary Deep and lovely house with that fantastically rich Oakland vibe — free monthly Blessed celebrates with Australian native DJ Vincent Kwok, who brings a sunny global soul perspective to the tables.

9 p.m., free. SomaR Bar, 1727 Telegraph, Oakl. Facebook: Blessed 2 Year

Emo Spring Break Hahaha, no sunshine for emos, ever, but plenty of fun and sing-a-long emo jams courtesy of awesome '90s retro night Debaser. Emo, screamo, and pop-punk gems await your mopey hairdo.

The Knockout, 3223 Mission, SF. www.facebook.com/debaser90s

Mount Kimbie Dominic Maker and Kai Campo, a.k.a. Mount Kimbie, are kings of thoughtful post-dubstep (and brought down Public Works last year). They'll float heavy at Mezzanine with sultry beat-collagist Shigeto, LA's Matthew David, DJ Dials, and more.

10 p.m., $15 adv. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

 

SUN., APRIL 3

Beats For Japan A massive all-day dance community effort to raise funds for those affected by the recent disaster. DJs Mark Farina, Claude Von Stroke, Miguel Migs, Fred Everything, David Harness, Oliver Desmet, Julius Papp, and New Mondo turn it up and out. Be there.

2 p.m–midnight, 10 suggested donation. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

THURS., APRIL 7

Big Freedia The omnipotent transgender queen of genius New Orleans genre sissy bounce is going to show you all how to get Azz Everywhere with gin in your system. She played Oakland last year and was seriously on fire. With her smart musical compatriot Rusty Lazer.

9 p.m.–late., check website for price, public Works, 161 erie, Sf. www.publicsf.com

7 Dirty Girls This one looks a clever corker. Curvicious Cabaret is putting on this naughty tribute to comedian George Carlin's famous "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" skit. One hot lass performing a routine for each word equals "filthy, depraved, perverted, disgusting, and completely uncensored burlesque."

9 p.m., $10. Blue Macaw, 2565 Mission, SF. www.curvisiouscabaret.com

 

FRI., APRIL 8

Miss Blow Up USA The exuberant 18+ monthly glitz-electro night is still going strong -- and now they need a queen (apparently I've been retired). Anyone can enter -- and everyone wins with DJs Jeffrey Paradise, Lloydski, Dirty Dave, and more.

10 p.m., $10 21+/$15 18+, DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.blowupsf.com

 

SAT., APRIL 9

Aprilween Yes, yes, every day is Halloween for us freaks — but not every night is a massive costume party at the monthly mashup Bootie party. So here you have it, Aprilween, with DJs Adrian and Mysterious D with guests Faroff and Squrrrl and live mashup band Smashup Derby. Plus crazy costume contest.

9 p.m., $8 before 10, $10 after. DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., SF. www.bootiesf.com

Justin Vivian Bond San Francisco's drag cabaret pride and joy, now slaying them (and scoring Tony noms) in New York City is releasing a new CD, Dendrophile, and bringing a truckload of talent to the Castro Theatre for a scenester's dream of a performance.

8 p.m.–11 p.m., $25–$65. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. www.castrotheatre.com

 

WED., APRIL 13

DJ Kentaro + Japan benefit I am so delighted that actual vinyl turntables are making a comeback — but one glimpse of this Ninja Tune dude's mad scratch-collage skillness might send a generation running back to Serrato. Proceeds go to Global Givings Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund

9:30 p.m.–late, $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

FRI., APRIL 15

Mary Ann Hobbs BBC Radio's undisputed queen of fractured beats and intel electronic dance comes back to the Bay — with a fanperson's wet-dream roster: Joy Orbison, Kode9, Roska, Gonjasufi (yes!), Lorn, Ghosts on Tape, and loads more. Sooo good.

10 p.m.–late, $15 adv. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

Tensnake After a few false visa-issue starts, the German recombinant house prince brings his funky, fantastic, steamy, sing-a-long creations to Public Works. Coma Cat here we come!

9 p.m.–4 a.m., $10 with Facebook RSVP. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. Facebook: Tensnake Live!

 

SAT., APRIL 16

Legowelt Absolutely smoking house with a classic mid-'80s feel from this Dutch "slam jack" artiste at a special installment of the rad Donuts! party. Also check out fellow headliners Miracles Club from Portland for more introspective early house-ish sounds and local spectacle-kinksters Tres Lingerie.

9:30 p.m.–3 a.m., $5 before 10, $10 after. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

TUES., APRIL 19

Bomba Estereo Brash and sexy Colombian electro-cumbia (and rap) band have burned up dance floors and the YouTubes with hit "Fuego." New EP Ponte Bomb samples Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam" to viral effect.

7:30 p.m., $18. The Independent, 628 Divisadero, SF. www.theindependentsf.com

Magical Properties Tour 3 Wicked, knob-twisted abstract bass and visual blasts from L.A. dandy Daedelus, local mensch Shlohmo, and fab Brainfeeder Tokimonsta. The last two installments we're seriously banging, smoke up.

10 p.m., $12. SOM, 2925 16th St., SF. www.som-bar.com

 

THURS., APRIL 22

Lil B Who's ready to get based? You know you are or wish you were. Super-canny Based God Oakland rapper Lil B is probably reaching out to you right now through his 500 Twitter feeds, but I'm telling you about this gig anyway.

9 p.m., $20 adv. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF. www.mezzaninesf.com

The Tubesteak Connection Seventh Anniversary What started as a humble tribute to the gay bathhouse discos of the past has, er, blossomed into a phenomenon over the past lucky seven — as well as expanding its excellent musical scope, via DJ Bus Station John's sensitive yet probing ear, to become a "petri dish of the era's many styles." You'll still get hella laid by a mustachioed hottie and dance your keister off.

10 p.m., $5. Aunt Charlie's Lounge, 133 Turk, SF.

 

FRI., APRIL 22

Fag Friday Another installment of this wildly successful reunion of one of SF's best gay house parties. The beats get cunty and the family, young and younger, comes out for this one. Special guest Tedd Patterson brings some NYC shine, and residents David Harness and Juanita More turn the packed floor out.

10 p.m.–4 a.m., $10. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com

PantyRaid and Lowriderz Burning Man sleaze-step superstars return with a mighty rumble and bang to meld crunk and dubstep to an apocalyptic sensibility.

10 p.m.–4 a.m., $15 adv. 103 Harriet, SF. www.1015.com

 

SAT., APRIL 23

Wicked 20 Years of Disco Glory The actually legendary soundsystem has raved through two decades, deepening the original sound into the purely sublime. Celebrating with a full-moon howl will be the original crew: Garth, Jeno, Markie, and Thomas. And you!

10 p.m.–7 a.m., $20 adv. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

 

SAT., APRIL 30

Bender's Second Annual Toga Party The first time this top bar among top bars held a toga party, it burned down (a week later, but still). That won't happen this time -- the bar is back and double the size -- despite the hot-sheets in the crowd. With the Corruptors and the Grannies live.

10 p.m., $7. Bender's, 806 S. Van Ness, SF. www.bendersbar.com

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Public Works, SF. www.publicsf.com

Mighty Real: Jellybean Benitez The Mighty Real classic house series at Mighty kicked off last month with Frankie Knuckles, and it was breathing room only (and fun!). This time another giant, Jellybean Benitez, joins resident DJ David Harness. Here's hoping he drops some wild freestyle.

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

Surefire Sound Tour Wonderful neo-grime, post-dubstep antics from this crew, bringing young phenom Ramadanman (very, very good), Zed Bias, and our very own Salva to the fore.

10 p.m., $10 adv.. Public Works, SF. www.publicsf.com

 

SUN., MAY 1

How Weird Street Fair Yay! It's the first of our major street fairs, which means I can finally run wild and free in my bunny suit, legally. Get stoopid in a good way with tons of DJs, one of the best local vibes of the season, and totally WEIRD entertainment. Theme: "Mythical Realms." After-parties: galore.

Noon-8 p.m., donation requested. Howard and Second Streets, SF. www.howweird.org

Sunset Boat Party Always a tipsy-tyrvy winner on the high seas annually with those Pacific Sound boys, Solar, Galen, and J. Bird.. Check www.pacificsound.net for details and guests.

 

THURS., MAY 5

Devotion 10-Year Anniversary Good lord, has it really been that long for this former weekly Sunday night affair? It still sounds as fresh as ever, energetically house-y with a dash of Latin love, and even though founder DJ Ruben Mancias has relocated to NYC, there's always a heavy local vibe when he plays in town. With special guest David Morales, plus David Harness and Teejay Walton.

9 p.m.–late, $10 adv. Mighty, 119 utah, SF. www.mighty119.com

 

SAT., MAY 7

Tim Xavier How much do I love monthly international live-set techno bonanza Kontrol at the EndUp? Thiiiiiis much, but a little bigger. May sees the Kontrol kids bringing in this intense Berlin musicmaker on the Clink label, who'll definitely keep the adrenaline level up.

10 p.m.-6 a.m., $20. EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF. www.rtheendup.com *

I enjoyed watching a few of the webcasts from the RootsTech conference. It was interesting to hear about some of the issues being considered on the frontier where the techies and the genies come face to face. In the last decade or so, the development of technology, along with genealogy's embrace of it, have made astounding changes in the way we research, and in the ways we share and preserve our data. I don't think any of us who started our research the old-fashioned way would want to give up the newfangled methods that allow us to pursue our passion in pajamas.

And it's easy to see how the technologically-inclined among us are lured by the convenience of the internet, and by the expansive capacity of cyberspace, and by the amazing science behind digitization. This is the way of the future, we hear. Digitize, digitize, digitize! And back up! Not once, not twice, but three times, and update your back-ups when the technology changes or every three years, whichever comes first. Password-protect it so the bad guys can't get it. Tell someone where you've hidden the password, so they can. Oh, if only your ancestors had done that! Imagine the happy dance you would have done when your complete genealogy appeared before you on a computer screen!

Huh?

Consider this: when you're watching Who Do You Think You Are?, have you ever thought they've made the research look too easy? Have you ever thought, hey, the celebrity didn't seem very excited (I recall someone saying this after the recent Tim McGraw episode)? Well, what if the scenario were this:

It's the last game of a hard-fought season, and an athletic team (the Blue-Blooded Ancestor Hunters?) suddenly finds itself short by one member. Six players are required; they have only five. You're asked to fill in, even though you have no knowledge of the game. That doesn't matter, they assure you, the real team members will carry the ball and do the scoring. All you have to do is stand where the coach tells you to, and be counted. Some sort of reward is offered--fame? fortune? undying gratitude? some skeletons for your closet?--so you accept the deal. The team wins the game, and the highly-coveted blue ribbons are passed out to everyone on the team, including you. Tell me, how meaningful is that blue ribbon to you? Isn't it pretty much commensurate with how much you've invested in the game?

Some people do genealogy because it's part of their religious practice. Some do it as a vocation. Many of us do it as an avocation and, oh, how we bristle if our pursuit is reduced to the lowly status of a mere hobby! No matter which category we fit into, though, I'd be willing to bet it's the thrill of the hunt that keeps us going, and that tantalizing prospect of another happy dance possibly just minutes away.

I started out doing genealogy the old-fashioned way. It was kind of like going big-game hunting. You had to go someplace to do it; you had to learn how to hunt; you had to plan ahead for your trip; you had to pack carefully and be prepared for anything, or nothing. It was an adventure.

The advent of digitization and online availability of records has made it a lot more like shooting fish in a barrel. A search engine, a name... BANG! Oh, look, another dead ancestor... no, two... three... But the number of records extant is finite. Sooner or later, all the fish in the barrel are gonna be floating belly-up. How long will it take? Another generation or two? When the barrel is passed on to your descendants, how much happy-dancing will there be when there's naught to do but dip out a couple thousand barcoded belly-up fish? How many of your descendants will be passionate about scanning the barcodes to look up those pedigree charts that you're so passionate about preserving? In fact, how many of your current, living relatives are passionate about it now?

The techiest of the techies see the world through tech-colored glasses. Everything, they insist, should and will be virtual in the future. Maybe they're right, I don't know. But I do know that not all people are computer-savvy now, nor will they all be computer-savvy in the future. And not all who are computer-savvy prefer to spend their time in the virtual world rather than the real world. Believe it or not, Kindle fans, some people still prefer a book with paper pages. Some would rather talk than tweet. Some would even... I know this will come as a surprise... some would even prefer to receive a bouquet of real flowers from a three-dimensional boyfriend rather than a virtual-bouquet icon from a Facebook app. Go figger!

In any case, it seems to me that it's a boon for everyone when the big players go digital with their records--and by big players, I mean any organization that has a body of records of the type we all seek as documentation for our family lines. I mean people who are in the records business (whether civil or commercial, profit or non-profit).

As for me, I'm what I would call a micro-player--gathering records (from people in the records business!) that pertain to my own lines only. For me it's not business, it's personal. And I'd be lying if I said I was doing it just to pass down to my descendants. If I can stir up their interest, so much the better, but the truth is that I have a hunter-gatherer gene that's tickled by this pursuit. I do it for the pleasure of the hunt.

I have decisions to make, then, along the way. Should I listen and learn from people with more skills, more experience, more credentials? Of course. Should I be grateful for what I learn from them? Most definitely. I am grateful. It's always better to be more informed. But should I then obediently follow all their advice?

Hell, no! I'm a grown-up. It's up to me to weigh what's been offered and make my own choices. I reserve the right to enjoy and/or employ cyberspace to whatever extent works best for me, along with the right to use real paper. Why? Because at this moment I can reach across my desk and pick up a book that was published in 1884, and it still works. Nobody had to take any particular pains to preserve it, and I don't need anything but daylight to be able to use it. Am I glad there's a copy of it in cyberspace? Yes, of course I am, that's how I discovered it and decided I wanted the real thing. And, yippee!, I was able to order the real thing for $25 and about five minutes of my time online, thanks to technology. Yep, technology is great. But am I gonna digitize everything in triplicate, pay to store it in cyberspace until I die or run out of money, and replace it triennially in case it's deteriorating?

Nope. Not today, thanks. But, reader, if it serves your purpose to do so, you go right ahead!


February Accomplishments

I've been working on books this month, as usual, but have extended my deadline for completing the Stone book.

And in the other column . . .

I still haven't vacuumed yet this year. See, the vacuum cleaner needs a new belt and, while I did order and receive said belt, I am still waiting to see if it will crawl in there of its own accord, or if I'm actually going to have to find my Phillips-head screw driver and put it in there myself. I'm all for giving it plenty of time to take the initiative.

Winter is finally behind us, leaving countless GIFs of guys getting hit in the face and groin in its wake. Here, we revisit the best animated sports GIFs of the last few months.

10. The 2010-11 Bulls, in GIF form

(Click image to view. Via Ryan Corazza)

It's fun to see a basketball coach (in this case, Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau) react to a big win at the end of a game (in this case, the Bulls' win over the Heat), because coaches spend the games themselves reacting unfavorably to everything. If their point guard hits a go-ahead three in the fourth quarter, he doesn't pause for a moment, sweeping it under the rug as deftly as a fourth-grader who opens his lunch box to find that his mother has written an "I love you" note on his napkin.

To me, the suppression of joy would be the most difficult part of being a basketball coach. That's only one reason reason I'd be a terrible coach, though. I'd probably just pace up and down the court all game while clapping my hands and yelling "FUNDAMENTALS" and "EXECUTE" over and over. I'd be fired before the end of the road trip, but you know the announcers would eat that s*** right up.

 

9. Goalie Fight: a one-act play

(Via Mocksession)

RICK DIPIETRO. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT
BRENT JOHNSON. FIIIIIIIIGHT
REFEREE. Hey. Hey, guys.
JOHNSON. Huh?
REFEREE. Not allowed.
DIPIETRO. Why not?
REFEREE. You... you're goalies.
JOHNSON. Oh, word.
DIPIETRO. He's halfway through his punch. Should he just finish it real quick, or?
REFEREE. Nah.
JOHNSON. Cool. Sorry about that, we don't really know how fights work.
DIPIETRO. Yeah. We see fights happen a lot, so we figured we'd try it for once.
JOHNSON. So, okay, we're at the end of the fight. Do we get fortune cookies?
REFEREE. No, those don't have anything to do with fights. I believe you're thinking of the end of a meal at a Chinese or Vietnamese restaurant.
DIPIETRO. So now does Green Day sing that "all by myself" song?
REFEREE. Nope. End of "Dookie."
JOHNSON. So now we spend like ten minutes yanking the starter cord?
REFEREE. (shakes head) That's the end of the life span of a consumer-grade lawnmower.
DIPIETRO. So I guess this is the part where we bang on the door and yell at Wilma to let us back in?
REFEREE. No. Do you guys know what a fight even is?
JOHNSON. Wait, okay, this is when we realize Incubus isn't a good band.
REFEREE. Nope, end of your childhood.
DIPIETRO. Okay, so now there's just a blue screen with copyright information and funky music with chimes and stuff.
REFEREE. No, you're thinking of the end of a 1980s episode of Sesame Street.
JOHNSON. Wait, I thought the Sesame Street theme song played during the closing credits.
REFEREE. Yeah, but then after that there was a second series of closing credits.
JOHNSON. TOTALLY forgot about that! This is such a sick jam.
DIPIETRO. Okay, so this is when Brent Johnson says, "whoa, that is tripping me out."
REFEREE. No. That's the end of an imagined conversation based on an animated GIF.
JOHNSON. Whoa, that is tripping me out.

 

8. Blake Griffin makes kid even happier than he makes the rest of us

Yes, I know. There's a bit of manipulation here, and one of my rules is that I can't include manipulated GIFs. I'm breaking that rule here, and I hope you understand.

Note that the kid's shirt says, "CLEVELAND." It isn't a team shirt or anything, it's just a generic "CLEVELAND" shirt. This strongly suggests two possibilities:

1) He is visiting Cleveland on vacation, and actually thinks Cleveland is great enough of a city to warrant a T-shirt purchase.

2) He lives in Cleveland and he thinks it's cool to wear a shirt bearing the name of the city that he lives in and is currently in.

If either of these is true, then they, in turn, strongly suggest that this moment is by far the coolest thing that has ever happened in his life, and perhaps the only cool thing that has happened in life. This might be the most genuinely touching GIF I have ever seen.

 

7. HEY, SANTIAGO MARTIN SILVA OF VELEZ SARSFIELD, GUESS WHAT

SOMEONE JUST SCORED A GOAL AND THERE IS A MOUSE CRAWLING AROUND IN YOUR SHORTS AND YOU LEFT THE STOVE ON BEFORE YOU LEFT THE HOUSE THIS MORNING AND IT'S SIMULTANEOUSLY CHRISTMAS AND YOUR BIRTHDAY AND AN ASTRONAUT JUST FOUND A CURE FOR CANCER BUT HIS SPACECRAFT IS LOSING FUEL AND THEY JUST ANNOUNCED A SIXTH SEASON OF THE WIRE AND A COMET IS HEADED FOR EARTH AND I LIKE YOUR SHIRT

I KNOW, RIGHT

 

6. REX SMASH

(Click image to view. Via Mocksession)

"Loud man with foot fetish coaches large-market team battling sexual harassment accusations" is, generally speaking, not a formula that win over the rest of the country. But we talked about them a lot without wishing they were all dead, which is about as close as NFL fans come to love. I think that if the Jets won the Super Bowl, we would hate them as much as we hate the Patriots, and so this moment had to happen.

It isn't rare to see a head coach throw a tantrum on the sideline, but the tantrum's always directional. Every other coach is mad at his player for blowing coverage, or at the officials for missing a holding call, or at his offensive coordinator for sending his running back to certain death. Watching this moment, I get the sense that Rex is not mad at anything. He is simply mad.

Just as coaches are unnaturally unhappy during games, they are usually unnaturally stoic after a loss. Rex broke this rule, too. We looked to Rex Ryan last season to behave as no other coach behaved, and at every turn, he delivered.

Page 1: 30-26 | Page 2: 25-21 | Page 3: 20-16
Page 4: 15-11 | Page 5: 10-6 | Page 6: 5-1
Best Animated GIFs of 2010

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? The Swell Season Trailer Enraged. Absolutely enraged that I can’t see this movie, right now. Part of me realizes that saying that those of you who didn't at least feel a little something when watching John Carney's Once are a bunch of unfeeling robots who ought to have their hipster cards revoked is absurd but, there is that part that does wholly believe it. Watching Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová move in between one another in that film was like watching real love blossom and then slowly see it give into the forces of human entropy. But that was a movie, right? From the looks of this trailer, though, it seems like this movie will have more in common with something like Wilco's 2002 I'm Trying To Break Your Heart than it does your usual concert film. Directors Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, and Carlo Mirabella-Davis look like they've decided to take the black and white route and it's a road well taken as it just makes us focus on what's in front of you. The trailer literally dumps us at the epicenter of what looks like a contentious moment between a couple. It's damn near uncomfortable to watch as Hansard is getting a talking to but it's brilliantly placed because it's telling us everything we need to know about this movie. It's going to be emotional and hard and real as when the camera swings to Glen, who looks lost and defeated, you wonder what it is that's going on here. You can't help but be curious to know what that poor guy did. And almost as if we just given half a thin mint cookie we get a musical interlude that includes some concert footage and behind the scenes antics that is nothing short of engaging. It's only a few seconds, though, but it's more than enough. It leaves you wanting so much more and that's when we get Markéta again. This time, though, she's singing quietly next to Glen. Besides wondering if Glen has ever heard of Jheri Curl, I mean how can you look at that tightly wound perm on his melon and not be transfixed by it, it's about as close as you're going to get this week to a perfect trailer. Beyond The Black Rainbow Trailer Bear with me on this one. Yes, it seems self indulgent and experimental and feels like it could be art for art’s sake but there is just something alluring about this trailer. It’s creepy. Director Panos Cosmatos looks like he has made something truly unique and it has completely disarmed my ability to talk about it in a coherent fashion because there is no narrative here. Even though the music is one constant that does not change as we are assaulted with these stark images of things that don't make much sense there is a sublime beauty to it all. The cinematography catapults me back to another time, another place, this place having no tether to any reality I know, but there does seem to be evil sticking to every frame. A girl appearing skeeved out by the crazy things around her is about as close as you're going to get to a humanistic tether and make the case why you should check out more of what you see. This movie is selling itself based on its ability to stand apart from anything else you've seen in the last few months and it does it admirably. The best way to explain what's going on, or least the best way I can process this trailer, is liken it to a piece of art. Whereas 99% of the other trailers you consume would belong in a public viewing area for everyone to enjoy, something like this belongs in one of those side street art studios where people go in knowing it's not Thomas Kinkade. This is something else entirely. Donor Unknown Trailer Honestly, and this is a place for honesty, I didn't care for The Kids Are Alright if only because it supposes that lesbians might slip up and crave some chub once in a while. I didn't buy it then and I certainly had issues with this beleaguered plot device after the third or forth time I've seen it employed in other films. Director Jerry Rothwell, however, is making me believe that here is a movie that deals with the sperm donation issue in a matter that's really interesting and with a little more depth than its commercial doppelganger. What's special about this trailer is that even though it follows a very traditional path of storytelling it doesn't ruin things by telling too much. You would think that explaining the plot away with establishing what it is we're going to see, the stories of some girls who want to know more about the sperm donor that was their dad, would be an anticlimax but there is real heart here. Besides seeing how many loads this guy dropped (dozens upon dozens, this guy was helping to populate a small village using only the power of vigorous knuckles) and how many lives were created from this man's donations a picture emerges, literally, of how even though they were spawned by different mothers these offspring all physically resemble one another in an uncanny way. The process of these half-sisters and brothers reaching out to find one another, the New York Times story that covered this odd situation providing even more sizzle to this odd tale, is coupled with us finding out more about this guy who seems all but destitute, living the life of a gypsy. What's more, leaving the trailer hanging before even one of these offspring meet the man who started it all is a really nice touch. It's such a close approximation to The Kids Are Alright, with the exception that this is full-on reality, that I'm wondering what will be a more compelling viewing experience: the story dreamed up in a writer's room or the utilitarian nature of a process that happens every day? I'm thrilled to find out, though. Bombay Beach Trailer Its beauty is somewhere between its weirdness and the uneasiness you feel as you watch this trailer. Documentary filmmaker Alma Har'el looks like she's crafted a movie that looks like it's T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" come to life, or death, depending on your viewpoint. It's perfectly apropos here because we start this trailer looking at a kid playing on a beach, hearing his voiceover, but listening him depict the most strange account of a hanging you'll hear all day. It seems so innocent to hear how this child processes what it's like to go through one of the most tried and true methods of human extermination but as we transition from watching this youth to seeing a home video of some guy in a coffin, it's jarring. However, I get it. It's effective. And the entire trailer is just like that, moments that seem to slip and slide on top of one another in a pastiche of sparse human experiences. From seeing dead animals all caught up in barbwire, to seeing an average mom squeeze off a few rounds with a pistol, to experiencing the joy of teenagers just being teens at a football game there is too much to try and wrap your arms around here and make sense of in a way that's meaningful or understandable. Again, it's entirely appropriate and I understand the reasoning behind why things are constructed this way because, ultimately, this trailer is a thing of beauty. There does seem to be an inordinate amount of suffering and sadness on display but there are the vestiges of why people keep slogging forward in their lives, these kinds of lives, day in and day out. I can only imagine that watching this film will either make you believe in the indomitableness of the human spirit or make you wonder what's the point of it all if a place like this exists. I'm hoping it's more of the former but you never quite know sometimes. Let The Bullets Fly Trailer I did not see Wen Jiang's donation to New York, I Love You so I can't say for sure whether this is a director that I should be excited about or roll my eyes at. I'm a blank slate with ol' Wen. Using the musical cue that was used last year from the :30 Super Bowl spot for G.I. Joe was a nice touch to get people acclimated to the sensibility and speed of what's happening but it also had the added benefit of rushing through all the superfluous back story we sometimes can get bogged down with in these sorts of trailers. I don't mind not knowing what exactly is happening as long as I'm promised a treat of some kind and what we get here feels closer to The Good, The Bad, The Weird and that's glorious. I dare anyone, without consulting IMDB, to try and decipher the many things going on in this trailer other than the action which is popping out from every angle. Just when I think someone will at least provide a little context we get someone drawing a weapon or someone being held against their will in a battle that seems to be more than just two-sided. So many people are clashing in this movie that I think it's an all out royal rumble which will be fine by me as long as what's ultimately driving things is a fun story. I liked The Good, The Bad, The Weird because it was a fun romp and that what we're coming to see isn't a deep examination of the essence of being human. Rather, it's people smacking people and lots of old school martial arts set in the old west with an uptempo spirit and cinematography that uses a lot of colored lighting. I haven't been excited by anything Chow Yun-Fat has done in years and I am just hoping, based on what little I see here, that we'll get something to wash away the stink of Dragonball: Evolution from our collective conscious. Note bene: If you have any suggestions of trailers to possibly be included in this column, even have a trailer of your own to pitch, please let me know by sending me a note at Christopher_Stipp@yahoo.com In case you missed them, here are the other trailers we covered at /Film this week: Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Trailer [1] - He's the Michael Moore of Gen X. This trailer's peppy, upbeat, and the insertion of the Matt and Kim ditty underlines that what you're going to see is nothing but absurdity. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Trailer [2] - This trailer certainly makes me want to take another chance after the last installment left me a little cool. The mermaids, though, that's what really has me interested. The FP Trailer [3] - It's a funny trailer but the question is whether it can carry the joke over a full film. Another Earth Trailer [4] - Lot of navel gazing going on here with the amount of talking. I don't get anything telling me why I should see this film and that's no bueno when I could be watching the Swell Season documentary trailer again. Hop Trailer #3 [5] - I just can't get excited for a movie like this. Looks like it will test the collective wills of the parents who will have to sit through it. 11-11-11 Teaser Trailer [6] - Maybe it's just me but it looks pretty basic and not very exciting. Cinema Verite Trailer #2 [7] [8]- The cinematography is lovely and the story is timely. Free couldn't be a better price to see this. Sympathy For Delicious Trailer [9] - Interesting premise, a little maudlin and bombastic in areas, but overall this is a good trailer. Mr. Popper's Penguins Trailer [10] - Bland, boring, and generic trailer for a milquetoast looking film. Last Night Trailer [11] - Wow, will he or won't he? I've just got to see another movie about a guy who's conflicted about getting into the sack with another woman. Captain America Trailer [12] - This is exactly what a summer movie trailer should be. Just a pure rocket ship ride of excess. Dig it. The Big Bang Trailer [13] - I really want to like this, I do, as it seems like it's an explosion of different styles and tones but something just doesn't work for me in this trailer. [1] http://www.slashfilm.com/pom-wonderful-presents-greatest-movie-sold-trailer/ [2] http://www.slashfilm.com/pirates-caribbean-stranger-tides-trailer-2/ [3] http://www.slashfilm.com/fp-trailer/ [4] http://www.slashfilm.com/another-earth-trailer/ [5] http://www.slashfilm.com/hop-trailer-3/ [6] http://www.slashfilm.com/darren-bousmans-111111-teaser-trailer/ [7] http://www.slashfilm.com/cinema-verite-trailer-2/ [8] http://www.slashfilm.com/cinema-verite-trailer-2/ [9] http://www.slashfilm.com/sympathy-delicious-trailer/ [10] http://www.slashfilm.com/jim-carreys-poppers-penguins-teaser-trailer/ [11] http://www.slashfilm.com/last-night-trailer-2/ [12] http://www.slashfilm.com/captain-america-trailer/ [13] http://www.slashfilm.com/the-big-bang-trailer/

Between weather and aircraft maintenance, getting the iPad2 into the air has proven more difficult than anticipated. Yesterday's afternoon flight was scrubbed due to a dead battery, but I did manage one flight in the morning. The iPad2 performed just fine during the 1.9 hour flight, leaving me confident enough to box up the original iPad for shipment to its new owner. Here are my impressions of the iPad2 in flight along with some thoughts for current iPad owners on the relative advantages of upgrading.

Size and Weight

The iPad2's slightly smaller size and thinner profile not only makes the iPad2 lighter, cases like the semi-rigid one that I'm using are also smaller and lighter. This means my minimalist flight bag is noticeably more minimal when I pick it up. The iPad2 feels lighter when you hold it and it's definitely lighter when strapped to my leg. The thinner profile makes the 30-pin connector look a bit precarious when inserted. Same for the audio port. This could be a consideration for folks who use the Bad Elf GPS Receiver with a 30pin extention cable.

Thin profile means plug connections could be more fragile?

The new size means some of the iPad1 kneeboard solutions may require modification. For more details, see my previous post on this topic.

Lights, Camera ...

The iPad2 has two built-in cameras, one rear-facing and one front-facing. If you are familiar with the iPhone4, it's a similar set-up. I say similar because the quality of the rear-facing is not very good at all (actually, it sucks). One would assume that a lower quality camera kept the iPad2 unit cost down, but it makes one wonder why Apple bothered at all.

Here are some photos I took and while the quality is not great, using the iPad2 camera did provide a déjà vu moment. The iPad2's screen is so large and bright that while framing a photo I was reminded of bygone days (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) when I regularly used a large format view camera, except the iPad2 image is right side up. Oh, and you don't need a mammoth tripod and dark cloth. Of course the iPad2 camera can't provide view camera features like swing, shift, and tilt that architectural photographers rely on.




I haven't tried the iPad2 video capability, but the front-facing camera lets you make video calls using FaceTime and one imagines that eventually Skype will provide video support for the iPad. The addition of these cameras doesn't really add much value for pilots. I guess when trying to electronically copy a large sheet of paper it could be easier to frame with the iPad2 as opposed to an iPhone4. The image quality is undoubtedly better with the iPhone4's camera.

Speed & Clarity

The faster graphics performance of the iPad2 is evident when loading a terminal procedure in ForeFlight, SkyCharts Pro or Jeppesen's app. Scrolling around on charts is also faster. Downloading chart updates seems quite a bit faster, too.

The iPad2 screen is not terribly different from the original iPad except that it offers a wider range of brightness. You can make it much dimmer and a tad brighter than the original. Note these images have been adjusted to try to capture the relative brightness settings.

Brightest setting ...

Dimmest setting ...

Certify This

Some have observed that operators who just received OpSpec authorization for using the iPad1 as an electronic flight bag (EFB) may now be faced with certifying a new device if they wish to upgrade. I'm not certain of the particulars, but it does seem incredibly inefficient and expensive for the FAA to require individual operators to replicate decompression and electromagnetic testing on the self-same device. At least they won't have to change the approved training programs since it will be the same software, just running on a slightly different device.

Other Features

The GNS 5870 Bluetooth GPS Receiver worked just as well with the iPad2 as it did with the old iPad1. As before, ForeFlight showed my position on approach charts and airport diagrams. With both SkyCharts Pro and ForeFlight the groundspeed and heading readouts closely (often exactly) matched the KLN 94 GPS displayed values. The GPS-derived altitude was within 50 feet of the altimeter most of the time. The GNS 5870 achieves satellite lock so quickly that I don't really know how long it's taking. My only complaint continues to be the touchiness of the swipe-style on/off switch. It's just too easy to inadvertently turn the thing on when stowing it in your flight bag.

For non-aviation use, there are some other features of interest. Using a HDMI connector (available separately), you can mirror your iPad2's screen on a larger monitor.

Battery life of the iPad2 seems on par with the earlier model; about 10 hours.

The new magnetic cover looks cool, but it isn't designed to work with a case and than makes it a non-starter for me. It's interesting to note that the iPad2 itself contains 10 magnets and the cover contains 21 magnets. Call me old-fashioned, but lot of magnets seems like a bad idea in a cockpit. I haven't done any testing with the magnetic cover in the cockpit since I don't plan on using it, but my anecdotal observations are that with the iPad2 strapped to my leg there didn't seem to be any adverse effects on the compass in the Piper I was teaching in yesterday. I observed the aircraft compass on the ground through 360 degrees of heading change and it seemed to accurately indicate known headings. The aircraft compass aligned correctly with three different runways at two different airports. This is something I'll continue to watch in the coming weeks.

Preliminary investigation of the iPad2 accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass features seems to indicate that there isn't an app at the moment that can provide accurate Attitude Heading and Reference (AHARs) features. The idea of using an iPad in flight as a back-up attitude indicator may seem ridiculous, but keep in mind that only a year ago a lot of things seemed farfetched.

Apps 'n Stuff

People new to the iPad game always ask what apps I recommend. Here are the apps I've used on the iPad2 so far:

SkyCharts Pro - Limited wx features, but best chart-based EFB app around.

ForeFlight Mobile HD - Interface is a bit cumbersome, but this EFB app does it all from weather to approach plates.


Jeppesen Mobile TC - Limited features right now, but if you must have Jepp charts ...

AvCharts - Low cost way to carry and access terminal procedures. Only app that allows you to make notes on a chart.

LogTen Mobile - This logbook app may actually have too many bells and whistles, but if you have a special logging requirement, this app can probably do it.

DUAT - Simplified way to access your DUAT account, get weather briefings, file flight plans, etc.

Square - Cost-effective way for self-employed professionals to accept credit card payments.

Penultimate - My favorite note taking app.

PFMA - Easiest-to-use electronic E6B I've found.

GoodReader - Not just good, this is a great PFD reader. Use it to read all those FAA handbooks you're carrying inside your iPad.

Atomic Web Browser - Does a few things the built-in Safari browser can't do.

 Numbers - Not exactly like Excel, but if you need spreadsheet capability on the iPad then this is a good choice.

 Pages - Solid word processing app, though a bluetooth keyboard makes it more usable.

 Keynote - Let's you give PowerPoint presentations with your iPad. Add this app and you'll have your audience yawning in no time!

 EverNote - Great way to take, save, and distribute notes across multiple platforms.

As for accessories I'm using or have used and recommend:

GNS 5870 MFI Bluetooth GPS Receiver
Tietco Kneeboard
Square Credit Card Reader

Upgrade or Wait

More speed is always better, but for frugal pilots I'm not sure the iPad2's speed bump and lighter weight are worth the cost and trouble of upgrading. Pilots who already have an iPad1 or who are considering acquiring a used iPad1 may actually get more bang for the buck. If you do decide to purchase a new iPad2, I personally don't see a need for more than 32Mb of memory. I chose the 16Mb version. I don't store music or videos on my device, but with several chart apps and associated data, lots of FAA handbooks, a PDF version of the AIM, and so on, I still have 8Gb of free space out of 14Gb. So why did I upgrade, you ask? Well it's obvious! Nerds like me must do whatever we can to preserve what little blogosphere cachet we possess. We must!

Ellen's Kittens
Sabrina says: You already know the story of the stray cat who brought her kittens Edgar, Ellen, and Poe into our lives. In May 2010, it was Ellen's turn to be a mother. We knew she was about to give birth at any moment, but as my father was home, we couldn't take her inside. It was a sunny afternoon when Ellen was standing at the veranda door, acting a bit odd, and when we went outside to check what was going on, we could hear the cries of newborn kittens. We searched every corner of our backyard but couldn't find them. I sneaked into my neighbour's backyard and soon enough found them between a pile of bricks, in an ant nest, still attached to the placenta. Now I know you're not supposed to move the kittens but it was one big mess, covered in ants. We took the risk and cleaned up the kittens a bit, moved them under our brick BBQ on a soft pillow. There they were, five gorgeous little kittens: two girls that were tortie/calico like their mother, and three boys that were all or nearly all white.

Ellen wasn't too pleased about us moving her nest. When she found out, she grabbed them by their necks and dragged them back to the place of birth. It was nice to see she didn't reject the kittens but kind of harsh as well: The road back was pretty tricky and Ellen was new to it. She accidentally dropped the first she took back, one of the girls, and it hit the side of a brick. We worriedly watched her take them back one by one, but there wasn't anything we could do. When she was ready to expose us to her kittens, we'd know. Leaving the veranda door open, hoping Ellen would want to move her nest there, we went back inside. Later that day, I went back to check on Ellen and sure enough there she was: the veranda couch with four of her kittens. We looked for the fifth one but unfortunately it didn't survive the fall. Ellen seemed very comfortable, and we left the door open just enough so she could squeeze herself in and outside.

I had a big fight with my dad that day. He wasn't really pleased with the fact that there were cats in his house. After agreeing I would move the kittens off the couch, into a box, make sure they wouldn't leave the veranda to explore other parts of the house, and eventually find them a home when they were big enough, everything seemed to be okay. I grabbed a box from the garage, put a pillow in it and some towels, moved the kittens once again, and hid the box behind a chair. Ellen was happy. But the next morning we found the other girl stone cold. It was sad. We buried both girls in our front yard between the roses, said our goodbyes, and covered the little graves with flowers.

The three little boys were growing up fast, one in particular. While the other two stayed in their box, the all-white one was a true scout. Even though his eyes were still closed, he was always on the run, driving Ellen crazy. She constantly had to get up and carry him back just so he could take off again. It was so cute! My boyfriend Michael and I talked about it and we decided to adopt him.

A few weeks later, the little ones still hadn't opened their eyes. There was still a lot of crust and I had a little alarm bell ringing in the back of my head. I had seen this before with Poe, so I was sure they were struggling with an upper-respiratory infection, and the vet confirmed my suspicion. Since nobody else wanted to do the nursing and I didn't want to take the kittens away from their mother, I moved in with my parents for two weeks so I could give them their antibiotics, feed them, wipe, and clean their eyes/noses, and apply special ointment three times a day.

Young and playful as they were, the boys managed to find their way outside very quickly. To make sure they wouldn't escape, I put some boxes on top of each other at the exit so Ellen could still jump on top of them but the kittens couldn't. Once a day, I let them play outside for a few hours under my supervision. I may sound rough, but there's always lots of little children playing behind our house and they could easily take them, just like what happened to Edgar. There's also some guy in our neighbourhood with two huge dogs. He doesn't like cats much and often lets his dogs loose on them. Also, a few houses down the road, there's a guy that's known for poisoning cats.

When the kittens were almost ready to leave the nest, I decided it was time to find them a home. I posted a message on Facebook and soon found out they were very popular. Since Michael and I had already claimed one of them, I could only give two of them away. It was a nice feeling knowing I could afford being picky about who I'd give them to. Someone with dogs? No! Someone who already had a zillion cats? No! Someone who'd keep them in the garage? No… I wanted them to be looked after, get a lot of attention, and be spoiled. Eventually a friend of mine who was about to move into her new apartment and absolutely loves cats made the cut. The date on which she could pick up her new kitten was set, but until then, I would take care of him.

Meanwhile, Ellen was being a good mother. She taught her boys how to climb trees, hunt for birds, and how to use the litterbox. One day though, I walked into the veranda, ready to let the kittens outside, when I noticed alot of blood and feathers everywhere. Ellen brought a bird inside, not quite dead, and before the bird surrendered to its fate, it managed to peck the eye of one of my boys. His left eye looked horrible! Back to nursing… cleaning the eye and rubbing ointment on the wound. I felt really sad and tried to talk my boyfriend into adopting that one instead of our little scout, but his heart was set. After talking it over, we decided to take both of them.

Eight weeks after birth, my friend picked up her kitten. She was ecstatic! She named the little guy Willy and spoils him to death with lots of attention, toys, treats, a pillow to sleep on at the end of her bed, and even a leash to walk him. I'm proud I found him such a good home. Later she got another kitten, a female, to keep him company. There won't be another nest though, Willy got neutered when the time was right.

As for the other two, after we kitty-proofed our apartment, they too got to explore their new home. The all-white one is named Sheldon after the silly guy in The Big Bang Theory, but we usually call him "Mon" cause he's a purr-monster. He's very graceful, independent, and usually outside enjoying the weather and hunting for birds. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up being the dominant cat in our neighbourhood when he's fully grown. He gets alot of respect from other cats and even dogs are scared of him because he shows no fear at all.

The other one we took in is named Rum. Because of the eye, he reminded me of a pirate, and when I think of pirates, I think of: "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!" Eventually Rum's eye healed completely which was a big surprise. It had looked as if it was lost, but now all you can see is a little white dot in the middle of it. If you didn't know about his encounter with the bird, you'd never even notice it. Rum's confused about his identity, I swear he thinks he's a dog. He growls when Mon comes near his toy, loves rolling around on the doormat, chases his own tail, and plays fetch! He actually brings you the toy, drops it in your hand or lap, waits for you to throw it, chases it, and brings it back. He needs a lot of attention. No matter what you're doing, he'll find a way to get on your lap and demand attention. And when he doesn't get enough, he protests and gets behind the TV between the cables so we have to get up and get him out. Even though he's very clumsy, he's a great jumper. After six months, both kittens were neutered.

Ellen wasn't happy losing her kittens. She looked for them everywhere every single day for at least another week. Whenever we opened the door, she'd run inside, checking every corner while making sad sounds. She is now spayed but she ended up adopting a stray kitten who had lost his mother and treated it like her own.

Courtesy of: Michael Stoop in the Netherlands

Over the past couple of years, I’ve started a thread focusing on albums that would be celebrating the 40th anniversary of their release. It takes quite a bit of work to compile the list in this form but, I figured that it’s worth it. Since I had a bit of time over the holidays, I thought that I’d work on the list for 1971/2011. (I'm sure that there are many more that could be on the list but, this is a pretty good representation. Any corrections are certainly welcome. Feel free to mention additions to the list.) Once again, it was another good year for new releases. Three of The Beatles had releases. John had Imagine, Paul had Ram (and Wild Life with Wings) and George issued a set with his Concert for Bangladesh. ELO released their debut and ELP and Yes issued a pair of albums each. Traffic issued a pair as well with The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys and Welcome to the Canteen. There were some nice live albums, too. The Allman Brothers released their At Fillmore East and Humble Pie put out their Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore. There were also a pair of Hendrix posthumous releases (Cry of Love and Rainbow Bridge). Some big sellers in the form of Jethro Tull’s Aqualing, Led Zeppelin’s fourth LP, The Who’s Who’s Next and Carole King’s Tapestry also hit the shelves. Joni Mitchell released Blue, David Bowie issued Hunky Dory and Van Morrison had Tupelo Honey. Pink Floyd issued an album of new material (Meddle) as well as a compilation (Relics). The same for The Rolling Stones with Sticky Fingers and Hot Rocks. So much good stuff! I’ll let the list speak for itself... *Record Albums Released in 1971* (note that release dates in North American and Europe may vary) A The Allman Brothers Band - At Fillmore East Amboy Dukes - Survival of the Fittest (Live) Amon Düül II - Tanz der Lemminge Lynn Anderson - Rose Garden April Wine - April Wine Atomic Rooster - In Hearing of Atomic Rooster Brian Auger - Oblivion Express Kevin Ayers - Whatevershebringswesing B Badfinger - Straight Up Joan Baez - Blessed Are... The Band - Cahoots Bang - Bang Barclay James Harvest - Once Again Count Basie - Afrique Count Basie - Have a Nice Day Shirley Bassey - Something Else The Beach Boys - Surf's Up The Jeff Beck Group - Rough and Ready Bee Gees - Trafalgar Chuck Berry - San Francisco Dues Birth Control - Operation Black Oak Arkansas - Black Oak Arkansas Black Sabbath - Master of Reality Black Widow - Black Widow Carla Bley & Paul Haines - Escalator over the Hill Blood, Sweat & Tears - Blood, Sweat & Tears 4 Blue Cheer - Oh! Pleasant Hope Booker T & the MG's - Melting Pot David Bowie - Hunky Dory Bread - Manna Edgar Broughton Band - Edgar Broughton Band James Brown - Hot Pants James Brown - Sho Is Funky Down Here James Brown - Super Bad Jack Bruce - Harmony Row Jack Bruce - Things We Like Budgie - Budgie Eric Burdon & Jimmy Witherspoon - Guilty! The Byrds - Byrdmaniax The Byrds - Farther Along C Cactus -One Way...Or Another Cactus - Restrictions John Cale & Terry Riley - Church of Anthrax Can - Tago Mago Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band - Mirror Man (material recorded in 1967) Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink Carpenters - Carpenters Johnny Cash - Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 Johnny Cash - Little Fauss and Big Halsy Johnny Cash - Man in Black Johnny Cash - The Man, The World, His Music Johnny Cash & Jerry Lee Lewis - Johnny Cash & Jerry Lee Lewis Sing Hank Williams Ray Charles - Volcanic Action of My Soul Chase - Chase Chicago - Chicago at Carnegie Hall Chicago - Chicago III The Chi-Lites - (For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People Gene Clark - White Light Jimmy Cliff - Another Cycle Cluster - Cluster Bruce Cockburn - High Winds, White Sky Leonard Cohen - Songs of Love and Hate Ornette Coleman - Twins John Coltrane - Sun Ship (recorded 1965) Judy Collins - Living Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band - No Roses Colosseum - Colosseum Live Rita Coolidge - Nice Feelin' Rita Coolidge - Rita Coolidge Alice Cooper - Killer Alice Cooper - Love It to Death Chick Corea - Piano Improvisations Vol. 1 Chick Corea - Piano Improvisations Vol. 2 Crazy Horse - Crazy Horse Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - 4 Way Street David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name King Curtis - Live at Fillmore West Curved Air - Second Album D Miles Davis - A Tribute to Jack Johnson Miles Davis - Live-Evil Deep Purple - Fireball Delaney & Bonnie - Motel Shot Sandy Denny - The North Star Grassman and the Ravens John Denver - Poems, Prayers and Promises Neil Diamond - Stones Bo Diddley - Another Dimension Dion DiMucci - You're Not Alone Dr. John - The Sun, Moon & Herbs Donovan - H.M.S. Donovan The Doobie Brothers - The Doobie Brothers The Doors - L.A. Woman The Doors - Other Voices Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. Ii E Earth, Wind & Fire - Earth, Wind & Fire Egg - The Polite Force Electric Light Orchestra - The Electric Light Orchestra (aka No Answer) Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Tarkus Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Pictures at an Exhibition John Entwistle - Smash Your Head Against the Wall F Faces - A Nod Is as Good as a Wink... to a Blind Horse Faces - Long Player Fairport Convention - Angel Delight Family -Fearless Faust - Faust The 5th Dimension - Love's Lines, Angles and Rhymes Ella Fitzgerald - Ella à Nice Roberta Flack - Quiet Fire Flamin' Groovies - Teenage Head Fleetwood Mac - Future Games The Flying Burrito Brothers - The Flying Burrito Brothers Focus - Moving Waves Aretha Franklin - Aretha Live at Fillmore West Aretha Franklin - Aretha's Greatest Hits Free - Free Live! Funkadelic - Maggot Brain G Serge Gainsbourg - Histoire de Melody Nelson Rory Gallagher - Deuce Rory Gallagher - Rory Gallagher Marvin Gaye - What's Going On The J. Geils Band - The Morning After Genesis - Nursery Cryme Gentle Giant - Acquiring the Taste Golden Earring - Seven Tears Grand Funk Railroad - E Pluribus Funk Grand Funk Railroad - Survival Grateful Dead - Grateful Dead (live) Grateful Dead - Historic Dead Live 1966 Al Green - Al Green Gets Next to You Grin - Grin Gordon Lightfoot - Summer Side of Life Groundhogs - Split The Guess Who - So Long, Bannatyne H Bill Haley & His Comets - Rock Around the Country Tom T. Hall - In Search of a Song Peter Hammill - Fool's Mate John Hammond - Source Point Roy Harper - Stormcock George Harrison and Friends - The Concert for Bangladesh Richie Havens - Alarm Clock Hawkwind - In Search of Space Isaac Hayes - Black Moses Isaac Hayes - Shaft Jimi Hendrix - The Cry of Love Jimi Hendrix - Rainbow Bridge Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks - Where's the Money? The Hollies - Distant Light Honey Cone - Soulful Tapestry Honey Cone - Sweet Replies John Lee Hooker - Goin' Down Highway 51 John Lee Hooker - Mad Man Blues John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat - Hooker 'n Heat Hot Tuna - First Pull Up, Then Pull Down Howlin' Wolf - The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions Humble Pie - Performance Rockin' the Fillmore Humble Pie - Rock On I If - If 3 Incredible String Band - Liquid Acrobat as Regards the Air J The Jackson 5 - Goin' Back to Indiana The Jackson 5 - Greatest Hits The Jackson 5 - Maybe Tomorrow Jade Warrior - Jade Warrior Jade Warrior - Released James Gang - James Gang Live in Concert James Gang - Thirds Jefferson Airplane - Bark Waylon Jennings - The Taker/Tulsa Jethro Tull - Aqualung Billy Joel - Cold Spring Harbor Elton John - 11-17-70 (aka 17-11-70) Elton John - Madman Across the Water Tom Jones - Tom Jones Sings She's a Lady Janis Joplin - Pearl Joy of Cooking - Closer to the Ground Joy of Cooking - Joy of Cooking K B.B. King - Live in Cook County Jail Carole King - Music Carole King - Tapestry King Crimson - Islands The Kinks - Muswell Hillbillies The Kinks - Percy Kluster - Eruption (live) Kluster - Zwei-Osterei Kris Kristofferson - The Silver Tongued Devil and I Fela Kuti - Live! (with Ginger Baker) Fela Kuti - Why Black Man Dey Suffer? L The Last Poets - This is Madness Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV John Lennon - Imagine Lindisfarne - Fog on the Tyne Little Feat - Little Feat Jon Lord - Gemini Suite M Taj Mahal - Happy Just To Be Like I Am Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Inner Mounting Flame The Mamas & the Papas - People Like Us Man -Do You Like It Here Now, Are You Settling In? Bob Marley & The Wailers - Soul Revolution Bob Marley & The Wailers - Soul Revolution II John Martyn - Bless the Weather Curtis Mayfield - Curtis/Live! Curtis Mayfield - Roots Paul McCartney and Linda McCartney - Ram MC5 - High Time Don McLean - American Pie Melanie - Gather Me Melanie - The Good Book Steve Miller Band - Rock Love Mr. Fox - The Gypsy Joni Mitchell - Blue The Moody Blues - Every Good Boy Deserves Favour Van Morrison - Tupelo Honey Mott the Hoople - Brain Capers Mott the Hoople - Wildlife Mountain - Nantucket Sleighride The Move - Message from the Country Mungo Jerry - Electronically Tested Mungo Jerry - You Don't Have to Be in the Army Anne Murray - Talk It Over in the Morning N Graham Nash - Songs for Beginners Nazareth - Nazareth Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band - Rudy the Fifth Willie Nelson - Yesterday's Wine Randy Newman - Randy Newman Live New Riders of the Purple Sage - New Riders of the Purple Sage Olivia Newton-John - If Not for You The Nice - Elegy Harry Nilsson - Aerial Pandemonium Ballet Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson Harry Nilsson - The Point! Laura Nyro - Gonna Take a Miracle O Ocean - Put Your Hand in the Hand Yoko Ono - Fly Le Orme - Collage Osibisa - Osibisa Osibisa - Woyaya Gilbert O'Sullivan - Himself P Dolly Parton - Coat of Many Colors The Partridge Family - A Partridge Family Christmas Card The Partridge Family - Shopping Bag The Partridge Family - Sound Magazine The Partridge Family - Up to Date Pentangle - Reflection Pink Floyd - Meddle Pink Floyd - Relics Poco - Deliverin' Poco - From the Inside Elvis Presley - C'mon Everybody Elvis Presley - Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas Elvis Presley - Love Letters from Elvis Elvis Presley - You'll Never Walk Alone John Prine - John Prine Procol Harum - Broken Barricades Q Quicksilver Messenger Service - Quicksilver R Bonnie Raitt - Bonnie Raitt The Rascals - Peaceful World The Rascals - Search and Nearness Renaissance - Illusion REO Speedwagon - REO Speedwagon Emitt Rhodes - The American Dream Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - One Dozen Roses The Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks 1964-1971 The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers Diana Ross - Surrender Todd Rundgren - Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren Leon Russell - Leon Russell and the Shelter People Mitch Ryder - Detroit S Buffy Sainte-Marie - She Used to Want to Be a Ballerina Pharoah Sanders - Thembi Mongo Santamaria - Afro Roots Santana - Santana III Boz Scaggs - Boz Scaggs & Band Boz Scaggs - Moments Carly Simon - Anticipation Carly Simon - Carly Simon Frank Sinatra - Sinatra & Company Sir Lord Baltimore - Sir Lord Baltimore Skid Row - 34 Hours Sly & the Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On Soft Machine - Fourth Sparks (as Halfnelson) - Halfnelson Spirogyra - St. Radigunds Jimmie Spheeris - Isle of View Status Quo - Dog of Two Head Steeleye Span - Please to See the King Steeleye Span - Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again Cat Stevens - Teaser and the Firecat Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story Stephen Stills - Stephen Stills 2 Stoney & Meat Loaf - Stoney & Meatloaf Barbra Streisand - Barbra Joan Streisand Barbra Streisand - Stoney End The Stylistics - The Stylistics Sun Ra - Pictures of Infinity Supertramp - Indelibly Stamped Sweet - Funny How Sweet Co-Co Can Be T James Taylor - James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine (recorded ‘66-'67) James Taylor - Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon Kate Taylor - Sister Kate Livingston Taylor - Liv The Temptations - Sky's the Limit Ten Years After - A Space in Time Thin Lizzy - Thin Lizzy Three Dog Night - Golden Bisquits Three Dog Night - Harmony Traffic - The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys Traffic - Welcome to the Canteen (live) T.Rex - Electric Warrior U UFO - UFO 2: Flying Uriah Heep - Look at Yourself Uriah Heep - Salisbury V Van der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts W War - All Day Music War - War Dionne Warwick - The Dionne Warwicke Story Muddy Waters - They Call Me Muddy Waters Weather Report - Weather Report Tony Joe White - Tony Joe White The Who - Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy The Who - Who's Next Andy Williams - Love Story Wings - Wild Life Edgar Winter - Edgar Winter's White Trash Johnny Winter and - Live Wishbone Ash - Pilgrimage Bill Withers - Just as I Am Stevie Wonder - Where I'm Coming From Link Wray - Link Wray Y Yes - Fragile Yes - The Yes Album Z Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention - Fillmore East, June 1971 Frank Zappa - 200 Motels Soundtrack ZZ Top - ZZ Top's First Album

Medium: TV Anime (26 episodes)
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Military, Science Fiction
Director: Koichi Chigira
Studio: GONZO
Release Date: Apr. 7 – Sep. 29, 2003 (JP – TV Tokyo), Nov. 18, 2003 (Geneon/FUNimation – NA)
Rated: Not Rated

Ed. Note: Welcome to the second of our four "Anime Secret Santa Reviews." Our reviewers were given review requests as gifts from their Secret Santas, and are now unveiling their opinions of the shows they chose. For more information, check out our 2010 Anime Secret Santa introductory post.

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You know you're in for a polarizing show when one of the biggest pieces of praise people can give is "it's one of the few shows by this studio that's actually worth watching!" Unfortunately for anime studio GONZO (Gankutsuou, Welcome to the NHK, Linebarrels of Iron), that's basically the compliment granted to any relatively successful series that they create, and for better or for worse, Last Exile (2003) sits among this short list of "not terrible" GONZO series.

The show begins in a vaguely steampunk era in which giant airships have become the primary tool of war. Our heroes are two young pilots who make their living as couriers on the wings of their small fighter plane-esque craft called a "vanship." Claus Valca is a quiet, kindly pilot with a penchant for finishing everything he starts, while Lavie is his hot-headed, impetuous, and intelligent navigator. As the guy piloting the vanship, Claus is naturally the hero GONZO chooses to focus on, while Lavie serves simultaneously as his childhood friend, romantic interest, and moral compass.

These two couriers are living a simple life in the shadows of their legendary fathers (couriers who flew together until their untimely deaths) when they find themselves tasked with transporting a young girl named Alvis to the "Kill 'Em All" Silvana, a notorious mercenary airship thought to suck the souls out of anyone who comes aboard. After narrowly escaping attacks from the Guild, a shadowy organization that exerts subtle control over all the world's militaries and governments, the two vanship operators end up joining the Silvana's not-so-scary crew in a mysterious mission to strike the very heart of the Guild.

On paper, Last Exile seems like an exhilarating modern military tale, set in the skies of a unique world bound by strange rules — and it almost is, too. Unfortunately, GONZO's execution is painfully uneven, to the point that I often wondered if the writers knew where they were going when they created the original concept. The story is roughly split into three acts: 1) introduction of major cast and factions, 2) the Silvana wanders around doing things and battling some people, and 3) final confrontation with the Guild. As you might be able to guess, the second act features no central narrative or even an attempt at a formula (which would have made it much easier to follow). Instead the characters just meet a few unrelated challenges and overcome them, all the while developing ever so slightly as both individual characters and as a team.

Unfortunately, that individual development often leads to dead ends, as with two of the show's seemingly important romantic threads that simply die out before the introduction of the third act. The overall development of the cast, however, is one of the Last Exile's defining characteristics. The sense of cohesion between the Silvana's crew might not be apparent at first, but the motley crew of pilots, mechanics, and bridge personnel really start to feel like one big team by the end of the series. The most apt comparison that comes to my mind is original Gundam, though Last Exile certainly doesn't pull it off quite that well.

Despite the compelling sense of overall camaraderie, some of the individual characters can get truly grating after 26 episodes. Let's start with Claus: his personality is so meek and boring that he is effectively the same as any of the cookie-cutter protagonists in harem anime. Underscoring this unfortunate truth is his harem of girls, including Lavie, Alvis, the cold-hearted pilot Tatiana, and even the strong-willed Vice Captain Sophia. To make matters worse, Tatiana turns into a mushy little lovestruck schoolgirl when Claus so much as lends her his jacket, and Sophia's romantic encounter comes from so far in left field that you'll likely be throwing things at your screen in frustration. To be honest, by episode 15 I was convinced that Last Exile was a harem show in disguise.

Meanwhile, there are a few characters who really shine despite their disappointing company. Alex Row, the stoic captain of the Silvana, rocks all kinds of socks with his grumpy demeanor and tortured past, but cracks begin to show in his emotional armor as we learn more about his history and see him lose control near the end of the show. Dio (no, not that one) and Lucciola, two runaways from the Guild who join up with the Silvana, and Mullin Shetland, a musketeer-turned-mechanic, provide an interesting counterpoint to the rest of the crew as outsiders coping with the stress of turning away from their previous loyalties. On the bad guy's side, the sinister Guild leader Maestro Delphine comes off as a poisonously sweet version of Gundam's Haman Karn.

But as far as I'm concerned, the real star of Last Exile is Lavie Head, Claus's energetic navigator. Originally she seems like nothing more than an obligatory bossy love interest, but by episode 8 or so it is clear that her personality reaches depths far beyond those of her lame childhood friend. Even when she decides that she doesn't want to be Claus's navigator as long as he is flying in combat (a brave and unexpected decision that throws a fascinating wrench in the works), she remains one of the most well-developed members of the crew. Lavie feels with a magnitude that nobody else in the show does, careening between nurturing love for Alvis, passionate concern for Claus, and unexpected bravery in the face of danger. Through it all, she manages to be both completely admirable and believably flawed, a feat that I'm frankly surprised GONZO managed to pull off so well.

While Japanese voice actor Chiwa Saito's performance as Lavie certainly gets the job done, Kari Wahlgren truly makes the role her own. Especially compared to Johnny Yong Bosch's typically overwrought Claus, Wahlgren's Lavie is always believable, no matter where she is on the emotional spectrum. In terms of the rest of the English cast, despite some clunky deliveries they mostly stack up well, especially thanks to spot-on Japanese-to-English voice matching by Bang Zoom.

Nearly all of the technology in the show (intricately researched and designed by character designer Range Murata and Gankutsuou's Mahiro Maeda) is animated using GONZO's notorious CG style, which only rarely blends with the two-dimensional character animation used throughout. Movement is also irritatingly choppy during the fight scenes, undercutting the clear quality of the original concepts. The skilled 2-D animators who realized Murata and Maeda's beautiful character and costume designs likely could have transformed most of the storyboards for the battle scenes into thrilling dogfights, but as it stands the 3-D fights are merely passable (though GONZO gets points for including ZERO Gundam-style monologues or pilot-to-pilot arguments during fights).

While I don't usually comment on such things, Last Exile's sound design is actually one of its greatest strengths. The sound effects used to represent the creaking and turning of machinery and the movements of the wind are far more visceral (and frequent) than the effects used in most other anime. This, combined with Maeda and Murata's unique and complex designs for clothing and machinery, makes for a lot of fascinating world-building potential. Unfortunately, spotty explanations of the factions and technologies often make it difficult to understand who is fighting whom and for what reasons. By the time the series reaches its exciting finale, it might still take a Wikipedia visit or two to understand just what was going on in the skies of Claus and Lavie's world.

Last Exile, like many GONZO series before it, is a valuable lesson in wasted potential. It's clear that the concept designers put a lot of work into the series during pre-production, and the animators' love for their material shines through in rare moments that belie Last Exile's most glaring flaw, which is that it doesn't really say or do very much with its own material. In the end, the exquisite presentation, the attempts at world-building, and the moments of genuine humanity come together to produce a work that is nothing more than the sum of its parts. We are left with a vaporous story about people in airships who fight each other.

[Passable]

---

This review is based on the Hulu streams (both dub and sub) of the series, provided by FUNimation.

2010 offered us a lot of video games, and for those of you who enjoy pretending that your controller is a gun, it involved a lot of shooters as well. Some were good, some were bad, but can you remember all of them? Stretching your memory all the way back to January 2010 can be tough when we're on the precipice of the holiday, but lets' take a look, shall we?

JANUARY

Army of Two: The 40th Day

The year was still brand-new when the second Army of Two got dumped in our laps. It expanded upon the original, giving us more co-op moments, destructible environments, and the ability to mock surrender while your partner popped them in the head with the bullet. While not a huge success, it was one of the more robust co-op experience in that vast wasteland of early January. However, most people were probably playing Darksiders instead of this one. Great idea that just hasn't delivered yet.

Read on for the Rest of the Year in Shooters!

MAG

MAG promised us massively multiplayer gunplay action, and it actually delivered. Up to 256 players online at the same time duking it out as one of three different factions led to a lot of fun moments, although there were some glitches along the way. Still, manning a turret and defending your base from hordes of real-life foes is highly addicting and was well worth it. Issuing orders to your squad and leveling up through the ranks gave this a lot of replayability.

FEBRUARY

SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals Fireteam Bravo 3

Who said shooter experiences are just limited to consoles? SOCOM on the PSP delivers a squad-based shooter experience in the palm of your hand, and it does it with over 70 different weapons. Seriously, that's a lot even for a console title. Online co-op lets you experience the action with a friend, and you can level up and earn ribbons to decorate your uniform with. If you're stuck in a car on the way to grandma's house for three hours, this is what you want in your pocket.

Borderlands - The Secret Armory of General Knoxx

Yes, Borderlands came out in 2009, but the best piece of DLC (possibly ever?) came out for the game in early 2010, giving you even more RPG Shooter-ness to enjoy. Brand-new weapons, never-before-seen enemies, more Scooter, and tons of new missions make this piece of content a very easy buy, and we haven't even mentioned Crawmerax. What's that? Oh, you'll find out. Oh boy, will you find out. Just keep a spare pair of pants handy. 

MARCH

 

 

Metro 2033

Metro 2033 came out of left field and surprised everyone when it managed to combine the shooter genre with the best elements of action adventure. Plus, the game introduced a bullet economy where ammunition was more valuable than cash. Requiring air filters for gas masks, supplying you with horror elements, and even making you illuminate your map with a Zippo lighter all gave this game a unique edge that is still a lot of fun to experience.

Red Steel 2

Even the Wii got some much-needed shooter love in 2010, and it all started with Red Steel 2. Which actually means it started back in 2006, because it was a launch title for the Wii. However, this game is superior in every way to the original Red Steel, and it adds MotionPlus support, so you can more accurately pop a cap in, or disembowel, someone. Great combat and much-improved visuals make this sequel well the time.

Just Cause 2

While this game might not fit squarely into the shooter genre, I'm calling it the lone entry in the "Sandbox Shooter With a Grappling Hook" genre, because it gives you the toys you need to play with (namely lots of guns, and an awesome grappling hook) and sets you loose. You can completely ignore the storyline if you want, and just go around tethering things to one another. Or shooting people. It's really up to you, and more people should check this game out. There is something truly addictive about it.

APRIL

 

 

Splinter Cell: Conviction

It's almost criminal to include this title, as Splinter Cell has traditionally been about sneaking and stealthing, but Sam Fisher's new ability to "Mark and Execute" make spying on enemies that you're about to kill all the more exciting. Granted, the game is extremely light when compared to Chaos Theory, but Fisher needed a shakeup. While the team stopped shy of turning him into Jason Bourne outright, they got very close in delivering us a fast, powerful Sam Fisher. Plus that whole "spraying the name of the objective" on the environment thing was very cool.

Dead To Rights: Retribution

I'll be honest. This game was a real limburger cheese-fest. By which I mean, it stank. However, you know what didn't stink? Shadow. Having a dog sidekick that can literally rip the balls off of bad guys is awesome. Sure, you have to trade the good with the bad, and was DTR: R's bad gameplay worth it? Definitely, when you saw the "Scrotality" achievement. 

MAY

Lost Planet 2

Again, not a typical shooter, per se, but one that gave you the ability to hop onto giant mechs armed with pods that could house your teammates and wield things like giant shotguns. Yes, there were some control problems, and trying to carry giant eggs in multiplayer is enough to make you tear your hair out, but that low-gravity combat and those Vital Suits made it enjoyable. If only this had been a Winter release, I would have felt the need to search for heat sources a bit more compelling. 

JUNE

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker

While I enjoyed Portable Ops as much as the next PSP owner, I really didn't think it was going to be possible to put out an MGS game that managed to tie together the original games with a new storyline, but they did it. Peace Walker represents a true MSG-centric experience on the PSP, and the fact that they made it co-op is all the better. Even though you all play as Snake on your own screen, it's nice having the ability to bring buddies into the battle. Once you step onto the beach in that opening scene training mission, you'll be hooked.

 

 

Singularity

While not the first game to allow you to manipulate time while you fire weapons at baddies, Singularity had the added ability of letting you de-age things (i.e. crumbling a wall), or re-aging something (restoring a crate to its full glory so you can smash it open and get the goods inside). Yes, we all know that the game wasn't exactly a success when it hit shelves. but the innovative time-manipulation was definitely something that I'd like to see in a game at some point. There's so much that could be done with time-travel, so I'm hoping that Valve picks up the chrono-gauntlet after Portal 2.

JULY

Crackdown 2

While Crackdown 2 didn't really shake things up too much in terms of a sequel, it added a lot of new toys to play with. Granted, searching for orbs gets to be a pain in the ass after your first 100, those magnetic grenades turn everything in the world into something fun to play with. Launch cars up onto buildings has never been so enjoyable. Once you finally find aerial vehicles, you're so far into the game that you can practically leap everywhere you need to go. But, that doesn't mean that the flying isn't a total blast, because it is.

AUGUST

 

 

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

If you want gritty realism in your video games, then you need to check out Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, as it was inspired by user created content from surveillance cameras and the like. Grainy, jump-cutty, and visceral, this game doesn't want you to think it's light and fluffy at all. Gameplay mechanics are basic, but going online to co-op as both Kane & Lynch (you only play as Lynch if you're going at it single player) offers up the best experience. It's a bloody mess, and very fun at times.

SEPTEMBER

Halo: Reach

Okay, if I really need to remind you about the Halo: Reach release date, then you need to try chewing on a plasma grenade. Halo: Reach gave us a team to fight alongside, and sweet powerups that give you a slight edge at times, or let you do insanely stupid times at others. Like flying off the edge of the map to your death. Not that I've done that several times or anything. 

Quantum Theory

Quantum Theory, I really don't want to be the boot that kicks you in the ribs while you're down, but holy cow you sucked. Your premise sounded amazing. I mean, fighting your way through a living tower? Getting to toss your partner as a projectile? These are all good things. Sadly, it just didn't come together. Maybe next time.

OCTOBER

Medal of Honor

While I didn't enjoy Medal of Honor as much as I thought I would, there were some awesome gameplay elements that this brought to the table. Silently traversing a map with your buddy instead of going in guns blazing? That creates a lot of tension, and is surprisingly enjoyable. But my favorite level had you a great distance from the bad guys, popping them one by one with an extremely long-range sniper rifle. That was enjoyable enough to make me wish they'd just make Sniper: The Snipening game already. Bring back Silent Scope!

 

 

Vanquish

Yes, it was short, had dorky dialogue, and a wafer-thin plot. But, it was a science fiction shooter that delivered hardcore or the clanking and robot-ing where Halo: Reach only offered you strange-colored aliens. Plus, since when has knee-gliding been such a core component of a game? Read: never. Especially since knee-gliding isn't offered up in Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Vanquish offers a solid game experience that got overshadowed by Halo: Reach, and deserves some of your hard-earned attention.

NOVEMBER

GoldenEye 007

When this game was first announced, I thought it would be a craptastic port. Instead, you got a beautiful game with some very fun gameplay and a very fun experience on the Wii. I only play it with a classic controller, but I have friends who swear by the Zapper. Whichever flavor you choose, GoldenEye offers up a really impressive James Bond experience on Nintendo's baby, and it does it with style. The multiplayer doesn't have quite the addictive feel of the original, but it is a lot of fun as well. Especially in that tacky disco level.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Best to end the year with a bang, right? Call of Duty: Black Ops certainly came in with a bang, and it shows no signs of going out anytime soon either. We imagine this will be a popular gift this holiday season, and with the just-announced DLC, you're going to be killstreaking and fragging your way to multiplayer bliss in no time. Plus, the game has one of the most interesting and exciting single-player campaigns to come with a shooter pretty much ever. Toss in the hilarious historical zombies, and this is a game that you'll have no problem loving.

 

So we probably didn't hit everything on this list, so what were some of your favorite Shooter from 2010? I'm split between Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops. Thankfully this isn't the Gift of the Magi, where I have to give up both games in order to make someone else happy.

Have something to share? Have an idea for a feature you'd like to see on G4? E-mail me. You can also follow me on Twitter.

There are many good reasons to make venison a regular feature of your table. Why do we show so little appreciation for it in this country?

Recipes:
• Venison ragu with linguine
• Venison casserole with beer

I've done some strange things in pursuit of lunch in my time – riding a recalcitrant camel across the Kalahari for an al-fresco feast of gritty chapattis springs to mind – but clambering halfway up a tree in the dead of night, and sitting there for two hours, motionless, silent, and absolutely bloody freezing, has to take the biscuit.

It's worth it though, when night finally fades to grey, and we spot two gloomy figures delicately picking their way across the horizon, and heading in our direction. They resolve themselves into the fallow deer we're seeking, surprisingly small to me, and heading straight for our wooden perch – Jim, the gamekeeper I'm shadowing, inspects them through the sights of his gun, as I hold my breath, afraid the least sniff could scare them away. "A pair of does," he whispers, relaxing.

The females are off-limits until the end of the mating season, so we watch them disappear into the shadowy trees, heading towards a low, throaty bark which sounds all the world like some enormous, angry toad but is, according to Jim, a big buck announcing his presence to the world. During the rut, he tells me as we make our way back to the car, the males have a one-track mind "you can go right up to them, they won't bat an eyelid". The sound, low and insistent, carries on until the sun is up, but although there's rustling behind us and a flash of movement behind a coppice in the distance, we spy no more deer that morning. Walking back through the woods, stiff from cold, we catch a glimpse of a herd in flight, but the buck is nowhere to be seen.

Fortunately, others have had more luck and when we catch up with young game dealer Jack Garton, who, along with his wife Jess, is a familiar sight at farmers markets around London and the south east, he's hard at work preparing a buck for hanging. The gralloch, as the process is known, is surprisingly swift in the hands of such a practiced operator, and before long the deer is meat hanging from a branch and I'm holding a plastic bag of warm offal. This particular one will hang for just shy of two weeks, but chef Lee Maycock, who fries up the liver with a little flour and honey, tells me he kept one in the chiller for three months last winter. "It was the best I've ever tasted," he reflects, "but I wouldn't do it again, there was too much wastage."

In the light of the fuss over the death (or not) of the "Emperor of Exmoor", I ask Lee, who acts as a consultant chef to the Countryside Alliance's Game to Eat campaign, about the ethics of venison. The figures he quotes surprise me: the British Deer Society, a charity which claims to be "the premier organisation promoting deer welfare" in this country, recommends 500,000 animals should be culled every year to ensure their future survival, yet currently only 350,000 animals are killed every year, almost 75,000 of which are traffic fatalities. With no natural predators left in this country, the deer population could easily escalate out of control: "They need managing, or they'll eat themselves out of house and home," he says – and I've already seen the damage bucks can do to woodland while testing their new antlers.

The benefits of deer population management are also clear to those of us more interested in cooking than shooting ­– it's the ultimate free-range meat, roaming across some of the most unspoilt areas of the UK in search of food, and, as Lee observes, "ticks a lot of the buzzwords at the moment, being seasonal, but available frozen all year round, British, and naturally organic." Venison is also the healthiest of the red meats, according to the Food Standards Agency: low in fat, high in iron and protein, it's a good source of B vitamins and immune-boosting selenium. Sadly, however, as with so much of our best produce, the vast majority of British venison is currently exported, mostly to mainland Europe, where they appreciate its distinctive, rich flavour.

There is an easy way to rectify this shameful state of affairs of course; eat more of the stuff. Lee is keen to explain the golden rules of venison cookery. First of all, know what you're eating; there are six different species of deer in this country (roe, red and fallow are the most commonly eaten, with the delicate roe often considered superior to the gamier red and fallow), and the flavour of the meat can vary wildly depending on the animal's age, location, and how long its been hung – seven to 14 days is usual, with 12 cited by Lee as "the ideal". Every deer shot in the UK is labelled with a tag listing these details, so "ask your butcher; he'll know exactly what it is."

Secondly, treat it with care. Because venison is so low in fat, it can dry out easily, so cook it as rare as you dare, and consider larding it with bacon fat to keep the meat moist, particularly if you're roasting it. The best joints for this are the haunch and saddle, preferably with the bone left in for flavour, and cooked hot and swift. Haunch is also good slow-roasted, as is shank, and for stewing look for shin and shoulder. Lee's favourite bits, however, are the two fillets inside, which if cut correctly, can become a venison chateaubriand; these, he says, should be quick fried.

The berries and mushrooms which are part of the animal's natural diet at this time of year are excellent partners with venison, but the robust flavour of the meat also works brilliantly with bitter, tannic ingredients like dark chocolate and red wine, and spices such as black pepper and chilli. Whatever you're doing with your venison, however, make sure you give it enough time to rest; for small pieces, as long as you've cooked it for, for larger ones, about 20 minutes so it stays deliciously juicy.

Of course, it's only in the last couple of hundred years that us lot have been allowed to sample the delights of venison, slow-cooked, fast fried or otherwise; for centuries the aristocracy jealously guarded their right to hunt to these noble creatures. (Veneson pye was, apparently, a favourite of that noted glutton Henry VIII, and these days the ecologically minded Prince Charles registers his interest by acting as patron to the British Deer Society.) Perhaps that why we've never really developed a taste for stuff … but it's never too late to start.

Why do we show so little appreciation for venison in this country? And if you're one of the few people who does eat it, where do you get it from, and what's your favourite way to cook it?

"The Walking Dead" Season 1 went out with a literal bang, but not before playing claustrophobic mind games with the survivors.Spoilers! If you're reading this and haven't watched the finale yet, then you must have the brain activity of a zombie.Most of the finale was spent inside the CDC with all the adults pretty drunk off of Jenner's cache of wine. We're thinking that they sobered up and got over their hangovers in a hurry though when he told them the CDC would undergo decontamination that would rival a nuclear bomb. Although the episode wasn't action-packed until the end, enough went on and was revealed that it's worth breaking it down and tackling items one at a time:1. ShaneThe opening flashback scene may redeem Shane in some people's eyes. He only abandoned Rick after he tried saving him and thought he was dead from hospital equipment failure. There must have been some doubt in his...

***** Bang by Q' (Style-City Music) *****

See The Pretty People,
Dressed In White,
Going To Have Fun,
On A Saturday Night.

They're Having A Bang.

Hear The Pretty Music,
See How They Laugh and Play,
See The Pretty People,
As They Play Their Games.

They're Having A Bang.

See The Pretty People,
Listen to The Birds Sing,
See How They Enjoy Their Lives,
Such A Wonderful Thing.

They're Having A Bang.

You Pull The Trigger,
With A Gun To Your Head.
Bang, Bang,
And Now you're Dead.

Friday questions, and I have one for you? Why does ANYBODY shop on this day? You know the crowds are worse than any other day of the year. Why not wait until tomorrow? Or February and just apologize that you're late? Anyway, hope you had a fabulous turkey day, and here are some Friday questions for your leftover pleasure.

404 says:

I agreed with the outstanding post you did a couple of weeks (months?) ago concerning "Outsourced" and why it was a subpar show. However, I think since then it has gotten better and better. It's still not great, but it has improved and is pretty enjoyable now, at least sometimes. I'm curious what shows through the years you originally thought were drivel, only to tune in weeks, months, or even years later only to find that the quality of the show had improved and turned it into a good show worth watching?

PARKS & RECREATION for one. That went from one of the worst to the best.  Others current examples are (in my opinion) THE BIG BANG THEORY, THE OFFICE, and COMMUNITY.

It’s not unusual that it takes a show some time to find its groove. You see what works, what doesn’t, and make changes accordingly. Cast members like Michael J. Fox on FAMILY TIES breakout and you make midcourse corrections. Even classic series like MASH needed a little time to find its sea legs. The first year of MASH is way more shenanigan heavy than it would become.

I would say (again, my opinion) CHEERS’ best season was its first. But that’s very unusual, and even then – watch the first six episodes. There was a lot of experimentation going on. There’s one episode where a bunch of different outside colorful characters come into the bar and we had four or five stories going. It was more like BARNEY MILLER in that regard. What we all discovered was that Sam & Diane were really at the heart of the show and so we wrote to that. And stories centered on our core characters worked better than ones featuring outside characters. But it was a trial & error process.

The key is you have to be open to throwing things out and following the direction the show wants to go in; not necessarily where you want it to go.  Tossing scripts, replacing actors, losing characters -- that's not easy to do and sure not fun.  But sometimes for the good of the series you have to.

The only show I can think of (and I’m sure there are others) that was consistently excellent, almost at the same peak quality, start to finish was FRASIER.

From Wade:

Not sure if you've seen the new TV series "The Walking Dead" yet, but it prompted a Friday question in my brain.

The main setting is the zombie apocalypse, and of course none of the zombies have any spoken dialogue (and if the show stays true to its source material, they never will). So the question is, does this mean there's zero chance any actor playing a zombie will ever get paid beyond "extra" status? If spoken dialogue is the ticket into a big jump in pay, is every one of these shambling corpses out of luck no matter how integral they might be individually in a given episode?

I think in this case they are paying significant salaries to the main cast. You’re not going to get the caliber of actor you want for your series if you’re paying him less than a hundred a day.  Even in this economy, and even if business affairs did try.

Maybe in addition to Actors’ Scale, and Extras’ Scale, there should be Zombies’ Scale. Imagine what that picket line would be like if they ever struck.

Brian Doan has a long question:

Ken, I'm curious about how you are defining "hit" in your response about the popularity of writers. I would not dispute your contention about the respect/fame that writers have in the UK versus the US, but I often think of David Chase, Matt Weiner, and others (like David Simon, or Joss Whedon, or Ron Moore, to name three that fans seem to follow from show to show) as creators of cult programs more than big hits-- they win awards and have great media penetration, but their numbers are smaller compared to "hits" on larger networks.

Yes, a “hit” is a relative term based on expectations. MAD MEN is a big hit on AMC compared to most of its other fare. If MAD MEN were on NBC and drew the same number of viewers it currently has it would be cancelled in two weeks. Same with THE SOPRANOS, THE SHIELD, practically any cable offering. Also, demographics now play a huge role. Shows like BUFFY and DAWSON’S CREEK are targeted for a specific young audience and both delivered nicely. Network execs didn’t expect them to get big overall numbers.

Then there’s the prestige factor. Shows like THE SOPRANOS and MAD MEN do wonders for the image of their networks. It also helps lure other top writers to those networks.

And winning awards doesn’t hurt either. Although awards can only take you so far. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT still got cancelled despite all the Emmys. Awards can buy you time but if ultimately the audience isn’t there, you and your trophies are gone. But the winners of the awards go make bigger deals elsewhere so don’t feel too sorry for them.

Hank asks:

I vaguely recall that when Coach died on Cheers and Woody replaced him, that at first Woody's personality was very different from Coach's, but over time his personality morphed until he basically became a younger version of Coach. Was this my imagination? Is there a behind the scene story here?

I would contend that Woody and the Coach were always different.

The Coach was a little addled because of all the times he had been beaned in baseball. He may have appeared dumb but in fact he was just confused.

By contrast, Woody was an innocent from Indiana. It’s not so much that he was dumb; he was just incredibly naïve. And he took everything literally. Woody has a definite logic; it’s just that it’s screwy.

All I can say is that I wrote them very differently.

What’s your question?

by Stoney deGeyter

There was no commercial internet in the 80's, but that doesn't mean that we can't reach into the recesses of our past to see that, everything we know now about SEO, we already knew back then. How? From the greatest, most magical music of all time: 80's hair band glam rock!

They just don't make music like this anymore, and it's a shame. The sweet sound of rock'n'roll has never tasted better. All it takes is a reflective look at some of these song titles to realize that these guys knew their online marketing! (Though I'm sure they were all too wasted to even know it!)

SEO Requires Knowledge and Skill

I always seem to run into people who read a little about SEO and think It's So Easy (Guns N Roses). Throw in a few meta tags and a title, and you're all set, right? Actually, there's more to it than that. What It Takes (Aerosmith) to perform SEO correctly is more than just a basic understanding of how search engines work. In fact, you have to be something of a Modern Day Cowboy (Tesla) if you want your pages to rank above the competition. A good SEO will Rock You Like A Hurricane (Scorpions), making sure you get the results you want.

Beware of Spammers Masquerading as SEOs

SEO has a pretty bad history with spammers. Heck, I think just about any SEO who has been in the business for more than a decade has spammed at least once! Back then we were Runnin' With The Devil (Van Halen), but we really weren't Foolin' (Def Leppard) anybody but ourselves. When Google came on the scene, they gave us more than Looks That Kill (Motley Crue), they gave a hardcore Shout At The Devil (Motley Crue) and combated spam like nobody's business.

Spammers today are a different beast than ten years ago. You could say back then it was just our Youth Gone Wild (Skid Row). Everything was new. Today, there isn't so much ignorance going around. Every spammer is a Wanted Man (Ratt), not just to Google, but to all legit SEO's out there.

Spammers: you're not making the internet better. You're cluttering it with your crap. People want to fall in love with websites, but You Give Love A Bad Name (Bon Jovi). And for that, well, you can just Burn In Hell (Twisted Sister).

But, the real problem with websites that use spam techniques is that, while they may rank well for a while, eventually they'll go down in a Blaze of Glory (Jon Bon Jovi).

Your Audience Matters

In online marketing, there is such a thing as love at first site. Every first time visitor comes to you with the Eyes of a Stranger (Queensryche), and you have just fractions of a second to answer the question: Is This Love? (Whitesnake). If you give them love at first site, you've got a convert and a customer. If not, you lose.

For too long, the needs and wants of visitors have been ignored. Instead of falling in love with your site, they come thinking, "Please, Don't Treat Me Bad!" (Firehouse). Your audience is more than just a traffic count or a conversion rate. They are your customers, your evangelists, your survival! You need to look at each and every customer in the eye and say "Oh, dear Sweet Child O' Mine (Guns N Roses), there is No One Like You (Scorpions) in all the world.

You have to take the time to know who your audience is and what they need. Then build your SEO and marketing strategy around meeting those needs.

SEO Is More Than Rankings... Conversions Matter

If you think SEO is just about rankings, Welcome To The Jungle (Guns N' Roses) of online marketing. While businesses may tell you they want rankings, in reality, it's conversions that are Wanted Dead or Alive (Bon Jovi).

A lot of SEO's Runaway (Bon Jovi) from talking about conversions. They just want to bring you traffic, traffic, and more traffic. But, what's the point of traffic without sales? You want your visitors to think of your site as Home Sweet Home (Motley Crue) and to be Still Loving You (Scorpions) from the time they land on your site through the end of the purchase process.

Content Matters

If you already know the importance of having strong SEO and conversion friendly content on your website, then you're definitely Nobody's Fool (Cinderella). Unfortunately, too many website owners still don't get it. If you want your visitors to come Back for More (Ratt) then you have to give your content a Reason To Live (Kiss).

Content provides the justification your visitors need to complete the purchase. If you could hear your visitors thoughts, they'd say "Tell Me! (White Lion), Why are your products better? How is your service is more thorough? Can you meet my needs? Why should I trust you over your competitors?" In short, they'll say, "Talk Dirty To Me (Poison), and tell me why I need you!"

If you can't do that with great content, you'll have a site that's just like any other. Nothing special.

We All Need a Little Link Love

If you have a great website but nobody is linking to it, you're Alone Again (Dokken). You might as well tell all of your grand marketing plans to "Kiss Me Deadly" (Lita Ford), because a new site without links might as well not exist.

When your sales-less website is asking you to "Pour Some Sugar On Me" (Def Leppard)... you better take heed. Your website just needs some lovin'. Good link marketing plans are not easy, nor are they cheap, but they are essential for new websites to be successful.

There is No Such Thing as Overnight Success

New websites are Too Young to Fall In Love (Motley Crue) with Google, or for Google to fall in love with them. And, even existing websites won't see success in the Still of the Night (Whitesnake).

Good SEO takes time. Not just the implementation of a solid SEO strategy, but for the engines to translate all that hard work into good rankings. Once you have optimized your pages, you've got to have Patience (Guns N' Roses). But, don't just sit back and Wait (White Lion) for the magic to happen. Be proactive and continue to look for opportunities to improve your site for search engines and visitors.

You Can't Set It and Forget It

SEO and website marketing is an ongoing process. Sometimes you feel like you're going Round and Round (Ratt), but there is really more to it than that. It's about continuously finding new keywords to optimize and fixing ongoing site issues as they are discovered.

Don't Stop Runnin' (Y&T;) to your analysis tools to assess the on-page optimization, architectural, and usability issues. You may think to yourself, "Here I Go Again" (Whitesnake), but revisiting your SEO regularly is an essential part of achieving and maintaining SEO dominance.

Test and Analyze

The great thing about SEO is that it doesn't always have to be a Shot In The Dark (Ozzy Osbourne). Routinely looking through your analytics software to see if you're visitors love you, hate you, or are In & Out of Love (Bon Jovi) with you is important. Sometimes you make a change to help improve search engine rankings, but it turns into Bad Medicine (Bon Jovi) for conversions. You don't have to ask each visitor to "Tell Me What You Want" (Zebra), you can let your analytics do the talking.

You Can't Always Be #1

In the world of SEO, Every Rose Has It's Thorn (Poison). Sometimes there is a very delicate balance between top rankings and better conversions, or rankings for one keyword vs. another. You simply can't expect to be #1 for every keyword, or that your #1 ranking will produce as many conversions as a better targeted #2 ranking!

Everyone wants to be on the first page. But, sometimes you have to accept being Seventeen (Winger) for one keyword if that helps you improve another keyword that drives more traffic or conversions. Some keywords are better as a Fallen Angel (Poison) if they don't contribute to profits.

Good SEOs Thinks Outside the Box

Good SEOs will have a bit of a Wild Side (Motley Crue). They are always on the look out for The New Thing (Enuff Z'Nuff) that is going to help their clients gain profits. Notice that I didn't say better rankings! That's a part of it, but profits matter most. Anyone telling you otherwise is involved in some Monkey Business (Skid Row) and can go Jump (Van Halen) off a cliff. Outside the box SEO is usually results driven SEO!

There Are No Guarantees

If you've been around SEO long enough, you know that, ultimately, you're just Livin' On a Prayer (Bon Jovi) that Google doesn't screw with their algorithm so much that you lose all your rankings. There is nothing worse than getting figuratively tossed aside like a Rag Doll (Aerosmith) while Google is Bringin' On The Heartbreak (Def Leppard). It makes you want to Bang Your Head (Quiet Riot) against the wall while screaming out, "Somebody Save Me!" (Cinderella), as the Tears Are Falling (Kiss).

But, that's the risk we all take. This is why having secondary online marketing strategies is essential!

Sweet, Sweet Success

Properly implemented SEO and additional online marketing strategies will, ultimately, bring the sweet flood of success as you see rankings, conversions, and sales pushing their way upward. When all your online marketing efforts are going well, you'll think Heaven's On Fire (Kiss) while you're living in Paradise City (Guns N' Roses)!

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The main draw of Call of Duty: Black Ops may be the multiplayer mode, but I don't care, because I like zombie mode best of all! Check out the video below for a guide to my favorite way of playing Black Ops with zombies:

Zombie Mode is Black Ops' cooperative game-type, where you and up to three of your pals gather together to fight legions of undead ghouls. There are three maps. The first is similar to World at War's zombie mode. It's set in the 1940s, and will be familiar to you if you played that game. If you finish the Black Ops campaign mode, though, a new zombie map opens up, "Five," and it is spectacular. The third map is not really a zombie mode; it's the top-down Dead Ops, an old school-style arcade game.

"Five" begins with a historic meeting in the Pentagon between President John F. Kennedy, Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro, Vietnam War architect Robert MacNamara, and President Richard Nixon. The meeting is interrupted when Zombies burst in. This totally happened in the early 60s, and Activision gets props for maintaining complete historical accuracy here. Seriously, write your next history paper on these events. Back to the game: Take a moment to listen to the hysterical comments from the group. Kennedy,  in particular, with his Boston accent, is a total crack-up.

The idea is to survive the horde as long as possible by wiping out wave after wave of zombies with shotguns, grenades, machine guns, and any other weapons that are scattered around the Pentagon. Zombies burst  through doors and windows all over the place, so you gotta send 'em back to hell, then board up the windows. You get paid for both. Ca-ching! Money! Here's a tip: Smash the windows yourself early on, when they're no zombies around, and replace 'em with boards. It's easier to see the zombies coming for you, plus: you get money. Build up cash in the beginning. You're going to need it. (I'm not sure why you get money for killing zombies, or why you need money to open doors, but I don't really worry about it too much.)

Occasionally, you'll be rewarded with power ups that do things like refilling your ammo to capacity, giving you double points, and laying out a nuke that incinerates any zombies on the screen. Here's a tip: Save the nukes for a bit if they spawn when not many zombies are on screen. There's nothing worse than lighting off a rare nuke just to take out a couple dudes. You can save up double points, insta-kill and ammo reload power-ups too.

As the game goes on, more and more zombies will appear to trouble you, and they'll get faster. In later rounds, you'll need some of the advanced weapons in other parts of the map, so it's a good idea to move out of the beginning area when you get a little money.

Here's a tip: The key is to Keep Moving. Do not be distracted by the mystery box. The Mystery box will spin the wheel and give you a random weapon. Sure, it might be a flamethrower, but it's just as likely to be a pistol. I stay away from the mystery box because I am against gambling. Here's a tip: Keep together. Do not stray. Do not walk away for a moment to pick daisies. You might think Richard Nixon is badass enough to handle a horde of zombies on his own, but he is not. He will die.

When you die, you'll be reduced to crawling on the ground, shooting a pistol, and your pals will have to run over to revive you and pull you from the clutches of the crowd of undead. If everyone bites it, you're totally dead, and the game is over. Don't be a burden to your friends. Keep alive! 

Be aware of zombies dropping from the sky. I guess they're coming through the ceiling or dropping from the roof or falling out of Air Force One.  Be aware of them! They bite.

Later, horrible hell-hounds will materialize from some other dimension where everything is horrible. They must be destroyed. Shoot them many times!  Here's a tip: Keep shooting! Shoot, shoot! Bang, bang! Headshots! Try not to miss!

Eventually, you will die. The game offers no way to win; you can only hope to survive a long time. Eventually, the increasing number of undead will win out and you will be sent to a heroic martyr's grave.

That, in a nutshell, is Black Ops' Zombie mode.

* the writer Chris Mautner muses about the state of DC's Vertigo imprint in the post-synergy world as a way of getting into an old-fashioned line review. I would think that a line review would tell you little about the state of things as these books would have been planned long before the latest round of DC restructuring and related corporate tweaking; what they have planned for next summer is probably going to be key. * Bill Griffith offers up a rare and awesome-looking cover he did for a literary publication in the early '70s. * Chris Butcher asks you to vote for two graphic novel options in the Canada Reads promotion. * Nicole Rudick quickly and deftly describes the abuse that Lynd Ward received from contemporary literary critics and Ward's elegant, pro-comics response in a Caldecott Award acceptance speech. * USA Today profiles Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Incognito, which just launched a second series. * the writer Peter David re-runs a column from the days when he used to go toe-to-toe with my former employer, The Comics Journal. I started working there about a half-year after that and temperature had not cooled. * I've never taken all-the-way seriously the extremes to which the esteemed comics historian RC Harvey argues his visual-verbal blend theory -- it doesn't seem to me arguable for half a second that a well-executed comic of serious intent and humane sensibility would kick the shit out of some silly, clumsy trifle that embodies the blending principle in every measure of art that should matter -- but I appreciate his consistency and the force with which he argues it. He's at it again. * Josh Flanagan on the Nerd Pride thing. Is there an age component to those kinds of issues? I find myself increasingly baffled by articles like these, unable to find purchase on any of the sides they describe. I couldn't even remember what Big Bang Theory was until the photo loaded. * not comics: "hey, what's your name?" -- Fantagraphics associate publisher Eric Reynolds and his Eightball t-shirt at a peaceful political protest, 1992. * Graeme McMillan reviews an issue of a Spider-Man comic book that he says serves as sort of a finale to the past few years of changing the baseline story and set-up on that character. He liked the issue, and liked the lengthy retrenching even more. * Johnny Ryan on those prints he did for the Walking Dead series; it's very entertaining. * the writer Timothy Hodler digs into Beetle Bailey like nobody's business, and because it's that particular industry-shaping juggernaut a lot of what he says resonates in terms of the entire newspaper strip medium over the last 50 years. * genial TCJ veteran Rich Kreiner looks at more comics by Joseph Lambert, which is exactly the same course of action I took after I saw my first Joseph Lambert comic. * Charlie Brown in the comic books was just like the Charlie Brown in the comic strips, except seedier. * D+Q's Tom Devlin provides his own list of favorite D+Q titles, in part to bring attention to books he thinks didn't receive enough attention in last Friday's "Five For Friday" spotlighting the company's works. * finally, if you're going to read one longer on-line piece today, make it Matthias Wivel's discussion of the Finnish comics scene, utilizing observations made by watching one of its societies make use of their space and time at the Helsinki Book Fair. I would love to see the same kind of forward-thinking made by North American groups at some of their shows.

Thai action and horror will take part in the Indonesia International Fantastic Film Festival from November 16 to 21 at the Blitz Megaplex Jakarta and November 26 to 28 at the Blitz Megaplex Paris Van Java in Bandung.

The fourth annual edition of Southeast Asia's only genre fest offers lots of clanging-sword action in Bang Rajan 2 (บางระจัน ๒), Thanit Jitnukul's CGI-blood-spattered sequel to his 2000 historical action epic about plucky Siamese villagers standing up to the Burmese invaders.

There's also a solid dose of horror, with The Snow White (ตายทั้งกลม , Tai Tang Klom), Sarawut Intaraprom's pretty good and pulpy ghost thriller about a pair of students who steal a fetus out of a dead mother's womb.

And there's the just-released Fan Mai (แฟนใหม่, also known as My Ex 2), director Piyapan Choopetch's followup to last year's ghostly girlfriend revenge thriller (Fan Kao, แฟนเก่า). "Koy" Ratchawin Wongviriya stars, playing a young woman who breaks up with her boyfriend after seeing him with another girl, who turns out to be dead. Pete Thongchua is lurking around in Fan Mai, casting menacing glances.

INAFF opens on November 16 with Gareth Edwards' sci-fi biological horror Monsters.

I have a new best friend. She's cool and smooth and adaptable. Kind of like a Dragon-Tattooed-urbanite who can deal with any situation, from a tweaking guest at a rave, to the post-modern gut-angst of intellectuals. She's slow to rile too - give her a nudge all she does is gurgle at you.

She's the toilet in my house.

I've been feeling the love ever since I recently got back from Haiti. At night, when the rooster began his panicky crowing at 3am, I got up, pushed through my mosquito netting and stumbled past sleeping co-workers to our iron-gated front door. Everything in Haiti is locked behind metal. I'd fumble for the key on the nail (thinking, yet again, about how we'd all die if there was a fire, locked inside as we were), to open the doorway's Adams' Family creaking gate. Then, once outside in the still-hot Caribbean night, I'd turn on my headlamp and weave my way to the "bathroom." Despite being closet-small, and covered, over every square inch, in unspeakable fluids, and reeking worse than an ancient, abandoned alley-side Port-a-Pottie, it too was tightly locked behind a metal gate. After fumbling with keys and getting the deadbolt to slide, I'd do my business by hovering over a deceptively-normal looking toilet. Perched on a ledge was a pre-sliced SkyMall magazine thoughtfully provided by our host - to be used as toilet paper. I got, from the experience, a new perspective on in-flight gadgetry ads, once I had to choose several times a day whether or not to wipe my bottom with them.

And after the unavoidable juggling act of keys, paper, and hand sanitizer, came the bucket pour. You couldn't pull a handle. Well, you could, but nothing would happen. Instead, you had to scoop a bucket of dubious water out of a large plastic bin (while trying to not think about what might be growing in that much-handled bucket). And then you needed an aggressive pour to get the water from the bucket to force the contents of the toilet bowl down a pipe to who-knows-where. No one warns you that splash-back is an inevitable  fact of life. Hence the perpetually damp, unspeakable floor. Since sewer pipes were almost non-existent (and "water treatment plants" a thing of myth) BEFORE the earthquake, there's no telling where your bucket's dump goes. Perhaps back up under your floor somewhere. And, keep in mind, our toilet facilities during this trip were, by far, the best that I'd seen Haiti offer (either in February or now).

In the best of homes, there was at least a sense, in February, that the bucket-dump into a rocking shell of a damaged toilet was a temporary approach to sewage and sanitation. October's trip (and its cholera outbreak) proved that assumption wrong. Even knowing there hadn't been "much" progress, I still went nine months after the earthquake hoping to see change. So was there change? Or was my toilet experience symbolic of all Haiti's lack-of-progress?

Turns out, Port au Prince was different. But not exactly the way I'd envisioned it.

For a start, the city was heart-breakingly neater. Port au Prince looked as though a million women with twiggy brooms had, together, swept the dirt of this entire San Francisco-sized metropolitan area. Literal canyons of dust and rubble had been brushed away or tucked into corner lots.

And walls were dismantled. By hand. We saw a man taking down one listing wall with nothing more than a broken piece of rebar. There was nothing else for him to use, not even a hammer, much less a sledgehammer. Since there's no heavy machinery at work, the dismantling can only go down as far as the owner is able to bang it out, leaving behind sturdier triangular corners. The roofless homes marching in a line across a hillside, originally shaped like rectangles, now looked like jagged broken-off teeth.

It is still clear that the city had taken a solid punch. And now it's swaying under the on-coming battering of cholera and a storm, both of them threatening to undo what progress has been made.

You see, the other signs of progress were more social than structural. Since February, people now thronged the sidewalks, weaving like schools of fish, the motion and conversations constant - where before there were only random flat-faced becalmed groups, drifting here and there like untethered seaweed, so abnormal in movement and structure that you worried about whether they could survive.

Fragile social roots have struggled to take hole after such devastation: socially organized camps, widespread advertisements for candidates in the upcoming election, and the painful tiny individual accumulation of belongings under a plastic sheet. There still are very very few actual "tents." Mostly people still live under suspended plastic sheets. But with storms bearing down, those same signs of social-progress-against-all-odds may be destroyed.

Cholera is a lethal infection of hurricane proportions. You can die in as little as 3 hours, with your entire body's amount of fluid coming out as stool. Socially, in Haiti, I found in February that there was already tremendous stigma attached to diarrhea. Not that surprising, really, if you think about the realities of living in a parking lot without a toilet while surrounded by other people. And now there are concerns that cholera may  have been brought to Haiti by the very international workers who came to help. Besides the devastating toll on lives (with reports ranging from 200 to Russian reports of 500 dead from cholera), how much current, and potential, good-will could such an event destroy?

Now there are reports of people being asked to "voluntarily" evacuate their sheet cities. But where do you go when you're already sleeping on the mud with only a plastic baggie of belongings you're trying to keep dry? What if you've only now, after months of struggle, found a group that can band together to make sure none of us women are raped when we go to pee in the night? Throughout time, we humans survive, and improve our lives, by banding together - so what does this level of forced social disruption do to a those who have only recently found each other?

I saw patients in Gonaives, a Haitian town that didn't even really make the news that much when a hurricane blew through in 2004 and left its entire population homeless, and 2,000 people dead. To that destitute not-yet-recovered area, 70,000 more people from Port au Prince were sent after the earthquake. We saw patients who were both locals and evacuees. The area is so poor, that it took our translators several hours to get us to realize that no one owned a spoon. You couldn't give a mother antibiotics for her baby and expect her to be able to measure them out. So we tore the tops off cough-syrup bottles and gave them to moms, demonstrating with them how much medicine made up a dose. One day, I saw a man who was "100 years old." Many of the very elderly didn't know when they'd been born, but he said he was 100, and, by God, he definitely looked 100. A sprightly 100 for sure, but definitely, as we say in medicine, he was one of the very very elderly. He was barefoot, and had the kind of triangular wide-toed feet that people get who have never ever worn shoes - the kind I haven't seen since I worked in Africa. He wore a hat and walked with a stick, and his blood pressure was an impressive 188/110. There was, of course, no way I was touching that blood pressure, since anything I might give him would only make him worse and he'd made it this far with it untreated. I asked him why he came, having to wait for hours in the sun to see me. He said, through the translator, that he came because he heard there was a doctor, and he wanted to see one. It took us a moment of circular translating to realize that he meant that he just wanted to lay eyes on a doctor.

Me.

But I noticed as we talked that his right eye didn't work right - the bones around it were disfigured and tears leaked from it constantly. Searching for a way to make him more comfortable, I asked what had happened. In "the flood" of 2004, he said, he was floating in the water and was hit in the head with a big log. His eye has never been the same. I told him that perhaps I could help with the problem of his eye tearing. He looked dubious. I said, "Your eye - it doesn't close when you sleep, does it?" He asked the translator, astonished, "how does she know that?" I explained that the nerve had been damaged, and that his eye cried all day because it was forced to stay open all night. I told him he could try taping it shut at night, and the tearing might improve, or even go away. He didn't really understand "tape," so we got some of our tape and I demonstrated how to do it. He left, with duct tape and a little acetaminophen for his back and hip pain, amazed at the miracles we in the States can perform. And I was ashamed at how little I had to offer.

It was only after the hectic clinic day was over that the story he'd told me finally sunk in. The imagined reality of it - being 94 years old, swept away in a flood, with a blow to the head that broke the bones of his face. What must it be like, to survive through such, and keep on living and learning, walking to see something new and meet people who have come from afar?

So I've come to appreciate many things after my trip to Haiti. First and foremost, the staggering resilience of the Haitian people. Only, I also have a bone-deep anger, on behalf of my 100 year old patient, and on behalf of all those people who are being asked to leave their tiny patch of mud, and people who are dying of diarrhea, that no one should HAVE to be that resilient. There are, in fact, in our world of random affluence, things that are just wrong.

Second, I have also come to appreciate my toilet. She works beautifully. I am now very aware that under her is a sewer line that connects me to an entire social network. Our flag should have a toilet on it - it is a symbol of how we, as a people, work together to improve our lives and our health - the lives and health of even the least of us. It is a symbol of what progress is all about, and a bottom-line (pardon the pun) measure of any country's success.

As those storms blow through Haiti, and floods rise, spreading misery and more cholera far and wide, you may feel the urge to turn off the news - if for no other reason than because you can't take it any more. And because there's nothing you feel like you can do to make a difference. If so, I encourage you to do one small thing. I encourage you steal this video, below. I spent a weekend making it with good friends. It is a mostly-wordless instruction video, suitable for any country, about how to make life-saving oral rehydration solution, using only things that a person living in a sheet city would have. I was appalled to find that there are almost zero YouTube videos about Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) - almost all (except for one in the Hausa language depicting an upper-middle-class housed family) are commercials for electrolyte drinks.

Maybe you don't think anyone in Haiti will ever see YouTube. I'd say you might be wrong. People there have cell phones, and everyone has an email address. Aid workers have smart phones to show videos, and people love to watch the tiny screen. One of the stars of the video, Dorothy Edwards, made a rhyme - perhaps you can tweet a version of it, and email it far and wide Cap, cap, Cap, cap, a cap, 4 caps sugar 1 cap salt, 1/2 liter of water, & what have you got? Pass it on! #haiti #ORT. Or you can send a visual image of the ingredients - like the picture off to the right. Or make another YouTube life-saving oral rehydration video, write a brain-worming jingle for the rhyme. Get your kids to create a hand-clapping game using the ingredients. Send it all to anyone and everyone. Like all acts of altruism, spreading the word can benefit your personal health. You'll know how to mix up your own pedialyte instead of making a midnight run to the store. Of course, you may want to make yours tastier by boiling it with a mint or ginger teabag. And, you can laminate the photo or recipe and put it in your personal disaster kit so you never have to worry about forgetting it if you need it.

There are the letters-in-a-bottle of our age, a thousand folded cranes of hope that we can launch one after the other, knowing that the more we send, the more likely that one, or more, will make it to harbor with a person in need.

See, there IS something you can do. Give thanks for your toilet. And steal my video.

What do you think? Ready to spread the word about ORT? Share your take in the comments section. Are you a Doc Gurley fan? You can follow Doc Gurley on Facebook. Doc Gurley is the only Harvard Medical School graduate, ever, to be awarded the coveted Shoney's Ten Step Pin for documented excellence in waitressing, and is a practicing board-certified internist. You can get more health posts at www.docgurley.com, or jump on the Twitter bandwagon and follow Doc Gurley. Also check out Doc Gurley's joyhabit and iwellth twitter feeds - so you can get topic-specific fun, effective, affordable tips on how to nurture your joy and grow your personal wellth.

Brooklyn-based duo Matt and Kim are like that guy or girl you know that always wears a sickeningly sweet grin on their face, even if they just got fired, their puppy died, a comet is plunging towards the earth leading to imminent catastrophe, or a combination of all three. Except this time you don't feel the urge to kick them in the shins to see if they'll finally break; you're just too busy dancing.

The real-life couple of Matt Johnson (keyboards and vocals) and Kim Schifino (drums and vocals) just want to play music and have fun—and it shows in their sets. They're now known just as much for stunning fans with their pearly whites as with the fast paced, upbeat blend of indie-rock and electro-pop they first started creating in 2004. For five years they remained a local phenomenon, until their breakout album Grand (2009) catapulted them from living in Matt's family's house to becoming a household name. Their rise is mostly due to Facebook, Twitter, the viral sensation of the video for "Lessons Learned," and samples of the undeniably catchy single "Daylight" in Bacardi ads, shows like Entourage and Community, and video games like NBA Live 10 and FIFA 10.

The exposure may have raised their profile, but the band has earned their following. Behind the hits of "Daylight," "Lessons Learned," "Good Ol' Fashioned Nightmare," and "Yea Yeah" are solid albums that energize, delight, and intrigue listeners with deeper lyrics than their merry melodies may imply. And even though it's not all rainbows and lollipops, the messages are always positive. After listening to a Matt and Kim album, you just feel good.

And now with the release of their third album Sidewalks set for this Tuesday, they're taking a new step in their musical career, with more time and money going into the production. This past Friday at The Phoenix they also hit their biggest venue in Toronto yet, with a longer set list and a louder sound. Part of the reason that the two-person band has succeeded in clubs in the past is the impression that the audience is just sitting in on a jam session in their garage. We were wondering if that same charm would transition onto a larger stage.

And though it may not seem like it, the happy-go-lucky temperaments of Matt and Kim were a fitting kick off to the Halloween weekend, because if you weren't beaming and bouncing within the first few chords, you were probably dead.

9:31 PM: Opener Donnis has only been on for a few minutes, but the floor at The Phoenix is almost shoulder-to-shoulder already, probably the result of Matt and Kim's promise to play Sidewalks in full as pre-show entertainment. But even though the floor is packed, Matt, casually standing and watching the show, is still spotted by a few fans who proceed to flatter and fawn over him. Matt is gracious and casual, and continues to sing along to the concert before moving to a different vantage point.

9:39 PM: A woman who looks about eight months pregnant walks by—this really is an all-ages show! But apparently no one told Donnis, who just yelled, "Who the fuck is fucked up in Toronto right now? Who drank some shit? Who smoked some shit? 'Cause I need to get fucked up too!" Classy.

9:49 PM: Even Donnis admits that he, a rapper, is an odd choice to be an opener for an indie rock show. Sure, he's getting the audience moving, but compared to Matt and Kim, he takes himself way too seriously. But the duo keep the excitement pumping with surprise appearances—Matt pops out from behind a curtain, appearing to be floating in mid-air. And Kim joins Donnis onstage for a dance and tells the audience, "This man makes me so excited, I can't wait for our set!" Neither can we, Kim!

10:21 PM: The black curtain falls to reveal a pyramid of LED screens, a new high-tech feature for a Matt and Kim show. The two take their signature positions in greeting, standing on their seats, arms raised in the air. "Hey we're a band called Matt and Kim!" We're definitely aware.

10:25 PM: Moving closer to the stage, one can feel the onset of Matt-and-Kim-itis. Symptoms? Chronic smiling, contagious laughing, and severe dancing. They launch into "Good Ol' Fashioned Nightmare" and there's maybe two or three feet in total on the floor at a given time.

10:29 PM: Matt and Kim reveal their costume plans for Halloween. Since he already has the hair, he's considering joining the hoards of Justin Biebers, and Kim ponders going as a slutty Miley Cyrus. We wonder: is there another kind?

10:40 PM: As an intro to "Lessons Learned," Matt tells the story about how he had to convince Kim to do the video for months before she agreed, but this was one of the rare occasions where he was right. They're engaging with the audience even more than usual tonight, openly flirting and giving little tidbits about their personal lives. They exude a new "Golly gee, they must actually really like us!" confidence that is not the least bit arrogant or annoying.

10:50 PM: Kim leaves her post at her drum kit to toss a few deflated balloons into the crowd. They're blown up to reveal the imprinted visages of the dynamic duo, with the logo of Sidewalks on the reverse side. At their command, the balloons are released into the air as the band sets off "It's a Fact." The audience's movements begin to match the flight of the balloons.

11:03 PM: A sorry attempt at crowd-surfing: a guy gets on stage, kind of leans over, and just stands there unsure until security tells him to get off, after which he gently lowers himself off the stage. Booing ensues. To remedy the mood Matt and Kim launch into the best singalong of the night, their version of "Just a Friend" that leads into "Ready? Ok."

11:07 PM: Matt and Kim's faces are luminescent with sweat, not only from the climbing temperature inside The Phoenix but from how hard the two are hitting their instruments (Kim has clearly earned her ripped arm muscles). And that guy in the mustard costume has got to be chipotle-flavoured, because he must be HOT!

11:11 PM: Lucky people in the front row—they support Kim's ankles as she walks out into on top of the crowd and proceeds to give us all a booty dance. An excellent example of athleticism! The audience gives their own collective shake to "Cinders," Matt and Kim's "fastest song ever." Basically the only dance move is to pretend you're doing the beep test at level one thousand.

And even though they're confined to two spots on stage, Matt and Kim's energy cannot be contained. They give their all to every stroke of the keyboard and bang on the drum, which then feeds the audience, who feed off each other. There's a general euphoria hovering over the crowd (and not a chemically induced one...for the most part), and it's incredible. We realize our mouths are hurting from the smirk on our faces that started when Matt and Kim took the stage, and hasn't left since.

11:25 PM: "This is dedicated to everyone who had a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year. We hope you didn't, but take three-and-a-half minutes to shake it out of your systems!" announces Matt as the audience buzzes during the slow-motion intro into "Daylight." Crowd-surfers suddenly appear like popcorn kernels, while others take Matt's advice to heart on the floor. The song is fun, fast, and simple—about the joy of driving down the street on a sunny day. Some may think it's corny, but we're happy to just smile and say cheese.

11:35 PM: And with that, the show ends. No encore, no material from Sidewalks to be heard. We exit as Matt and Kim lean over the edge and are swarmed with hugs and praise. Well if we got that sort of attention we'd be pretty damn upbeat too!

The next day, 9:34 AM: Oof, our thighs are making getting out of bed harder than usual on this Saturday morning. Luckily, the optimism from the concert is just as long-lasting as the physical exhaustion.

Photos by Harry Choi/Torontoist.

No new deaths this week, although the Vikings are on life support.  What a crazy season.  By no means did I ever buy for a second that the Cowboys were among the cream of the crop, but holy crap... the way they came out and just moped around in a blowout loss against the mediocre Jacksonville Jaguars to go to ONE AND SIX?  Absolutely mind blowing.  The latest look at the hierarchy of the NFC:

Dead, buried, and disgraced:

2011 could be just as bad for Dallas, too.  They're going to have to replace FOUR old offensive linemen (Andre Gurode, Marc Colombo, Leonard Davis, and Kyle Kosier) that will all be 33 years old by the end of next season.  Not to mention, that secondary is a major weakness.  Their top 3 corners all have issues - Terence Newman will be 33 years old, Mike Jenkins' play has severely regressed, Orlando Scandrick has been a disaster - and their safeties (Gerald Sensabaugh and Alan Ball) are among the worst duos in the NFL.  Also troubling is that 3 of their core players are quietly getting up there in age - Tony Romo will be 31, DeMarcus Ware will be 29, and Jay Ratliff will be 30 next season.  And not to pile on, but are we sure their vaunted 3-headed monster at RB was ever really that good?

As much as I'd like to, I don't want to make this whole thing about Dallas, so let's just say they have a lot to fix and move on...

Dead and buried:

Wondering if I buried the 49ers too early.  I mean... they were 1-6, but that division is just so ridiculously awful...

Special thanks to the Lions for their win over the Skins.

Taking it on the chin:

Three teams have made the playoffs after starting 2-5.  The Vikings won't be the 4th, but I'm not quite ready to bury them yet.

Stinkness:

The Cardinals actually showed a little something by coming back from a 21 point deficit against the Bucs, I guess.  Still, they lost... at home... to the Bucs.  The Cards are tied with Carolina for last in the NFC with a -65 point differential.  They stink.

See the rest of the NFC hierarchy after the jump...

Ruh Roh!

Oh boy.  Rex Grossman?  Really?  Rex Grossman is the better option to run the 2-minute offense, according to Mike Shanahan?  Over Donovan McNabb?  Wait... Let me digest that for a second.  Rex.  Grossman.  Better option in crunch time than Donovan McNabb.  Welp, I guess Shanny doesn't trust McNabb.  That's really the only reasonable conclusion one could come to in this situation.  Good thing you gave up a 2 and a 3/4 for him, Shanny.  Bang up job there.  Have fun with the media this week.

Mildly Relevant Again:

Yeah, they beat the lowly Panthers, and yeah, you can pick out any number of holes on that roster, but if you're a suffering Rams fan, you have to be extremely fired up that your team is legitimately still in the hunt to win that division, bad as it may be.

Meh-diocre:

Pete Carroll has done a great job with this talent-challenged team, and they're somehow 4-3.  Well, they're 4-3 because they've played only one team with a winning record (the equally meh-diocre 4-3 Bears), and they were just manhandled by the Raiders.  It's a little unfair that this team is likely to have a home playoff game.

Meh-diocre, Part 2:

Horrible OL will keep them from seriously contending.

I still don't buy it, but it's cute while it lasts:

Frisky little team here with a sparkling 5-2 record (currently tops in the NFC with the Giants and Falcons), but let's not kid ourselves.

NOTE: At this point, we set a cutoff line indicating a significant gap between the the above teams and the teams listed below...

What the hell is this team, anyway?

Wasn't this team supposed to be an offensive juggernaut?  Well, they looked completely listless on offense against the Jets, but their defense was spectacular in throwing a shutout.

Wildly erratic:

How do you lose badly to teams like the Arizona Cardinals and Cleveland Browns, and then come back and completely outplay the Pittsburgh Steelers?  Impressive win last night by the champs, but until they can prove they can win the games they should win (see next week's matchup in Carolina), I have to leave them right here.

The bye guys:

The status of each of these 3 teams remains the same as last week.

With a super-geeky tweet from a top-dog

These words will cut Steve Jobs deep:

"the definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make"

No really.

The coded message above is the first ever tweet from Google's VP of engineering, Andy Rubin, who took to the microblogging platform to hit back at Steve Jobs' mockery of all things Android.

If you're not bang up to date on your coding, the message is basically a statement regarding the openness of the Android OS.

Jobs had expressed his content for Android during an announcement of Apple's record quarter financial results. He said that the iPad's competitors were "dead on arrival" and stated: "Even Google is telling tablet companies to wait for a new release of Android next year...What does it mean when software supplier says not to use software for tablets, and what does this mean when you ignore them and use it anyway?"

The jibe from Rubin is no doubt a direct response to this.

However, don't expect a tweet retaliation from Jobs as he doesn't use the service. But, there's an Apple event scheduled for 20 October over in California and we wouldn't expect it to pass without a sly dig from the Apple CEO.

?

Read

Tags: Steve Jobs Andy Rubin Tablets Phones Google Apple

Google hits back at Jobs over Android comments originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:08:00 +0100

[quote user="www.OGBOBBYJOHNSON.com"] You can always post lyrics on a screen and they fall flat. Not that Nicky's jump off the page when you hear it, but in general, most of this stuff is STYLE. Which is my point.

Redman said, "I fuck a hoe with a baseball cap on like Mr. Marcus." If Wayne said that, Plex would fall out on the floor at how wack it was. But Redman can pull it off because we like Red's style.

Look at these lyrics. You call these HOT????? Lol. No one can defend these as hot, but they went off because he was that dude and we gave him points just for that.

Hah, sicker than your average Poppa
Twist cabbage off instinct niggas don't think shit stink
pink gators, my Detroit players
Timbs for my hooligans in Brooklyn
Dead right, if they head right, Biggie there every night
Poppa been smooth since days of Underroos
Never lose, never choose to, bruise crews who
do something to us, talk go through us
Girls walk to us, wanna do us, screw us
Who us? Yeah, Poppa and Puff (ehehehe)
Close like Starsky and Hutch, stick the clutch
Dare I squeeze three at your cherry M-3
(Take that, take that, take that, ha ha!)
Bang every MC easily, busily
Recently ******* fronting ain't saying nothing (nope)
So I just speak my piece, (c'mon) keep my piece
Cubans with the Jesus piece (thank you God), with my peeps
Packing, asking who want it, you got it ***** flaunt it
That Brooklyn bullshit, we're on it[/quote] You're the only cat that posts on here that makes their points so thorough I can't argue with it...haha. You're right about that Redman line. Red does occasionally have a wack line, but in the context of the track and with his delivery, it isn't wack. What would make that line wack if Wayne said it would be the fact that it Wayne would say some shit like "Uh, I'm high like high rise apartments, I fuck a hoe with a baseball cap on like Mr. Marcus, I'm heartless, uh, ya dig? Spark this, uh, park shit, I'm the shit, ha haaaa, I'm the best rapper alive and a carcass" haha

There were 15 finalists in the previous round of the 2010 James Dyson international design contest and now there is but one: Samuel Adeloju for his invention of the LONGREACH Buoyancy Deployment System.  Though the system looks like a sawed-off bazooka and the supposed emergency person operating it is depicted as warrior from Second Life, LONGREACH's highly explosive warhead is actually a rescue device.

 

I have a friend who loves skulls and she wanted me to illustrate a skull for a tattoo. Skulls are kind of not my thing, ya know? Skulls are very goth and goth is dark and scary - not bright, colorful or humorous, all things I tend to infuse into my style of pop art.

But pop art is defined as "a form of art that depicts objects or scenes from everyday life and employs techniques of commercial art and popular illustration." Pop art gets to play with the images that bombard us daily and skulls are all over the place in today's graphics so why not play with skulls?

I am not into goth, dark or scary but I figured why not do Pop Art Skulls in my own psychedelic, sixties pop art style? I love Day of the Dead skeletons so I took my cue from the vibrant way that an image of death is treated in the folk art skeletons of the Day of the Dead celebrations. (If you're not familiar with the Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos - Mexico's version of Memorial Day - take a look at some of the Day of the Dead images on Google.)

In this series of Pop Art I am taking silhouettes of every day images then filling them with parts of another pop art design I've created. In this pop art design I wanted my typical rainbow colors but slightly darker and less saturated overall so I dropped in black shadows and overlays on the background areas.

I also wanted some solid black shapes to sharpen the colors and to bring in the "dark" element so I popped in some black "holes" and a big graphic black circle for balance with some ghosted white stars shooting out from it. Then in went some big, bright round areas for tension across the front and all of a sudden I was seeing "black holes" and a "big bang".

These all translated nicely on the skulls giving them cracks and shattered areas - like skulls that had been around for a while. I got rid of the jawbone, added some jagged breaks and removed a tooth just to add to the illusion. What I ended up with was a cosmic explosion inside of a human skull. I kind of like the idea of a bunch of black holes and a big bang floating inside a dead head, it's sort of modern day physics meets Gothic horror - very fitting so close to Halloween!

Get both images on posters, t-shirts, skateboards, shoes, cards, invites, cups, aprons & other goodies:
Big Bang - Black Holes Pop Art Gifts & Gear

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I get spots occasionally, sometimes a few little manageable ones and sometimes a giant painful stonker of a spot. I really like Mario Badescu Drying Lotion and other spot treatments I have used are ok but I have yet to find a ‘killer’ product that knocks spots dead. The Cillit Bang of spot creams. Twitter [...] If you're reading this anywhere else, besides Cosmetic Candy, then this article has been shamefully stolen. Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Cosmetic Candy Twitter Recommends: PanOxyl Aqua Gel Spot Treatment Review

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VA - 100 Essential Tracks Rock Hits (2010) [6CD Boxset]
Genre: Rock | Label: Sony Music | 6CD | MP3 192 kbps | 560 MB
Tracklist:
CD1

1. Don't Fear The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
2. More Than A Feeling - Boston
3. Africa - Toto
4. Can't Fight This Feeling - Reo Speedwagon
5. Just Like Paradise - David Le Roth
6. The Final Countdown - Europe
7. Easy Living - Fastway
8. Up Around The Bend - Hanoi Rocks
9. FM - Frozen Heart
10. Eye Of The Tiger - Survivor
11. High Enough - Damn Yankees
12. Right Here Waiting - Richard Marx
13. To Be With You - Mr.Big
14. Cold As Ice - Foreigner
15. Broken Wings - Mr.Mister
16. Eye In The Sky - Alan Parsons Project

CD2

1. Black Magic Woman - Fleetwood Mac
2. American Woman - The Guess Who
3. I'd Rather Go Blind - Chicken Shack
4. Samba Pa Ti - Santana
5. On The Road Again - Canned Heat
6. White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
7. Mississippi Queen - Mountain
8. The Witch Queen Of New Orleans - Redbone
9. Spinning Wheel - Blood Sweat & Tears
10. Piece Of My Heart - Big Brother & The Holding Company
11. Rubytuesday - Melanie
12. Summer In The City - The Lovin' Spoonful
13. Get Together - The Youngbloods
14. Run Run Run - Jo Jo Gun
15. Race With The Devil - Gun
16. You Keep Me Hangin' On - Vanilla Fudge
17. We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place - Animals
18. No Fun - Stooges

CD3

1. Black Betty - Ram Jam Band
2. All The Young Dudes - Mott The Hoople
3. Cat Scratch Fever - Ted Nugent
4. Carry On Wayward Son - Kansas
5. Barracuda - Heart
6. Satellite Of Love - Lou Reed
7. Life's Been Good - Joe Walsh
8. Love Struck Baby - Stevie Ray Vaughan
9. Frankenstein - Edgar Winter Group
10. Black Night - Deep Purple
11. My White Bicycle - Nazareth
12. Pool Hall Richard - Faces
13. Dance With The Devil - Cozy Powell
14. Breaking The Law - Judas Priest
15. Evil Woman - ELO
16. Poison - Alice Cooper
17. Silver Machine - Hawkwind

CD4

1. Satellite - Hooters
2. Ashes To Ashes - Faith No More
3. Drinking In LA - Bran Van 3000
4. Love Rears Up It's Ugly Head - Living Colour
5. Runaway Train - Soul Asylum
6. No Rain - Blind Melon
7. The Valley Road - Bruce Hornsby & The Range
8. Lavender - Marillion
9. Free Money - Patti Smith
10. Just What I Needed - The Cars
11. Always The Sun - Stranglers
12. Heaven - Psychedelic Furs
13. Easy To Smile - Senseless Things
14. Happy - Neds Atomic Dustbin
15. I Wanna Go Where The People Go - Wildhearts
16. California's Bleeding - Amen

CD5

1. God Gave Rock And Roll To You - Argent
2. Legs - ZZ Top
3. Werewolves Of London - Warren Zevon
4. Total Eclipse Of The Heart - Bonnie Tyler
5. You're The Voice - John Farnham
6. Dead Ringer For Love - Meat Loaf
7. I Want You To Want Me - Cheap Trick
8. Once Bitten Twice Shy - Ian Hunter
9. Out In The Fields - Gary Moore
10. 18 And Life - Skid Row
11. Wait - White Lion
12. Cherry Pie - Warrant
13. When I See You Smile - Bad English
14. Metal Health (Bang Your Head) - Quiet Riot
15. Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through - Jim Steinman
16. See The Light - Jeff Healey

CD6

1. Wherever You Will Go - The Calling
2. Staring At The Sun - Rooster
3. Solitary Man - HIM
4. Place Your Hands - Reef
5. My Own Worst Enemy - Lit
6. Teenage Dirtbag - Wheatus
7. Two Princes - Spin Doctors
8. Survival Car - Fountains Of Wayne
9. Feel The Pain - Dinosaur Jr
10. Silver - 100 Reasons
11. All I Know - Screaming Trees
12. Drops Of Jupiter - Train
13. Neil Jung - Teenage Fanclub
14. Come Play With Me - Wedding Present
15. Motorcycle Emptiness - Manic Street Preachers
16. Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet
17. I Believe In A Thing Called Love - The Darkness

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Chuck Greene, father, former motocross superstar and survivor of a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas two years after the events in Willamette (chronicled in Dead Rising), is participating in Terror Is Reality XVII a pay-per-view television event centered around the wholesale slaughter of the undead. This vulgar competition is taking place in the newly built Fortune City, Nevada, billed as America's playground and filled with vice and temptation.

When an explosion occurs shortly after the show, zombies overrun the city and Chuck -- along with a zombie advocacy group CURE (Citizens for Undead Rights and Equality) -- is framed for what has been deemed a terrorist act. Now Chuck has three days to find evidence to prove his innocence before the military arrives to evacuate survivors, all while keeping his infected daughter supplied with the zombie inhibitor Zombrex. Oh, and dealing with the thousands of undead shambling about.

Chuck Greene is having what is, by any standard, a bad week.

Dead Rising 2 (PC, PS3 [reviewed], Xbox 360)
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release date: September 28, 2010
MSRP: $59.99

Dead Rising 2 features an entertaining story, if somewhat predictable. Chuck is a compassionate, sympathetic character that's easy to become attached to. That attachment is aided in no small part by the relationship with his daughter, Katey, to whom Chuck must administer Zombrex every 24 hours. The cutscenes centered around this activity shed light on their shared history and on Chuck as an individual, and pull the player into the story wonderfully.

It's clear that Capcom made an effort to create a believable atmosphere and a serious tale in the scenes which drive the plot forward, but that's about all it takes seriously. Throughout the city are other survivors whose situations and motivations are often utterly ridiculous and quite funny. Tongue-in-cheek humor that serves both as entertainment and commentary on American culture is pervasive in Fortune City, from the over-the-top Terror Is Reality game show and posters for high-octane films like Revenginator 7 to the zombies still lining up at the slot machines even in undeath.

For the most part, it works well enough. Some characters, such as the safe house security guard Sullivan, feel a little bit forced in the voice acting. But most are surprisingly natural, a huge surprise from the company which generally delivers hammed dialog and acting as in the Resident Evil series, and this title's predecessor. Meanwhile, the humor consistently hits the mark and there are plenty of tiny jokes littered throughout the world to discover.

Graphically, Dead Rising 2 is solid but nothing particularly special. Textures occasionally pop in very obviously,  noticeable whenever you travel faster than Chuck's natural running speed. And it does have some infrequent framerate issues where the game slows to an utter crawl. These issues are understandable when you consider just how much stuff exists everywhere in the massive world, but they are present and mildly annoying nonetheless.

At the start of the game, Chuck is not the most effective survivor you'll ever meet. As you kill zombies and explore Fortune City, you'll earn Prestige Points (PP) which go towards increasing his experience level. New levels bring an assortment of rewards, such as additional health, speed, increased inventory capacity and damage bonuses. You'll also learn a series of combat abilities which will become crucial to your survival, including melee attacks and the all-important dodge roll.

As a result of this progression, the game can be a touch on the frustrating side at the outset. Chuck's levels build quickly early on and you'll definitely notice the changes in him as levels progress. Eventually, he does become a machine of zombie destruction, but it takes time, much more than the game's eight hour running time allows for. You can, however, restart the story at any time, taking your earned experience levels, money, and unlocked items with you.

That's simply how the game is meant to be played. It's certainly possible to progress through the entire story from start to finish without ever taking advantage of the restart feature, and such an endeavor would provide quite a bit of challenge. But the spirit of Dead Rising 2 is in trial-and-error gameplay, and accomplishing all of Chuck's tasks will require you to plan ahead and manage your time effectively. Besides, there are few things more satisfying than obliterating everything in your path after working hard to attain the maximum experience level. New players would be advised to ignore the story for the first few hours while they play and experiment in Fortune City, earning a few levels along the way.

And that's very easy to do. Fortune City is a huge environment, featuring two shopping centers, an arena, a hotel and multiple casinos. Connecting them all is a vast courtyard area and an underground series of maintenance tunnels. These locales are broken up into eleven large regions, with additional smaller areas for the rooftops of certain buildings.  All of these are filled with weapons, equipment, interactive objects and, of course, zombies. 

The environments truly are amazing, with a staggering amount of things to interact with. Almost every section has some kind of special environmental object which functions as a mini-game, often rewarding Chuck with money and other rewards. But everything packed into them comes at a significant cost. Traveling between regions, as you'll do constantly, results in a rather lengthy loading time. It's not hard to feel like you spend half of your time outside of the game, staring at a static screen while you wait for the action to start again. 

Just about anything Chuck can pick up can be used as a weapon. Baseball bats and axes are obvious tools of destruction, but other items such as a stuffed moose head or a park bench can be wielded as well. Many weapons have two modes of attack, performed by either tapping or holding the attack button, to provide more versatility.

Beyond basic weapons, Chuck is a bit of a handyman and can create weapons at maintenance rooms liberally sprinkled throughout the map. Items which can be used to make these combo weapons are designated with a wrench icon and they are generally the most effective zombie-slaying tools in the game. Not only can most of them completely tear apart an oncoming horde, using them also provides bonus PP to help Chuck gain experience faster.

Discovering a combo weapon on your own rewards you with a "Scratch Card" which gives you the formula used in its creation. "Combo Cards" -- earned by rescuing survivors, gaining experience levels and more -- offer improved versions with greater durability and double the PP rewards. The entire system of combo weapons is an awesome addition to the game. Experimenting both with their creation and application is great fun. 

Building combo weapons is not the only way to acquire them. They may also be purchased from the four pawn shops set up by looters within Fortune City. These shops offer a range of merchandise from generally useless gag items to highly valuable -- and expensive -- unlockable items. Cash to purchase these items with is practically everywhere in the game, whether it be sitting on the ground, liberated from ATMs or earned in games of skill and chance.

To find the evidence which will exonerate Chuck, you'll have to be in the right places at the right times. A series of "Case" missions which will slowly reveal the truth of what has happened take place at specific times during the three days in Fortune City. Players of Dead Rising will already be familiar with the mechanic and if you didn't care for the manner in which the game forced you to follow its script or hate being interrupted, you probably won't like it any better now.

To its credit, the missions do feel as though they have a better pace to them in this sequel, allowing plenty of time to accomplish tasks elsewhere and still make it back to give a dose to Katey or start the next sequence of events. And, of course, you are free to not bother with the Case missions at all and simply slaughter zombies, though missing one of them cancels those remaining.

This is not without its flaws, particularly if you have restarted the story after you become aware that certain events will transpire eventually. Because they might not. Areas that should become opened regardless of whether or not Chuck carries out his role in the story never will be if he is not involved, completely destroying the illusion that the world has any life of its own. It shouldn't be an issue for first-timers and players who decide to skip out on the story for a run will be mildly inconvenienced at worst, but the effect remains present.

Chuck's eyes in Fortune City are provided by CURE chapter leader Stacey Forsythe who, monitoring surveillance cameras from the safe house, provide him with information on the location of survivors and gives reminders of important events using a transceiver. One of the major complaints from the first game was the manner in which similar calls would interrupt gameplay, forcing you to wait for the text of the entire conversation to appear on screen and any interruption would start the entire process over. Now, these messages can be easily progressed through with a quick button press, making the mechanic significantly less obtrusive.

Second only to the story-related missions, rescuing the survivors of Fortune City is one of Chuck's most important tasks. Just as with the Case missions, survivors are only present in specific areas at certain times on certain days, and you'll have to plan in order to save them all. Some of these survivors will simply join up with Chuck as soon as he meets them, but many have conditions which will need to be met before they'll accompany him. These conditions usually require Chuck to give them an item, though some require the presence of other, specific survivors or have other, more unique requirements. Also, not all of the survivors will be seen by Stacey, so exploring the world to find them is the only way you'll ever know that they are there.

Once in your party, survivors can be directed to either follow Chuck or wait in a location you designate. They are surprisingly hearty, and capable of taking more than a few hits from zombies (or friendly-fire) before being killed. They are also rather capable fighters and can be equipped with many of the game's multitude of weapons. Far from the burden they were in the original Dead Rising, survivors can now be a valuable asset when accompanying Chuck, making them fun to have around. Bringing them back to the safe house offers huge rewards, including large quantities of PP and other bonuses -- such as valuable doses of Zombrex -- offering plenty of motivation to seek them out.

Not every survivor is going to be Chuck's friend, however. Some of these individuals have had their minds broken by the chaos erupting around them and are now dangerous killers. The "psychopath" class of survivors act as mini-boss encounters and are typically well-armed, fast-moving and capable of taking a serious beating before they go down.

While it's easy to say that these encounters are "broken" or otherwise unfair, the fact is that they just require a completely different approach than dealing with the zombies. Fighting a psychopath means taking full advantage of the environment in which you fight and coming in prepared to deal with them is a must. This, again, goes back to Dead Rising 2's gameplay aesthetic being focused on trial-and-error. It may be frustrating to deal with the psychopaths, but the satisfaction of finally emerging victorious from a difficult encounter is sweet indeed.

That said, combat with psychopaths clearly demonstrates some deficiencies in the game's mechanics. Chuck is rather slow, even at his best, and contact with just about anything can interrupt an attack animation. Add in that distance seems to have little or no effect on all but a few ranged weapons (which are used by many, many psychos) and you have a recipe for disaster. Patience, planning and persistence can eventually win the day but you will face no small amount of consternation when it comes to these enemies.

Finishing the main game doesn't necessarily mean that you're finished, either. The trophies/achievements in Dead Rising 2 are expansive challenges, requiring you to use every item, every weapon and try on every alternate costume. The "Zombie Genocider" goal of killing 53,596 zombies from Dead Rising returns and the ante is upped further with an additional award if you can succeed in killing a whopping 72,000 undead. A completionist's dream, the amount of replay value is staggering and those who want to accomplish it all will have a lot of work to do.

In addition to the main game, Dead Rising 2 features two multiplayer modes. A drop-in/drop-out cooperative mode has been implemented, allowing a second player to join a game over the internet. When someone wants to join your game, the transceiver will ring and a quick button press brings them right into the action. Playing with a second Chuck Greene in the world makes everything easier, particularly psychopath fights where the enemies will have a second target to focus fire on.

The co-op works well from a technical standpoint, but playing in a public game in which anyone may join can lead to a bit of annoyance if the other player does not share your agenda. It's fine when all you want to do is muck about killing zombies and earning PP. But if you're pursuing the completion of missions, it's entirely likely that the random person joining your game is not going to be interested and can impede your progress. Both players must be present at the exit to a new locale in order to leave, meaning that you may have to kick your partner from the game should they decide to do their own thing. If you don't want to deal with receiving game requests, your game can be set to private from the options menu.

A versus mode is also present, called Terror Is Reality. This competitive game for four players is based around the competition of same name which Chuck participates in during the single-player game and features nine party-style events. Each round consists of four events, set in combinations which allow for a consistent level of potential scoring on the leaderboards. There's a little something for everyone in them, from the asset management of "Headache," in which you put blenders on the heads of zombies to rack up points, to the sniping game, "Bounty Hunter." And every round ends with a game of "Slicecycles," where players ride motocross bikes armed with chainsaws through the arena.

It's very rare that I become enamored of a competitive multiplayer game (as I am not overly competitive myself), and I often find that the repetition of most shooters and other popular genres for the form to wear me out. Dead Rising 2's versus offerings, however, are great fun with enough variety to keep players of all types entertained and competitive. As an added bonus, all points earned in Terror Is Reality can be converted into cash that you can take with you into your solo game, making it one of the fastest ways to earn the more expensive unlockable items in the pawn shops.

It's also worthwhile to make note of the announcers who commentate on games of Terror Is Reality. Taking a page out of Madworld, these voice-overs add puerile and base humor to the proceedings. Much of their dialog is groan-worthy, but there are some real gems in their comments and a fair bit of variety. You'll quickly grow weary of their comments in all-too-frequent rounds of Slicecycles. On the plus side, they are easy to ignore.

Terror Is Reality does suffer from some issues in its netcode. Games of "Ramsterball" inexplicably experience serious lag from time to time and can make it nearly unplayable. Oddly, the other games rarely experience these same difficulties, even after you've had problems in that event. Getting into a game may make you wait a fair bit of time also, if it even gets other players at all (the Xbox 360 version of the game reportedly has serious problems with this, though this reviewer has had rare issues of that nature playing the PS3 release).

Between the solid story, entertaining gameplay and huge replay value, Dead Rising 2 offers more bang for your buck than just about any single-player game on the market right now. Add in the multiplayer features and you have a great package. The design, however, is an acquired taste and simply will not be everyone's cup of tea. But for those out there who can appreciate an action game where the prevailing philosophy is one of planning and foresight, while forgiving its flaws, it is an exceptional treat to play.

8.5 -- Great (8s are impressive efforts with a few noticeable problems holding them back. Won't astound everyone, but is worth your time and cash.)

You're more likely to hear MGMT or Grizzly Bear on a hip-hop record than James Brown these days. So is the art of crate digging gone for good?

"Last LP we got down right, showed all these corny motherfuckers what hip-hop's supposed to sound like." So boasted rappers Show & AG on their 1995 track Next Level. As practised by the duo, members of New York's revered Diggin' In The Crates crew, this ideal hip-hop aesthetic involved samples – generally from past genres of black music – gained by, well, diggin' in the crates.

In 2010, though, it's hard to know what hip-hop's supposed to sound like. In the late-80s, artists as diverse as Eric B & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane and Public Enemy sampled funk-soul brothers like James Brown, Bobby Byrd and the Meters, before 90s newcomers Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest brought jazz cats like Roy Ayers, Weather Report and Grover Washington Jr into the mix. Certain drum breaks became sonic staples (who didn't sample the Honey Drippers' Impeach The President?), while regional tastes in beats – the sinewy, P-funk inspired grooves of Dr Dre and his West Coast compadres, for instance – ensured that hip-hop had variety without ever sacrificing that all-important nod factor.

Recently, though, hip-hop seems to have stopped marching to its own beat. A few years back, hipster DJs took delight in mashing up rap vocals with alt-rock or dance beats. Now, rap's rising stars are cutting out the middle man and rhyming over these backdrops themselves, if they aren't already busy recording with the artists behind them.

Kid Cudi has collaborated with MGMT, Ratatat, Best Coast and Vampire Weekend, while Philadelphia duo Chiddy Bang made liberal use of MGMT's Kids on their Opposite Of Adults track, taken from a debut album titled The Preview that also packs in samples from Passion Pit, Sufjan Stevens and Radiohead. Then there's BoB, partial to some (sampled) Vampire Weekend himself, and whose UK chart-topping Airplanes featured Paramore's Hayley Williams.

Perhaps it had to happen. Pop, rock, R&B; and dance music have all lifted tics and tricks from hip-hop, whose own aesthetic boundaries have been pushed back from the inside by the experimentalist likes of OutKast and the Roots. Consequently, where hip-hop's hook-ups with other genres once seemed jarring (think the shotgun marriage of rock and rap acts on 1993's Judgment Night soundtrack), these days it's like hip-hop has overdosed on cider and black at the indie disco.

Double-O, the producer half of Chicago hip-hop duo Kidz In The Hall, whose 2009 mixtape track The Grizzly Man cannily sampled Two Weeks by Jay-Z-approved psychedelicists Grizzly Bear, feels right at home in a genre-jumbling new world that's far removed from the aural apartheid of his pre-MP3 formative years.

'I think the energy we see in the indie rock world is as close as we've seen in recent years to the early days of hip-hop' Double-O, Kidz In The Hall

"When I was younger, you would get made fun of for being eclectic," he remembers. "You could only listen to hip-hop, even if you secretly enjoyed Nirvana or Green Day. Groups like OutKast and producers like The RZA and Timbaland started early, sampling or working with Björk, and I think once the fanbase saw that, they started to seek out those acts on the internet. Then, with the explosion of DJ culture and the mash-up going mainstream with the likes of Jay-Z and Linkin Park, it was inevitable that sampling would become more eclectic."

One could argue that hip-hop's actually the genre benefitting most from this sonic free-for-all. Where the music once bristled with the outsider energy that rock sacrificed during its 1980s bad-hair decade, its Puffy-led commercial explosion in the 90s meant that, by the new millennium, hip-hop was the establishment. Fair enough, then, that rap's new breed might look to their tight-trousered counterparts in the reinvigorated indie scene for style pointers.

"I think the energy we see in the indie rock world is as close as we've seen in recent years to the early days of hip-hop," says Double-O. "And most of these indie rock guys have grown up with hip-hop as a part of their musical palate, so you hear the familiarity, whether it be drums or cultural references or even attitude. People are attracted to that, but then there's the other side that are simply followers. It's 'cool' to be different."

Still, whether you like this new, open-door approach to sampling or think that hip-hop – for so long the coolest kid at the party – must be in the midst of a mid-life crisis, one question prevails: is the art of beat-digging heading the way of the XXXL hoodies and oversized denim that today's hip-hop stars have ditched in favour of cardies and skinny jeans? In the 90s, producers like DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Buckwild and Diamond D routinely braved the deepest, darkest recesses of densely packed record shops in search of a jazz, funk or soul obscurity within whose dust-filled grooves might nestle six seconds of sampling pleasure. Architects of the era's boom-bap sound, they were also archaeologists (as crew names like Da Beatminerz and the aforementioned Diggin In The Crates' made clear), but while these hip-hop Tony Robinsons would board flights to Tokyo in pursuit of vinyl, a browse of HMV's CD racks is the nearest some of today's beatsmiths will ever get to digging in the crates.

"I was in college when Napster was invented," recalls Double-O, whose catalogue with Kidz partner Naledge combines modern electronica with purist-pleasing soul and jazz samples, "so I used that early on. I never really got my hands dirty. I certainly bought a few records, but not at the level those guys did. And initially I only made records from scratch. When I got my first Akai MPC, then I started sampling hard."

'The best thing is finding that magic and chopping it just the right way … The worst is when someone finds it before you and puts it out' Double-O, Kidz In The Hall

But while the newest knob-twiddlers are unlikely to be on first-name terms with staff at New York's Sound Library or know the thrill of beating Lord Finesse to a box of Cannonball Adderley LPs at a yard sale, many of them are students of their dusty fingered predecessors. Xaphoon, the board-bashing half of Chiddy Bang, cites Premier and the late J-Dilla as formative influences. Ageing hip-hop fans might sneer, but in an era when many producers have ditched costly-to-clear samples altogether, the fact that Chiddy Bang are sampling anything makes them hip-hop traditionalists of a sort. Besides, doesn't a craftily chopped MGMT sample make a change from the umpteenth use of Bob James's Nautilus?

So has hip-hop abandoned or exhausted samples of a certain vintage entirely? Sure, Just Blaze might have reached no further than his Now 26 CD in gifting Eminem with a Haddaway sample, but Teflon Don, the latest album from big-selling Rick Ross, has Latin jazz maestros Caldera and 70s R&B; smoothies Enchantment joining hip-hop perennials the Bar-Kays, James Brown and Willie Hutch in a symphony of samples lush enough to soothe the ears from Rawse's sandpaper vocals.

Likewise, with Premier, Rock, RZA and even LA's self-proclaimed "Loop Digga" Madlib having submitted material, Kanye West's forthcoming Dark Twisted Fantasy album may do for traditional hip-hop sampling what his 808s & Heartbreak did for Auto-Tuned self indulgence, although the presence of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon should ensure that Yeezy keeps the Pitchfork crowd with him.

Still, even if that cast list gets bumped at the last minute in favour of David Guetta and Bloc Party, it won't matter. They'll stay rifling through the racks as they strive to keep the art of digging from being buried, bumping elbows with the likes of Black Milk, 9th Wonder, Jake One and Alchemist along the way.

Asked whether digging is a dying art, Double-O pulls no punches. "It is dead," he emphasises. "You can download entire artist discographies in minutes." Yet the producer's description of the highs and lows of his craft – "The best thing is finding that magic and chopping it just the right way … The worst thing is when someone finds it before you and puts it out" – suggests that digging's spirit is already being sampled in the digital era. Can you dig it?

Each weekday morning, BDL serves up a handful of NBA-related stories to digest with your gruyére.

Gary Washburn, Boston Globe: This time last year, Kevin Garnett was running sprints with Kinesio tape on his right leg, hoping the adhesive would serve as a salve for his surgically repaired knee. It's difficult to concentrate on preparation for a much-anticipated season when there is a large degree of uncertainty about carrying out basic basketball tasks. Garnett is beyond such concerns this time around. His right leg is not taped. He isn't thinking about a potential collapse every time he takes a step with vigor. During a drill in yesterday's first practice of training camp, he jumped effortlessly to dunk a ball with his right hand. There were no second thoughts, no twinges of pain when he landed, no limp in his first step down the court. This is not to say that Celtics fans will see the vintage Garnett from five or six years ago. He will, however, be reminiscent of the Garnett who spearheaded the Celtics' run to the NBA title in 2008. At age 34, Garnett realizes his limitations more than ever, but he is heartened by several factors this season. He is as healthy as he was two years ago, and with the additions of Jermaine O'Neal and Shaquille O'Neal and the development of Glen Davis, Garnett will not be relied upon to produce as he did three years ago. The years of him dominating the paint as a volume scorer and rebounder may have passed, but he should produce more of those vintage KG moments more often. He walked off the court yesterday with peace of mind, less concerned about his knee and more concerned about Shaquille O'Neal distracting him during his media session. He couldn't stop laughing when O'Neal started dancing behind the camera, and he seemingly hasn't stopped smiling since he reported to Waltham, Mass., and began working out with his teammates. "If you're speaking on my injuries, I feel better obviously a year later,'' he said. "My body feels good, man. I took only one rest today. [Rajon] Rondo and I just kept communicating and talking. It was a good day, man.''

Brian Schmitz, Orlando Sentinel: Vince Carter will not be coming back next season to play for the Magic - at least not at $18 million. The franchise holds a team option on the final year of his contract. He could return, but with a much, much smaller deal. This is the worst-kept secret around the club, of course.n Carter knows it, too, but Vince is a perpetually upbeat sort. He doesn't like to be within an earshot of negative news. So when someone asked him about his "contract situation," a situation in which he can become a free agent next summer, he bristled a little. "That's never been a concern for me. You said it like something's wrong. Like my contract could be voided in the coming weeks or something," Carter said. "I just play. I'm going to let my game speak for itself."

Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports: With negotiations on a four-team trade that would have sent Carmelo Anthony to New Jersey having died, the Nets have become less optimistic about their ability to strike a deal for the All-Star forward, league sources told Yahoo! Sports. "At least for now," one source said. The Nets "need some closure on the matter," the source said. The Denver Nuggets had shown only an inclination to dabble in talks, but not follow through on any deal. All the uncertainty had become too big a distraction for a new team like the Nets with a new coach and a young rookie like Derrick Favors, who would have gone to Denver in the proposed trade. [...] The four-team trade fell apart when Denver kept trying to include more of its players in deals to spare themselves a bigger luxury-tax bill that would've come with the arrivals of Kirilenko and Favors, sources said. The proposed trade would have added $4.5 million in salary to their payroll plus another $4.5 million in luxury tax.

Bob Cooney, Philadelphia Daily News:There isn't much Spencer Hawes can't do on the basketball court. The 7-1 center, whom the 76ers acquired from the Sacramento Kings, along with Andres Nocioni, for Sam Dalembert, has already impressed new teammates and coach Doug Collins with his shooting, passing and total court awareness. Off the court, Hawes is just as versatile, as comfortable talking about pick-and-rolls as he is discussing world politics or music or current events. Yesterday morning at Saint Joseph's University, Collins oversaw his first workout with his new team, and was impressed with Hawes, among others. "He's been great. He's what you call ball-friendly. Teammates love to throw him the ball because he loves to pass. When he gets that ball in the post, guys cut. The thing that I like about him and that his teammates like about him is that he is ball-friendly," said Collins. "Spencer thrives in structure. The more structure there is, he has such a good feel for the game. I love that he's been on another team before. I think with all big guys, especially young big guys, they thrive in that second home."

Jonathan Feigen, Houston Chronicle: There was no sign of Aaron Brooks' familiar, easy smile. The wit as quick as his first step was gone. When discussing his contract Tuesday, Brooks found no humor. Brooks had hoped his breakthrough season and status as the NBA's Most Improved Player award winner would prompt the Rockets to offer a contract extension. Instead, he said the Rockets' unwillingness to work on a new deal for beyond this season is "bothering" him. "It's kind of stressful," Brooks said. "I was hoping we maybe could get something done this summer, but we couldn't, so I'm stuck in the position I'm in. "I understand, but it's bothering me. It's the business of basketball. You have to take it like it is. I'm stuck with that." Brooks' agent, Leon Rose, is scheduled to meet with general manager Daryl Morey today to discuss the situation, but he would not comment other to confirm the meeting. Asked if he felt he deserves a contract extension, Brooks said, "Oh, no doubt. I deserve at least discussions." The Rockets customarily have not considered contract extensions, other than for players still under their rookie contracts. They will pick up their options on the contracts of Courtney Lee, Chase Budinger and Jermaine Taylor later this month, waiting - as is their policy - for the deadline.

Jason Jones, Sacramento Bee: If there was any question where DeMarcus Cousins and Hassan Whiteside fit, the color of their practice jerseys told the story. Neither rookie had on white jerseys like Tyreke Evans, Beno Udrih, Carl Landry or any other established veterans. Nor were they were in black like Jason Thompson or Omri Casspi. Cousins and Whiteside were in purple and yellow Kings practice jerseys, just like any other newcomer. Unlike last year when Evans was a starter from the beginning of training camp, Cousins and Whiteside are being eased into the NBA. "We want to teach all of our young players what it is we're trying to do and what the league's all about," coach Paul Westphal said. "How fast they progress depends on them. "We're not putting any expectations, and we're not putting any limitations." The Kings' first practice Tuesday had no contact. There were drills and a lot of instruction - the ideal situation for the rookies. "I came in and tried to soak up as much information as possible," Cousins said. "I was all ears. I wanted to make sure I learned everything so I could be on my P's and Q's when it's time to play." Cousins apparently did a good job of that, as his first practice caught Westphal's attention. Cousins dislocated the ring finger on his left hand last week but practiced with it taped. "I hate to give him a compliment this early, but I thought DeMarcus looked really good," Westphal said. "He's a very skilled player, he's focused, and he picked things up real quickly."

AP: Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love had an MRI on his swollen right knee on Tuesday. The exam showed no significant damage, only some mild inflammation. Love missed the first practice on Tuesday morning to go to the Twin Cities for the exam. But he returned and participated fully in the evening practice. Love says that his knee feels fine and that there is no concern going forward. The team says that there's no need to monitor the situation and that the Wolves will hold him out of practice if the swelling returns.

Mike Wells, Indianapolis Star: The Indiana Pacers are putting the "power" back in power forward. That means no more trailing 3-pointers from above the key, a Troy Murphy trademark. Murphy's gone, traded in the offseason, so the days of power forwards shooting 300 3-pointers are over. This season, expect a more traditional look. The Pacers want their power forward to sprint the court and attack the rim. They want him to bang around in the post. Spot-up jumpers will come from 15 feet, not 24. Who that blue-collar player will be is anybody's guess. "I think all of our bigs will have an opportunity at playing time," Pacers coach Jim O'Brien said. "I think it's open. We're not going to be a 3-point shooting team at the position because we don't have a Troy Murphy anymore." Josh McRoberts, Tyler Hansbrough, Jeff Foster, Solomon Jones and Magnum Rolle are candidates. Danny Granger also will play some at the position when O'Brien goes with a small lineup. Hansbrough is viewed as the future but is working himself into shape after missing most of his rookie season. O'Brien said he'd start McRoberts if the season opened today, but quickly pointed out that the regular season is four weeks away.

 

You're not making this easy for me are you, Mark? Your completely random songs about completely random things are very hard to review, despite how brilliant they are.

Last time it was 'Bang Bang Bang', which I've finally realised is actually about private detectives of old; the Philip Marlowe kind, not the pipe-smoking, eye-glass wearing Sherlock Holmes type. "Bang you're dead, ha!/Here's your silhouette back" and "No-one ever does it like that anymore" eventually sunk through,"eventually" being the key word.

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Inquest into fatal shooting hears Mark Saunders wrote notes pleading to speak to his wife and told police he was frightened

Barrister Mark Saunders, shot dead by police during a siege at his London home, wrote notes pleading to speak to his wife and threatening to kill himself during the five-hour stand-off, an inquest heard today.

The 32-year-old lawyer, a regular cocaine user who was more than three times over the drink-drive limit, also repeatedly told police negotiators he was frightened.

Westminster coroner's court heard the former Territorial Army soldier, who had been firing his shotgun from his kitchen window, wandered around his flat drinking from a bottle of wine with his shotgun in his hand as police surrounded his home in Markham Square, Chelsea on 6 May 2008.

At various times he held notes to the window, said a firearms officer giving evidence anonymously. The first, at 7.55pm, had a single word: "Wife". The second read: "To my wife, information to my wife". At 8.15pm another read: "I love my wife to bits, I think I really do".

The last at 8.19pm, just over an hour before he was shot, said: "I want to say goodbye, kill myself".

Other notes recovered from the scene included: "Please, I want to talk to my wife", "I don't know how this happened", " I'm not a bad lad", "Mum" and "I can't hear".

Saunders died when he was hit by at least five bullets fired by police marksmen at 9.32pm. Police said they fired in self-defence and to protect others.

In his statement, the officer, known only as Sergeant SE, described watching the shooting on a film link from the police helicopter overhead.

"I saw Mr Saunders start to bring the shotgun down. The barrel was starting to come down and I was saying 'no, no, no' to myself. At the moment it reached the horizontal, pointing to the row of containment officers, I heard the volley of shots".

Saunders's widow, Elizabeth, had previously told the inquest she did not know her husband had repeatedly asked for her, and she was unable to call him as police told her to turn her phone off.

Friend and fellow barrister, Michael Bradley, told the jury that police response to a request by him and Saunders's wife to "knock on the door" and talk to her husband was "instant and negative". He added that the police had said: "Absolutely no way, can't do that for your own safety".

Bradley said he arrived outside the flat after receiving a drunken, "meandering" call from Saunders at about 4.30pm, which ended with him hearing the loud bang of the first shot. He dialled 999 and got a taxi to Chelsea.

He found the road cordoned off and Saunders's wife "sitting sobbing with her head in her hands" being looked after by police officers in a nearby shop..

"Liz thought that Mark would find this terrifying and distressing. I remember her asking could they try to move people out of sight so that he wasn't faced with looking at a police siege. It might dampen things down, because she was worried how Mark would feel if he recognised the situation," he said.

At the time, Bradley said, he thought it was the "best option" – a way of "de-escalating this terrible, dark scenario".

"It was now a nightmare armed siege and I feared then that, if he was ever conscious of what he had done, he might turn the gun on himself".

Patrick Gibbs, the QC representing Elizabeth Saunders, told the jury he thought the policing "seemed chaotic". There seemed to be "only two guys running the show on the ground", one a negotiator in casual clothes, the other a uniformed officer. "It did seem to me there was no guiding hand controlling matters," he said.

The most senior officer in charge was former Met commander Ali Dizaei, who was last year jailed for corruption. He said, in a statement, he had imposed a gold strategy to "provide all reasonable steps" to contain the area. The day-to-day running of the operation was left to officers under his command.

At 7.02pm, said Bradley, he received a call from Mr Saunders but all he could hear was slow breathing. After that both he and Saunders's wife were told to turn their phones off to keep the line of communication open for police.

Asked if he was "tempted" to just go and knock on the door, he replied: "No. When you're in that situation, it feels like a nightmare, totally unreal. How can this be happening?

"You are absolutely not in control. There are police everywhere, these guys with body armour and guns crawling through the back and on to the roof.

"There are helicopters and ambulances. The road is cordoned off and you are being given orders, effectively. Not in a brutish way, but you are not being given any option." He said he had no concern that Saunders would hurt him.

Toxicology tests on the lawyer found up to 255mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. Dr Stephen Morley, who analysed the samples, said there would be "significant effects". Hair and urine samples revealed he had taken cocaine repeatedly over the previous six months, but though he had taken the drug in the days before his death, he had not done so within 12 hours of the shooting.

The inquest heard that seven out of the 12 firearms officers stationed in and on the building in Bywater Street, which backs on to Markham Square, fired. Saunders suffered five gunshot wounds and was grazed by a sixth, with injuries to the brain, heart and liver and arms.

The jury was visiting the scene of the shooting this evening.

The case continues.

Notes lawyer wrote before police marksmen shot him dead in standoff are read out in coroner's court

A barrister whom police shot dead during a siege at his Chelsea home wrote notes pleading to speak to his wife and threatening to kill himself during the five-hour standoff that ended in his death, an inquest heard today.

Mark Saunders, 32, was a regular cocaine user and was three times over the drink-drive limit at the time.

In handwritten notes read out at Westminster's coroner's court, Saunders, who had been firing his shotgun from the kitchen window, wrote: "Please, I want to talk to my wife." Others read: "I don't know how this happened. I'm not a bad lad"; "I want to say goodbye and kill myself"; "Mum"; and "I can't hear."

Michael Bradley, a friend and fellow barrister, told the hearing he and Saunders's wife had asked police to let them knock on the door and try to talk to Saunders. The police response to their requests, however, had been "instant and negative", he said: "'Absolutely no way – can't do that for your own safety.'"

Saunders died when at least five bullets from police marksmen hit him on 6 May 2008 after a five-hour siege that began after he fired his shotgun from the couple's top-floor flat.

Bradley told the court he had arrived at the scene after receiving a drunken, meandering call from Saunders at around 4.30pm, which ended with the loud bang of the first shot.

He said he had found the road cordoned off, and Saunders's wife "sitting sobbing with her head in her hands" in a nearby shop, where police officers were looking after her.

"Liz thought that Mark would find this terrifying and distressing," he said. "I remember her asking [whether they] could ... try to move people out of sight so that he wasn't faced with looking at a police siege: it might dampen things down. Because she was worried how Mark would feel if he recognised the situation." At the time, he said, he had thought it the "best option" – a way of "de-escalating this terrible, dark scenario".

"The situation had escalated, so it was now a nightmare armed siege. And I feared then that, if he was ever conscious of what he had done, he might turn the gun on himself."

But he said the police gave "no consideration" to the idea.

Toxicology tests found up to 255mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood. Dr Stephen Morley, who analysed the samples, said this would cause "significant effects". Hair and urine samples revealed Saunders had taken cocaine repeatedly over the previous six months; though he had taken the drug in the days before his death, he had not done so within 12 hours of the shooting.

Bradley said he had become worried when Saunders rang him at around 4.30pm "in deep drink" at his chambers. During a "garbled, meandering" conversation, Saunders had said "something like, 'Damn. I've dropped the silver hen' or 'silver pen' – something like that". There had also been a reference to cartridges, Bradley continued.

"I said: 'You're not playing around with your gun or something stupid like that.' And he said: 'OK. I'll put the gun down.'" Then Saunders had carried on talking about chambers business.

Bradley said he had offered to meet up with his friend at a nearby restaurant but at that point Saunders said something like "shooting out the window". "Very shortly after that," Bradley said, "there was a bang and the phone went dead."

He had tried calling back, but got voicemail, he said. He then texted, saying: "Call me now. If you do not call me immediately, I will call the police." He then dialled 999 and jumped into a taxi to go to Saunders's home.

At 7.02pm, Bradley then received a call from his friend. "He wasn't speaking," Bradley said. "All I could hear was breathing, quite regular-type breathing. I said: 'Mark. Saundy. How are you? What's up, mate? Please say hello ...' But he didn't respond. Just this slow breathing.

"I said: 'Please don't worry. Everything is going to be OK. Please just calm down.'"

The call lasted four minutes and 34 seconds. After that, Bradley and Saunders's wife were told to turn their phones off in order to keep the line of communication open for police.

Asked if he had been "tempted" to just go and knock on the door, he replied: "No. When you're in that situation, it feels like a nightmare: totally unreal. How can this be happening?

"You are absolutely not in control. There are police everywhere, these guys with body armour and guns crawling through the back and on to the roof.

"There are helicopters and ambulances. The road is cordoned off and you are being given orders, effectively – not in a brutish way, but you are not being given any option."

He said he had had no concern that Saunders would hurt him.

"I remember Liz saying she was confident there was no chance that Mark would try to shoot her, or something of that nature.

"I felt sure from what I knew of Mark that this was the best way forward. And so I did try and impress on the person we were talking to that this was the best option. And the police said: 'No. There's no way we can allow that to happen, for your own safety.'"

The case continues.

Physics can seem a lot like a dirty trick. You spend most of junior high and high school being told that there are rules to this thing, that the Universe functions in predictable and rational ways. Apples always fall down from the tree onto Newton's head. Cars traveling at different speeds crash into each other with a force that you can sit down and calculate on a TI-86.

And then they pull the rug out from under you.

Suddenly, it's all photons, antimatter, and cats that are simultaneously alive and dead. Even the Universe itself might be just one of many, with every outcome that has ever been possible playing itself out somewhere. It's confusing. And into that gap in popular knowledge tumbles everybody who bought into What the Bleep Do We Know?

If you're lost, Marcus Chown can help. His book, The Matchbox That Ate a Forty-Ton Truck, explains how science got from the macro, everyday world of Newtonian Laws to the far-out, quantum reality we know today. More importantly, he makes the latter relevant, piecing together science history, sub-atomic particles, physical cosmology and everyday life. If you read one physics book after graduating from high school—hell, if you read one physics book while in high school—this should be it.

When I say that Chown makes quantum physics relevant, I mean more than simply praise for his ability to connect complex theory to brilliantly simple real-world analogies and mental pictures. Although, that's awesome.

One of the frustrating things about the way physics is taught in school is the way it disconnects Point A from Point Z. You learn to draw a model of the atom in some random lower-level science class.

Somewhere, and some when, else, you learn that the sun is 93 million miles away from us, a miasma of incandescent plasma burning at temperatures of millions of degrees.

Completely separate from the first two, you learn about nuclear energy and E=mc^2

Chown connects those dots—and adds in the fascinating history of generations of scientists trying to explain how the sun could possibly keep itself burning hot enough, long enough, for us to exist at all. Mix it all together and you come away with not only an intensely improved understanding of the structure of atoms and how nuclear fusion works, but also why it matters ... and what a wonder it is that we know any of this.

That's just one example. Chown has a real knack for creating, "Oh, I get it now!" moments, and The Matchbox That Ate a Forty Ton Truck is full of them, building up from the basics of quantum theory, to the fire at the heart of the sun, to the Big Bang and the apparent absence of alien life. In fact, it's hard to pick one simple fact from the book to tell you about, precisely because Chown does such a good job of tying everything together and making physics understandable as a system, not just separate parts.

And if that's not enough to make you want to read it, I'm not sure what else to say.

Marcus Chown: The Matchbox That Ate a Forty-Ton Truck
Also known in the United Kingdom as We Need to Talk About Kelvin

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this book from the author. That said, I receive a lot of free review copies of books. I only tell you about the ones I think you really need to read.

Image: Some rights reserved by the mad LOLscientist

Once it was just Quorn. Now the range of meat substitutes in the shops is baffling

Meat substitutes are leaner but also kinder than meat, to animals, to the environment, to your kitchen utensils (with almost no fat, they rarely make a sticky mess). But my problem with things pretending to be meat is they are never normally very nice. I have been scarred by my childhood days of Quorn when the only version it came in was weird shreds. Imagine crispy duck, and then remove the delicious skin, the moisture and taste and the dark, exotic colour: that was Quorn in the olde days. But now there are a baffling number of products and I decided to test the lot – supermarket own brands and specialist names (eg Linda McCartney, Cauldron). I rejected anything that was never intended to have meat in – falafel has always been tasty. The only thing that truly counts as a meat substitute is when the producers get a mycoprotein, or a rehydrated protein, or specially moulded tofu, or do something unspeakable to a mushroom, with the aim of making it taste like meat.

I had great success shifting the Quorn scotch eggs with my kids, even though I found them a bit icky because nothing about them resembled real food. Ditto, the Quorn satay sticks, when to an adult these were simultaneously mouth-drying and waterlogged (total riddle, but that's what you get when you mess with protein). They wouldn't touch the sausage rolls, but I tried them both hot and cold. The cold ones were manageable; hot, the comparison with a proper sausage roll was too evocative and sad. In a true sausage roll, the fat in the meat works in harmony with the fat of the pastry, a delicious heart attack in a matchbox. Quorn is incredibly lean, and the pastry in this was pretty puritanical. But Quorn is onto something with the sausage mix, which was heavy on the thyme and rosemary.

Linda McCartney still rules the world of sausages though. I can't tell you how – all they reveal on the back is "flavourings" – but they were not too salty, not too herby, not too sugary. The Cauldron Lincolnshire sausages weren't horrible either, just incomprehensibly sweet, while the ones from Morrisons looked a bit frightened (they were so small and pale), but were fine once cooked in the oven.

Following my enjoyment of the sausages, it came as a surprise to find so many crimes committed in the name of the frankfurter: the Taifun (it's a German company) tofu wieners were repellent long before the point of eating. They wobbled like the intestines of the dead; cooked, they fell apart as you touched them, making it impossible to catch them on a fork. Sainsbury's frankfurters weren't as disgusting, but were a long way from edible – a vile smoked flavour and rubbery texture. In the same hideous meal, I tried the Quorn bacon and ham. The bacon looked like a leather strap you might bite on if you were having Electric Convulsive Therapy. And I don't think I'm underplaying the seriousness of mental illness when I say that it would only be directly before ECT that I'd ever again put something like this into my mouth.

"Meats" like mince to which you add your own sauce seemed to be slightly better, while breaded escalopes were hit and miss. Quorn came up trumps again with its lemon and black pepper escalopes which were surprisingly meaty; however, it cannot imitate beef steaks and should never try. Chicken is relatively mild in taste, so you're mainly focusing on the texture; sausages work as a backdrop to the herbs. Steak tastes like steak. None of the meats, incidentally, were as bad as the Redwood "fish-style" fingers. God knows what fish they were trying to imitate: the fake flesh was a greyish pink, like a long-dead mullet. They tasted like a disease.

In a nutshell, go Quorn for domestic use and Linda McCartney for entertaining – her range is classier (chilli with potato wedges, lasagne – it all looks quite fancy). But I find myself with more and more to say in favour of the lentil.

Don't try any of this at home until you have exhausted all your garden- variety vegetables.

Best for

▶ Kids: Quorn Scotch Mini Eggs – pleasing to the younger palate, not too salty.

▶ Annoying vegan at a dinner party: Linda McCartney's Vegetarian Roast – looks like one of those rolled turkey crowns that people used to serve in the 90s, before Jamie Oliver et al pioneered the inclusion of the bone (if there's one thing vegans can't mimic, it's a great big bone).

▶ Dieters: Tesco meat-free mince – it's very filling and can be turned into loads of dishes.

▶ Tasting of meat to someone who isn't concentrating: Quorn chicken goujons - the breading provides a lot of the flavour and the texture is bang on.

▶ Your meat-free Monday: Linda McCartney Sausages.

Worst for

▶ Texture: Tofu wiener – a horrible, totally unreliable cohesion.

▶ Taste: Quorn bacon – tastes like those bacon bits that Americans shake on to salads, only 100 times worse.

▶ Appearance: Quorn ham, it's the colour of a surgical truss.

▶ Anti-climax: Tesco Garlic Kievs – looked quite golden and indulgent, actually dry and punishing

▶ Social embarrassment: Tofurkey – an American invention, to feed the vegetarian at Thanksgiving, and has a lot of the accoutrements, sauces and stuffing balls and suchlike. Tastes absolutely nothing like turkey, and all trussed up, optimistic and confused, it was like a dog in a prom dress.

Improvised explosive devices – IEDs – are the Taliban's weapon of choice. But many victims don't even know they're maimed

"This is a new beast." – Dr Alisa Gean, a traumatic brain injury specialist in treating soldiers

The IRA tried to murder me on three separate occasions. Nothing personal, just that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the Provos' deadly "mainland campaign" against Brits took the form of planting IEDs, improvised homemade bombs, in central London where I lived. In Picadilly, shrapnel from a device inside a letter box grazed my head; the same month, a McDonald's I walked past on Oxford Street blew up; and still later, outside a Sloane Square pub, glass shattered at my feet after an explosion. Despite my fellow Londoners' show of sang-froid ("Oh I say, is that briefcase under the bar stool for the past hour untended?"), such an intense level of exposure and vulnerability left me shaken. 
 
The Provos had resorted to the "poor man's artillery" of IEDs because they were outnumbered and outgunned by the British army and Ulster constabulary. How else were they to achieve their political agenda other than by indiscriminately killing British civilians?
 
IEDs are made by people who don't care who they murder. 
 
I read Afghanistan casualty lists almost every night, and my rough calculation seems to agree with the Pentagon's: that IEDs – jerry-built, cleverly-disguised roadside bombs – cost way more American (and Afghan) lives than snipers, mortars or RPGs. According to Nato and the department of defence, despite General Petraeus's soothing assertion that the incidents are "flattening out", since 2007, the number of Taliban IEDs has increased nearly 400%, and IED kills by that same 400% and IED-crippled troops by 700%. At least 30% of combat soldiers, in Iraq and Afghanistan, are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from IED blast waves – without suffering a scratch.  
 
But percentages don't bleed. For yourself, look up the casualty lists from your own state or district, add up the IED "kinetic events", and study, really look at, the names and photographs of the dead soldiers who suddenly seem part of our own families.
 
The harsh lesson is that no foreign invading army like ours can beat a "backward" native people who, for a few dollars and in five minutes, can build a dish pan, copper wire, a left-over 155mm Soviet shell and a bit of Semtex or C-4 and fertiliser into a killer IED hidden in potholes, among garbage and even inside animals.   
 
It's terrifyingly easy for a soldier to get blasted apart by these devices. You don't even have to step on a pressure plate any more, just walk by an innocent-looking rock and – bang! – you're shredded by remote control. Increasingly, these things are set off by text messages from afar. Jihadists may be typecast as primitive "ragheads" on TV news, but they have learned to be thoughtful and high-tech assassins. There are over 5,000 jihadist websites where killers can share information – they refine their techniques faster than we can counteract them.
 
In his latest Oval Office speech, President Obama, in paying anodyne tribute to the troops, glancingly referred to "the signature wounds of today's wars, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury (TBI)". Let's pause a moment on TBI, where a visible wound may not show but the person's brain has been shaken as in a Mixmaster by the faster-than-speed-of-sound blast of an IED explosion. No helmet or body armour yet invented can protect from its peculiar one-two punch that causes, on the battlefield or much later, microscopic cellular and metabolic damage, leading to blindness, deafness, memory loss, premature ageing and destruction of neurons that cannot be replaced.
 
As the pediatric surgeon and Vietnam veteran Ronald Glasser says, "the symbol (of the new IED-dominated battles) is not the cemetery but the orthopedic ward" and neurological unit.
 
Strangely, army commanders are extremely reluctant to award Purple Hearts for IED wounds, which can be hard for combat medics to diagnose in the heat of battle. Even skilled field-hospital emergency doctors may miss the insidious danger signs. If a soldier looks unscratched, just a little dazed, military culture demands he or she be shipped back to fight again. Troopers themselves may be reluctant to report symptoms, fearing career damage or being seen as a goof-off.  
 
Once back home, soldiers very often have to struggle for treatment. Congress is eager to vote the Pentagon $20bn for JIEDDO, the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Organisation – who thinks up these names? – whose own boss, general Michael Oates, confesses is only marginally useful. But when it comes to money for medical research into the little-known effects of TBI, the government drags its feet. At the moment, despite evidence that 30% of our battlefield casualties are bomb-concussion cases, the military and the veterans administration make it as hard as possible to get help.
 
President Obama boasts that "because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to go on the offence" in a deteriorating Afghanistan, which translates into more visible and invisible wounded. Soldiers lose their lives, arms, legs, eyes, even faces. We can see those terrible wounds. But concussed, TBI-suffering soldiers also lose parts of their minds sometimes without even knowing it. Until they get home and can't remember their daughter's name.

It's that time of year again, faithful followers of the TV Nerd! It's time for me to take a look at the Fall 2010 TV season and see what strikes my fancy. This year, like last, is remarkable for how few new shows whet my appetite, and indeed, how few shows do overall. This may be one of the leanest seasons for the TV Nerd in quite some time!

So, without further ado, and with thanks to the good folks over at Entertainment Weekly for their research library Fall TV Preview issue, let's check out what's in store, on a day by day basis:

Mondays
I'm already hooked on NBC's Chuck and ABC's Castle, but nothing else scheduled for Monday nights is grabbing me. The Event? I'm not big on political conspiracy theories. If I were, I'd read Daily Kos and Andrew Breitbart. Hawaii Five-O? I'm over police procedurals, especially the slick kind. Mike and Molly, a sitcom about two overweight people in love? I liked it the first time I saw it, when it was called Roseanne. Chuck and Castle it is, then.

Tuesdays
There are no recurring programs on the Big 5 networks on Tuesdays that I'm interested in, but two new ones have piqued my interest. The first is ABC's No Ordinary Family, with Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz as the heads of a suburban superhero family. Advance buzz has not been kind, but I'll be giving it a shot just the same. The second show is Fox's Running Wilde. I have to admit, this sitcom's Dharma & Greg-like premise does nothing for me, but I'm a huge fan of Will Arnett and the show is created by Mitch Hurwitz of Arrested Development. That's enough to get me to give it a try. Also, I hear FX's Louie has been renewed, so hopefully that will be back soon. Also also, now that everyone I know is a fan, I'm wondering if I should give Fox's Glee a try. Thoughts?

Wednesdays
For whatever reason, Wednesday is a wasteland on the Big 5, at least as far as I'm concerned. I'm mildly interested in NBC's new series Undercovers because it looks like it could be a lot of action-quip-spy fun, but that's it. I keep meaning to give Modern Family a shot, but I finally did with The Big Bang Theory and didn't like it nearly as much as everyone said I would, so I'm reluctant to try another sitcom that people are always telling me to watch. Of course, outside the Big 5, Wednesday isn't such a wasteland after all, what with shows like South Park and Ugly Americans returning to Comedy Central.

Thursdays
And once again the networks have decided to cram pretty much everything onto Thursday nights. There's NBC's Community, 30 Rock and The Office, of course. (On a side note, I can't believe they bumped Parks and Recreation to midseason to make room for Outsourced, which couldn't look less funny to me--or more poorly timed--if it tried. Really, NBC? You're going to try this one when we have 9.6% unemployment nationally? Good luck!) There's also CBS's The Mentalist, and after a much improved second season I'm looking forward to seeing how this one progresses. When it comes to new Thursday shows, the only one that looks interesting to me is CBS's S#*! My Dad Says, mostly because the Twitter is funny and everyone loves William Shatner. But advance buzz for this one is pretty bad, and I don't know how they can stretch what works as a 140-character tweet into a 22-minute sitcom episode.

Fridays
Once a wasteland of programming where shows went to die (Freakylinks, anyone?), Friday is no longer the kiss of death thanks to the popularity of DVRs and downloading episodes. So niche shows like The CW's Smallville and Fox's Human Target can actually thrive there now. Presumably. It's Smallville's last season, so consider it untouchable, but Human Target was a surprise renewal, which means even a Friday night pass may not be enough. I grew to really like this show, though, and hope it sticks around. Also, there's always E!'s The Soup. But again, no new shows are grabbing me on Fridays.

Saturdays
More Doctor Who and Primeval on BBC America, please!

Sundays
Dexter! Well, maybe if I had Showtime. Which reminds me, now that I don't have HBO anymore, Sunday nights for me will be entirely about Fox's animation lineup: The Simpsons, which is now entering its seventeenth millennium, The Cleveland Show and Family Guy. (I never got into American Dad.) Oh, and a little something on AMC called The Walking Dead! Yeah, baby! Glancing at the schedule, though, I'm surprised to see Desperate Housewives is still on the air. Who's still watching that? Maybe they should call that one The Walking Dead instead. Ouch.

As you can see, I'm becoming pickier and pickier in my old age. There are so many people out there these days who watch far more TV than I do. It makes me wonder if I deserve the TV Nerd crown at all anymore!

Anyway, those are the shows I'll be tuning in for, at least once. How about you? Any of the new shows look better to you than they do to me?

Spencer Hall explores the great cycle of college football interest and anxiety, reminds you why October is the cruelest month, and writes Lou Holtz gibberish that still doesn't approach real Lou Holtz gibberish.

A is for Apex.  The cycle of your average college football season works out to be mostly uniform with each passing season. Consult the following graph for reference in the following discussion of how you, like the planets around our sun, complete a perfect orbit through the life cycle of a college football fan's enthusiasms each year. 

The first phase involves a long climb or descent through September. Michigan fans are currently in the ascent variation of this phase since Denard Robinson may in fact be Percy Harvin with an arm and minus crippling migraines, and may lead them to a job-saving bowl game for Rich Rodriguez.  Fans of some teams--say, anyone in the ACC right now--are likely pulling the emergency brake right now and demanding to get off the bus before it reaches its destination at Infinite Pain Station. 

The second involves a peak in October, where your team either finally wins a game or ends the optimism by losing one in excruciating fashion. 

The third is the long decline into certainty, the bowl season, and the ability to encapsulate the entire season's work in a single image, letter, or phrase. Some of these make sense, like "The Texas Red Raiders finished with a quality bowl victory and a solid first season under new coach Tommy Tuberville." Some of them won't, like the capper we've already written for Syracuse, whose 2010 "will read like the bold misadventures of an angry gang of rogue kumquats who, stoked by vague ambition and blinding poverty, were killed in spectacular fashion attempting to rob a commuter blimp." 

We never said we'd all agree on the wording, but generally that's how a season goes. We're headed into the apex right now, and no one is going to be rational until the smoke clears and your team is either a.) blown to pieces, or b.) smiling and holding the detonator. 

B is for Bang for Buck. This stat will be repeated so many times over the next week you may as well spit it out first before your friends or local talk radio host does: Oregon has scored 120 points in exactly 120 minutes. Accepted as fact: Tennessee hit the wall after a valiant half of effort, the wall that most teams with zero depth, multiple injuries, and a general shallow tank of talent hit when struggling against an empirically superior squad.

One minute they're tied at 13, and we're all cool, and then suddenly the Vols are sliding sideways into the river when the field finally tilted towards talent, depth, and conditioning. It is the living version of that moment when you play a game of NCAA with a C-ranked team, take the game into the third with a respectable score, and then you throw three inexplicable picks, lose all blocking whatsoever, and watch your quarterbacks get knocked out of the game in rapid succession. 

(I'm playing a dynasty right now with the University of Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks. The moment is a recently familiar one, especially since Virtual Gene Chizik just paved me 66-0 on Heisman level. Virtual Gene Chizik kicked a last second field goal to make it a matching air of sixes. Virtual Gene Chizik is a massive dick.) 

Also accepted as fact: Oregon plays Portland State next week, and could keep their rare one-to-one minute to point ratio alive, especially if Kenjon Barner and LaMichael James continue their reign of zone read running back horror. (Training secrets of the Oregon Ducks: lots of Sumo Suit sprint work.) 

C is for Continuation of Previous Entry Noting Economy. Jeff Demps only had 11 carries on the day against USF. Presumably, he is like a Ferrari. His parts are hammered out by hand on stumps in Torino, his engine revs at RPMs unimagined by most other vehicles. He is used in relatively short jaunts, and if he breaks, there's a backup in the garage of slightly lesser quality (Chris Rainey.)  

In contrast: Denard Robinson is a barely street legal rally car. There is no backup and there is no guardrail: he rides sliding sideways through defenses never hitting the brakes without a right foot on the gas. He's covering immense mileage all by his lonesome, more than any other player in FBS football now, leading the nation in rushing with 455 yards and adding 430 yards passing because a one-man play fake leaves wide receivers waving unmolested in empty defensive backfields. 

He may suffer for this: unlike Demps, he's got almost no help, and even the stoutest rally car starts to spit parts and rattle down the stretch of a race. Without relief, he's going to have issues, which is the contemporary word for problems; injury, fatigue, the inability to conjure coverage-snapping runs 15 or 20 times a game.* He's received no support from Michigan's running backs. He will face defenses that can hurt people, and when he does they may do what they do so well. This rally car could end up flying roof-first into the forest, just as repeated hits sidelined Pat White for significant playing time late in seasons at WVU.**

*This number is not an exaggeration. Double digits are needed to describe the number of times a three yard run becomes six, or a six yard run becomes twelve, or a twelve yard run ends up as six points and this. 

(via MGoBlog) 

**Robinson is much thicker than White, and will be more durable, but even Tim Tebow got hurt by repeated hits something Michigan fans benefitted greatly from in the 2008 Capital One Bowl. Injury is a given for all quarterbacks. 

D is for Dilation. The special theory of relativity has a lot to say about time, and all of it is quite confusing, but one thing that any pop scientist can pull out of it is that time moves at different rates depending on gravity and relative position. For instance, if your name is Kyle Rudolph, and you are a tight end for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the catch and run for a go-ahead TD must have felt like a flash lasting no more than six seconds. 

If you were watching it, though, Einsteinian timeframes snapped into place, since watching it live was like watching it from a spaceship traveling on the edge of the speed of light. The Himalaya grew a few inches between the catch and score. I ordered a beer. They got the hops, barley, water; they brewed the beer; they allowed it to cool, and then forgot my order for five more minutes before the waiter brought it over. D'Angelo actually put out another album by the time the play ended. I watched the final scene from Truffaut's classic The 400 Blows and came back in time to watch Rudolph cross the goal line.  IT TOOK A REALLY LONG TIME IS WHAT I'M SAYING. 

I'm not saying Kyle Rudolph is slow: I'm saying that he's glacially slow, and that the Michigan secondary allowing him to gallumph for that kid of yardage would have committed an honorable suicide in a world where they had anyone else in the two-deep to play. (Which Michigan doesn't.) (Fortunately for some, samurai codes and football do not overlap, because Ron Zook would have been dead years ago.) 

E is for Endo. Watching Virginia and USC put the night shift to sleep on Saturday night was bad unless you were very, very relaxed. 

(Via EDSBS commenter Bubbaprog.) 

F is for Flinching.  If you woke up Sunday morning and wondered how in the hell UVA stayed tight for a 17-14 loss to what is on paper a superior USC team, this is how. 

1. Mike London is a former vice cop. Give him 10 minutes and a handcuffed Lane Kiffin in an interrogation room with a phone book and the tape recorder turned off and he can make anything happen. 
2. Monte Kiffin had the night off, because Salisbury Steak Night at Bob's Big Boy doesn't happen every week.*
3. USC's offensive line looked genuinely flustered for much of the night, which made Barkley flustered, and kept him running for his life most of the time against a fierce UVA rush. 
4. The Trojans had 13 penalties for 140 yards. 
5. UVA's not bad, and has a surprisingly nice tandem of running backs in Perry Jones and Keith Payne. Payne's especially fun, since at 255 pounds it looks like it really hurts when he hits people, and that is never not entertaining. 
6. USC could have lost this game if not for two missed field goals by UVA and an endzone INT thrown at the four yard line by qb Marc Verica. 
7. USC remains what they have been for the better part of five years: a tremendously talented and tremendously sloppy football team. (See A for Apex, especially the part about things generally remaining the same.) 

*It does. 

G is for Gandalf The White. It's long been our theory that Steve Spurrier died in a plane crash in 2002, and has been played ever since by a cunning and well-programmed cyborg built by Daniel Snyder. Why would Snyder do this, you ask? So he could sell it, complete with an exorbitantly overpriced Johnny Rockets franchise as part of the deal, to the South Carolina Gamecocks when the time was right. (To this day, Spurrierbot is only able to refuel off their mini chili dogs. Always thinking about profits, Mr. Snyder.) 

Even in his role as Gandalf the White, you still get quality Spurrier-like service, however. You still get the abrupt, flustered halftime interviews, the golf, the visor throws, and all the cosmetic Spurrierness. This includes the requisite jabs at rivals, which remain part of the programming. 

"That little inside play (we ran), the NFL doesn’t run that play. That’s a new scheme I guess. I’m sure they knew we’d run it. But they certainly didn’t stop it much."

What you have not gotten in his time since the great change: 1990s pass-first Spurrier capable of racking up fifty points through the air. The latest and most convincing piece of evidence: running Marcus Lattimore 37 times in a game against Georgia, a team Spurrier 1.0 would have rent asunder with slants and go routes. 

Marcus Lattimore, freshman Marcus Lattimore, had 10 carries, 50 yards. 11 broken tackles,  and 34 yards after contact on the first drive alone, and then continued to rend asunder the middle of UGA's new 3-4 with the same trap play over, and over, and over again. If you need further proof of Spurrierbot's faulty programming in mimicking old Spurrier, look on the other side of the stat sheet: 17 passes for Stephen Garcia, and no other attempts by other quarterbacks.

I have presented Exhibits A, B, and C to display the subject's fraudulent claim to be Steve Spurrier. If you think that's him out there running TCU's offense, then the robots have already won, haven't they?

H is for Heart Attack.  At the 13:20 mark, you can clearly hear Mike Gundy blow a valve somewhere deep in his brain. 

I

In a 41-38 game with under a minute to go, Oklahoma State quarterback Bradley Weeden fumbled the one snap you should never, ever fumble: the one taken in the Victory Formation. The Cowboys forced their own fumble to seal the game on the ensuing possession, but that shouldn't stop you from pointing and laughing at the Cowboys' ongoing struggles with Sun Belt kings Troy University, who in three matchups have beaten OSU once already and took them to the wire on Saturday.

The Sun Belt terror continued with Rutgers' ill-advised trip to Florida International. Rutgers won 19- with only 172 yards of offense to FIU's 371, and that usually points to--[TURNOVER IMPLICATION LIGHT BLINKING BRIGHT RED]--yup, five turnovers (three fumbles lost, two picks) for the Panthers. As bad a week as the ACC had, they still won five games as a conference total. The Sun Belt only won two, which is why every week is hard when you're a fan of the Sun Belt.  (MTSU even had to sweat Austin Peay for a while. WTF, Blue Raiders? YOU'RE ALL WE CAN COUNT ON IN OUR FAVORITE TINY CONFERENCE.) 

I is for Interruptus. If you missed the "Dr. Lou" segment from Thursday night's Mississippi State game, the text is summarized below for you. 

I always told my players to be like a pineapple. Be sweet, and people will just eat you up, but grow a hard exterior and you can have the best of both worlds. You should also be like a pineapple in that you grow where you're planted, even if someone cuts your head off and you have to grow a new body. That's a quote I got from my good friend Woody Hayes, who survived three decapitations and came back stronger each time. There's a lesson in that for all of us.  

Another thing about pineapples: they look like grenades, or at least grenades look like pineapples. Who knows: either way I eat one and get indigestion, but that's another story completely. 

[LOU HOLTZ PERFORMS A MAGIC TRICK WHERE HE TURNS A TURKEY INTO A PINATA.] 

Life's full of turkeys. You can eat a turkey, or you can turn it into a pinata. A pinata is a paper donkey. A donkey is a really just a pinata that likes to call your name over and over again, especially if your name is HEEEEEHAAONNNNNNK. I had a cousin named that once, but we all called her Floppy Betty because she was epileptic, clumsy, and suffered from rubber bones syndrome.

[HITS PINATA. A DOLLAR AND SEVENTEEN CENTS IN CHANGE AND FIFTY HUGE GREY MOTHS FLY OUT OF IT.] 

Life's a pinata, kids. Just don't lose the moths for the change. I'm Dr. Lou. Good bye. 

I swear to you, as bizarre as that may be, it makes more sense than whatever Lou Holtz said on Thursday night. 

J is for Jackal'd. Miami came away with nothing on four different redzone occasions against Ohio State, winning this week's Niumatololo Award for Redzone Futility. In the postgame press conference, Jacory Harris' comments about Miami's lack of scoring on these drives were made inaudible by the sound of him exhaling bits of fractured ribs and idiots screaming "Overrated!" at a quarterback who had no protection and spent most of the game being beaten with tire irons by the Buckeye defense as his offensive line watched. 

K is for KTHXNOTWANT. Jeremiah Masoli played well enough in Ole Miss' bounceback 27-13 win over Tulane (14-20, 281 yards, and 1/1 TD/INT), but he's not ready for bro-hugs yet. Seriously. Don't touch me. 

L is for Let's All Buy Tickets To This Exciting Bit of Theater. Georgia Tech's Josh Nesbitt sailed the last pass of regulation at about nine thousand miles an hour and out of the reach of his receiver. The throw accomplished several things at once. It capped Georgia Tech's embarrassing loss to Kansas, the same team that lost 6-3 to North Dakota State in week one; it all but killed any ambitions of a Josh Nesbitt Heisman campaign, which may have been laughable from the start given his inability to complete more than 50% of his passes; it immediately reversed the polarities of KU fans' attitude towards Turner Gill; and finally, it resulted in Paul Johnson holding an impromptu production of The Junction Boys starring the Georgia Tech football team this week in Atlanta. They're going to do all their own stunts including heatstroke and uncontrolled vomiting, but you already knew that.  

M is for Madison. 

Virginia Tech loses games they shouldn't because of their offense, and has for the better part of this decade. Jarrett Boykin is an NFL prospect at wide receiver. Ryan Williams and Darren Evans are both 1,000 yard rushers. Tyrod Taylor can bail out almost any bad play with his legs, and has all those other nice things you value in a college quarterback: arms, cool name, ability to stay eligible and not do stupid things off the field. (Cough Marcus Vick cough.)  The offensive line is more than adequate.  

This is a short note, but simple: if you keep losing games at the last second due to the same things over and over again, then you are doing the same things and expecting different results. According to cliche this equates to madness, and according to the box score Virginia Tech lost 21-17 to an FCS team. it is a wonderful, warm moment for James Madison, and in a world where Virginia Tech develops a functional offense it is a moment that never happens, and probably shouldn't have. 

O is for OH S#$%. More Denarding, via MGoBlog. 

That's about it in a single facial expression, Brian Kelly. 

P is for Patience (Rarely Exhibited.) I thought I'd finish the USF game throwing bottles at the wall and cursing the name of Florida offensive coordinator Steve Addazio, since that was how I finished the first half after Florida continued to sputter. YET MARK THIS DAY ON YOUR CALENDARS: for once and only once, patience, maturity, and the second half of the game brought on a rare display of something called patience. Florida lined up in the second half and engaged something called "a power run game" that didn't use "a huge battering ram/ quarterback." Instead there were these things called running backs, and "blocking," and a quarterback who generally did his best to stay out of the way and let the big men make breaking noises with the hard tissues of the USF defense. The Florida offense still looks like two offenses poorly sutured together, but as arrhythmic as it is it's a hell of a lot better from week to week. (Look, a whole paragraph without a disparaging word about Steve Addazio! YES WE CAN!) 

Q is for Quadrupedation. Stomping with all four feet, or what heinous act the ponies who pull the Sooner Schooner performed on Florida State. Florida State was suffocated on offense, but defensively they continue to suffer the worst of all deficits: not experience, or practice, or anything else but a sheer lack of talent. Oklahoma, meanwhile, appears to be on pace for their standard ten win season that will somehow still result in Bob Stoops getting mocked for his inability to win big games. 

R is for Random Awards of No Prestige Handed Out If The Season Ended Today.

• Forward Momentum Glutton:  Auburn QB Cam Newton, who if he passed out from a dead standstill still gains three yards and concusses a safety. 
• Corpse Who Just Keeps Talking: Tim Brewster, Minnesota's coach who is so fired they should hold two press conferences just to fire him enough to properly fire someone who lost to South Dakota 41-38. 
• Emily Post Courtesy And Manners Award. The UGA defense, who had at least one guy standing around watching Marcus Lattimore run on every play Saturday. Either they're unsure of their assignments, or they just enjoy showing proper respect for a gentleman's personal space on the football field. 
• I Went To The NFL And Lost All Ability To Do Anything: Norm Chow and the UCLA offense, who mustered all of zero points against Stanford. Norm Chow, too, may be a Daniel Snyder programmed robot agent at this point. 

S is for Sledgehammer. The team most in pain after this weekend is BYU after allowing 407 yards on the ground to Air Force. We would like thank them for their respect and courtesy paid to our servicemen, and give this week's WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA? Award To Hawaii, who traveled nine hours, practiced in a Newark parking lot, and still beat Army 31-28 with a late field goal. Clearly you hate America, Hawaii, but we suspect your loyalties anyway with you being so close to Red China, friend. (Or should we say ni hao, pengyou?) 

[Stares accusatorily to the west.]

T is for Tears. Perfectly excusable for everyone associated with the West Virginia/Marshall game to have left in raging tears. West Virginia played horrendous football for three quarters before pulling fifteen points out of Marshall's prevent defense to send the game to overtime. Marshall blew that lead, and then let WVU score the go ahead

U is for Uncanny. My powers, after calling Rod Gilmore's exact goal-line prediction in the West Virginia/Marshall game. Gilmore at the goal-line will say the same thing every single time regarding an offense's choices. I sat on the couch, poised at the ready. 

Joe Tessitore: "West Virginia, looking to get into position to tie this game." 

Me: "Hey! Honey! He's going to say run-pass option! He's going to say West Virginia's going to call a run-pass option!" 

Wife: "Why?" 

Me: "Because Rod Gilmore ALWAYS SAYS THEY SHOULD CALL A RUN-PASS OPTION. It's like his Rosebud. He's going to die staring into a glass ball and whispering it on his lips in a stately mansion." 

Gilmore: "....they should look at a run-pass option here." 

Me: "I WIN! I WIN!" 

Wife: "You're a genius." /makes wanking motion 

Me: "I know!" /takes off pants, runs around room celebrating

V is for Victory. Washington State won. No, really: that's news, even if they had to score 16 in the fourth to come back against FCS Montana State, because that's certainly more than Virginia Tech accomplished on the weekend. Paul Wulff is now 4-389 as Washington State coach. <----------NUMBERS THAT MAY NOT BE TRUE BUT FEEL TRUE, MAN.   

W is for Why, God, Why? Eastern Kentucky lined up for the opening kickoff and BLAMMO--surprise onsides! They went offsides in the effort, but if style points counted for a touchdown they still wouldn't have won in a 23-13 loss to Louisville. I'm glad I was not watching this, because I would have died of malicious laughter. 

X is for Xylocarp. A hard and woody fruit much like a Buckeye, which is a poisonous nut and not a fruit but hey--it's all a cheap excuse to take care of "X," and to post Cameron Heyward pulling a Suh-nterception by a lineman in coverage and nearly giving himself a heart attack in the process. 

At this point it's Ohio State and everyone else in terms of overall performance. I would also remind you that it's week two, and that the second most prolific passer in the nation is Sean Renfree. Sean Renfree, of Duke University. It's early yet, and this cannot be stressed enough (refer to chart in entry A for science backing this up.) 

Z is for Zho. A cow/yak hybrid, and roughly equivalent in weight to what Ed Orgeron deadlifts on his lunch break to keep from being bored while watching film. Of course, such stress results in random foot fractures, but that's just life (or as the Orgeron puts it, "MMMDASSA LIFEAAAHHH OOWWWMAHHFOOTTAHH.") USC remains equally hobbled  

Paging Chuckie. I know you're out there.

Hiding in my kid's toy box. Waiting to pounce.

They may not have red hair and a demonic look, but I'm convinced talking toys are out to get me.

Especially the sweet and innocent ones.

When I saw Playskool had brought back the Alphie Robot, I literally did a jig. Oh toy from my childhood, you are cute, fun, and educational!

And I can honestly say I love the toy when it's being played with ... it's Alphie for cripes sakes. Didn't you have one of these?

It's when it gets put away that it seems to take on a life of its own. He talks. In the middle of the night.

When I'm curled up on the couch avoiding the dog, the snoring, and just trying to read myself into an innocent slumber.

He's like the wood puzzle I eventually threw out (forgive me, she's too old for it anyway) because it would squeak when I walked through the room in the dead of night to go pee. It took one major bang of the shins in a mad dash in the dark to finally realize it was the hamster on the puzzle and we didn't have a mouse.

Did I mention I'm terrified of rodents ... in the house?

He's like the motorcycle that accompanied a Hess truck circa sometime in the last decade and still vrooms at odd moments in the middle of the night when a toy truck settles on it in just the right way.

You're probably going to tell me some story of your insane patience or all that extra time on your hands which you use for removing batteries before each toy is lovingly placed in its own slot in the organized out-of-the-way of company's eyes toy bin.

I don't have that kind of patience. If the toys are not underfoot on one of those midnight runs to the potty, I write a letter to the clean-up gods and include a few Hershey's Kisses. 

But I'm getting smart. I've banned Alphie from the toy box. He may live out his life on top, but not inside. And if the motorcycle is driven "accidentally" to a spot under the couch to live with the dust bunnies, don't come crying to me.

I'm a fan of the talking toy ... but he's not a fan of me.

Are the talking toys out to get you?

 

Images via House of Sims/Flickr; Amazon

 

The Russians refused to go away.

The Americans, then, had to find a way to make them. Lamar Odom and Russell Westbrook keyed the third-quarter run that did the trick. It did not provide the shock factor of the 1972 Gold Medal game, but Team USA's 89-79 victory packed plenty of questionable whistles.

David Blatt bemoaned the 18-3 free throw discrepancy in the first-half. Mike Krzyzewski chewed out a ref after he mistakenly robbed the U.S. of a fast break opportunity. Blatt was not pleased about the foul trouble that handcuffed key contributors Timofey Mozgov and Evgeny Voronov. The gamesmanship began Wednesday and did not cease until the final buzzer.

Blatt stirred up controversy when he said Wednesday that the Soviet Union's disputed victory in Munich was "fair." The Americans on that '72 team have never accepted their silver medals in protest. He arrived at his newfound viewpoint on that famous 51-50 final score when he studied the two timeouts that allowed the Soviets a last-second lay-up in a recent re-airing.

The coach with dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship already faced the prospect of a quarterfinal sans his two best players, J.R. Holden and Andrei Kirilenko, both of whom skipped out on Turkey. That was supposed to make Russia prime shark bait.

Down five in the second quarter, though, these Americans looked more like fish food than game for a semifinal appearance. Blatt's well-prepared crew wreaked havoc inside and created some mysteries their counterparts struggled to solve.

Krzyzewski could not find the right defender to cut off Andrey Vorontsevitch's muscular drives. When Mozgov recieved the ball five feet from the basket, he scored. Stephen Curry could not guard his own shadow, much less Dimitriy Khostov. The Russians switched between a match-up zone and man-to-man coverage, and figuring out the right way to attack the shifting defense was no picnic.

Just when it seemed like the right time to push the panic button, some familiar American weapons blasted it to bits and blew open the game. Westbrook has played Russian Roulette for much of the tournament. In the first half, his Russian opponents undressed him and took all of his betting money. In the second half, he stole back his cash and hit the jackpot.

 

Westbrook picked off Khvostov and Sergei Bykov and ran to the other end for a pair of easy slams. He also knocked down a three-pointer. He missed seven of 11 shots, but the four he did drop were momentous.

Lamar "where have you been all this tournament" Odom grabbed 10 huge rebounds and competed with the poise of a champion. His experience mattered in a game where many questioned whether the youngsters could stomach or conquer the pressure. He kept countless loose balls alive, played pesky defense, and added a vital third-quarter bucket.

Even Eric Gordon decided to pad his assist total--he recorded one in the first six contests--with a smart feed to Andre Igoudala underneath the hoop for an and-one.

Chauncey Billups nailed four three-pointers and dished five dimes.

The evening, though, belonged to Kevin Durant. Krzyzewski rested the Oklahoma City star for long stretches in pool play. Thursday evening, Durant totaled 33 points in 37 minutes. He darted through whatever defense Blatt ordered his players to execute and kept the U.S. close with his sniper-rifle hits.

Long three-pointer. Boom. Circus shot and-one. Kablam. Up-and-under drive past Mozgov. Bang. Hanging jumper. You're dead.

 

Durant became the Americans' one man army of destruction. Anytime Team USA needed a retaliation score to stop the early bloodshed at the hands of the Russians, he answered. Each of his 11 baskets had the impact of a two-ton stick of dynamite. All Blatt could do was suppress the bile he seemed ready to upchuck with some deep breathing.

Russia out-assisted the U.S. 19-17, shot better than 45 percent, and won the rebounding battle 45-37. Durant willed the Americans to the war's finish line. By the end of this skirmish, the Russians had to be thinking, Kobe who?

Imagine how dangerous the U.S. would be with Bryant and Durant. Russia and other Olympic hopefuls figure to face that lethal combo in London come 2012. The results in Istanbul, though, matter now.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Serbia's Milos Teodosic swished another shot heard 'round the world. His three-point heave, attempted from well beyond 32 feet, eliminated Spain from medal contention. The Spaniards, perhaps the most well-balanced and tallest challenge for the U.S., will compete for fifth place in the consolation bracket.

That surprising 92-89 defeat for Spain left Argentina, Lithuania, Serbia, the U.S., and host Turkey as the remaining medal hopefuls. The Americans will meet the winner of tonight's Argentina-Lithuania joust in Saturday's semifinal. Is that U.S. road to the anticipated conclusion now paved in gold?

 

Krzyzewski will not allow his players to think that. He knows the semifinal opponent will test his bunch more than Russia did. How does a date with the tournament's leading scorer Luis Scola sound? How about another dance with Lithuania, who lost steam after a blistering start in an exhibition match a few weeks ago in Madrid?

No more cakewalks. No more routs. The tension will climb a few levels, and defenses will invite the U.S. to practice its little-used half-court offense. A feisty Russian team fell victim to Krzyzewski's not-so-secret weapon.

Durant's hits just kept coming, and the Rusians were powerless to stop them. Behind their rapid-fire machine gun, and the other second-half heroes, the Americans pulled away and left no doubt about the outcome.

Even Doug Collins and Aleksandr Belov could agree on that.

Cheers for ESPN

The four-letter network finally decided to send a broadcast crew to Istanbul to call the medal round action. Mark Kestecher and Fran Fraschilla delivered play-by-play courtside instead of from an ESPN studio, which made quite a difference in the quality.

Yahoo! Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski has also joined the party.

Those of you who avoided the tournament in its first week and a half better start watching it now. Any basketball enthusiast who missed the epic Brazil-Argentina and Spain-Serbia clashes should check NBATV or ESPN 3 for replays.

A few updates on what's been going on in the MMA Twittersphere.

 

YOU GUYS ARE SPOILED... WHY DO I HAVE TO LUMP THESE THINGS INTO CATEGORIES ANYWAY?

"Why would twitter suggest I follow the Ellen Degeneris show and Jessica Alba? What does twitter think of me?" -Shane Carwin

"Charlie Valencia called and asked me for a dollar...he claimed he was a little short."  -Miguel Torres

"I accidentally put my stuff in someone else's grocery cart. The lady got all upset, like I was gonna make her buy it for me. So I did."  -Amir Sadollah

"I do enjoy hot yoga supplementally. Except when mildly obese middle aged women are doing better than me."  -Amir Sadollah

"Piranha 3D will give you the most confused boner ever... When the Piranha spit out dude's d*** I was all like, "That's because it was HIS d***. MY d*** is fucking delicious " "  -Joe Rogan

"If ignorance is bliss I never want to be happy."  -Miguel Torres

"Technology has been great at bringing the world closer together and making people farther apart. Nothing replaces human interaction. #fb"  -Josh Barnett, see that "#fb" tag? ... #irony

VITOR BELFORT VS JAMES TONEY IN A BOXING MATCH?

"Dana let me fight James Tony on 6 round boxe Mach I think I can catch him with my speed... Dana will be the 1 boxing match in Ufc I promise he will fell my power and we will show the world the a Ufc fighter can do better"  -Vitor Belfort

"Tell Vitor Belfort let’s make it happen. I like that because he ain’t no scared little b*tch. He wants to come to my world and I’m more than willing to welcome him into my world."  -James Toney, who says that fight hype is his twitter account. Chances of Belfort winning this is pretty slim, although the chances of this actually happening, is even slimmer.

 

MILETICH TEMPER SYSTEM

"I used to have a foul temper. They used to call me sonofabitchletich"  -Pat Miletich

"Landscaping front yard and now remember why I started fighting. Landscaping is not easy."  -Pat Miletich, yeah, most fighters only do manscaping

 

CONGRATULATION JON FITCH (or DON'T DO IT!)

"Never thought I'd love a friend like I love @FitchFighter"  -Dave Camarillo

"@JoshKoscheck so talented!"  -Dave Camarillo

 

THAT'S WACIST!

"See what u started @ufc i dont know who i am RT @thecodyk Phil so are you Jonny Bones.or just play him on @ustream" -Phil Davis, got mistaken for Jon Jones, Jon Howard, Anthony Rumble Johnson, and a bunch of other dudes in this ustream video.

"@PhilMrWonderful No idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Howard." -UFC

 

HENDO TURNED 40.

"Had a surprise bday party tonight. Didnt expect it, and it was the funnest ever. Thanks to everyone that came. Guess I’m gonna have to make all the 40yr olds proud this year."  -Dan Henderson

 

TWAINING

"Hung out with mma and Jiu-jitsu legend Paulo Filho! He wants @tjdillashaw to be his wrestling coach!!! Were gonna train with him a bunch!!!"  -Justin Buchholz

"Diet good, weight great, training harder, confindence excellent, mind powerful, hands heavy, knees crucial, wrestling well, fighting fun!"  -Jeremy Stephens, preparing for his bout against Melvin Guillard, which I am reallyyyy looking forward to.

"some of the guys at Victory MMA after good session!"  -Jeremy Stephens

 

BLOODYELBOW STATS

"@BloodyElbow has officially written more than 10,000 posts (not blogs). Pretty crazy."  -Luke Thomas, There are also 6400 Fanposts and 10,600+ Fanshots. Almost 3000 of those came from Luke, 2600 from Nate, and a whopping 7500 from Nick. What's kinda scary though, is that although I've only made 1300+ posts, I've commented almost 14000 times. That's wayyy more than theirs even though I joined BE a few years later. I will try to shut up from now on.

 

LOOK AT THE BRIGHT SIDE, AT LEAST HIS JOHNNY CASH TATTOO WON'T LOOK AS BAD ANYMORE... (Sorry, I know it's a really bad joke, but I couldn't resist... :P -- But all lame jokes aside, I know I speak for BE in saying that we're all sending our thoughts and prayers for the speedy recovery of Mr. Belcher. Hopefully we could see him back in the cage real soon)

"This is alans wife @Ashleebelcher Yesterday his vision was blurry again today heading into another surgery on same eye please keep praying"  -Alan Belcher

"This is @Ashleebelcher after a few autographs in the pre op area he got wheeled back but all who know him knows he didn't mind one bit"  -Alan Belcher

"We are home He is in a lot of pain though Next few weeks are really important He has to lay face down :( thanks for prayers, @Ashleebelcher... Thanks to our friend Mickey Smelser for bringing over your massage table for Alan to sleep face down on!"  -Alan Belcher

"He is doing ok. He's very uncomfortable though. He has to be face down as much as possible. The surgery was a vitrectomy. @ashleebelcher"  -Alan Belcher

"Alan is feeling a little better. see dr tomorrow. Thanks for checking! ...Dr Semple still wants him face down as much as possible until bubble has gone away. We go back in a week. It is healing ok"  -Ashlee Belcher, has some good news. Hopefully he recovers well and gets back to training soon.

 

TWICTURES

"My original art- how much could I fetch at auction for charity??"  -Mayhem Miller

"Lovin Id already, check out @ampenergy reppen, @chadmendes & i r takn this as a sign that were suppsed 2 b here."  -Urijah Faber

"► French MMA is on FIRE ... Kongo & Diabaté on the same card . UFC 120."  -Cheick Kongo

"Hangin with my Aussie, Tre!! Good girls just wanna have cranberry juice"  -Natasha Wicks, I'm happy that Natasha it tweeting, but Logan's twitter account can be pronounced dead if she doesn't tweet soon.

"what can I say? I'm clumsy! :("  -Natasha Wicks

"Working with the blonde squad tonight! Welcome to the team Erica:)"  -Chandella Powell

"2nd workout done now time to cook my "healthy turkey meatloaf" if its tasty ill put it on my site. Fingers x'd"  -Arianny Celeste

"Got all my beeetches at the beach! @April_Milan n @girlsdonttweet"  -Arianny Celeste

"Shopping attire: bed head, lipgloss, mascara, tanktop n sweats."  -Arianny Celeste

 

TWIDEOS

"You're a Fucking Human Being - Joe Rogan and Daft Punk"  -Joe Rogan's philosophy on life, to the tune of Daft Punk.

"Naughty Navigation center, not for children. But this was a hilarious suprise. Directions w/ a Bang!"  -Urijah Faber

 

TWITOR BELFORT'S TWAINING TWIDEO TIDBITS

"Warming up!!" -Vitor Belfort, shows off his magical jumprope tricks again.

"Physioterapy, hard work out!!" -Vitor Belfort

"...Strength condition!!"  -Vitor Belfort

Also, If you have a twitter account, don't forget to follow:

The Official BloodyElbow Twitter Account, Luke Thomas, Kid Nate, Brent Brookhouse, Mike Fagan, Chris Nelson, Leland Roling, Richard Wade, some guy named Anton Tabuena, and Jonathan Snowden.

The question started going around the Chicagoist office a few weeks ago: What’s the summer jam of 2010? As brains were wracked and heated discussions arose we began to realize that something was deeply wrong. You see, a summer jam is that tune that just OWNS the season. It’s universal. It’s everywhere. And the summer of 2010 doesn’t have that going for it this time around. There’s no one tune everyone has on repeat in their cars, on their stereos, and in their earbuds. There’s no “Ghetto Superstar.” No “Umbrela-a-a-a.” No “Since U Been Gone” or “Somebody Told Me” or “all My Friends;” no nothing! Has the music scene finally become so fragmented there is no song to unite us any longer?

Seriously, if Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” is the best the summer of 2010 can come up with were are all seriously fucked.

So we decided to come up with our own nominations for the summer jam of 2010. We decided that in order to by a jam it doesn’t HAVE to come out in 2010, it merely needs to capture the feeling of this particular summer. See what our writers came up with after the jump and make your own nominations in the comments below.

C’mon people, let’s find the summer jam of 2010!

Rob's pick:
"Kiss On My List" by The Bird And The Bee
An insanely catchy song gets the definitive remake, courtesy of Inara George & Greg Kurstin. Proves that almost any song is better with an electric piano and a sweetbreathe chorus. It's rather delicate but hey, I still jam when it comes up on my iPod.

Ben's pick:
"Maybe So Maybe No" by Mayer Hawthorne
Smash.

Michele's picks:
"Boyfriend" by Best Coast
Nothing seems to conjure more thoughts of a breezy summer afternoon than the whispy, innocent voice of Bethany Cosentino rests gently atop bright guitar tones and a smash of cymbals singing her forlorn tale of her unrequited love. The song definitely takes us back to summers in the early 90s when Belly's "Feed the Tree" was rocking our boom-boxes. This selection is well-suited for a long, hot summer day on the beach while paging through your most trashy romance novel, dreaming of that every-so-romantic summer fling

"Shutterbug" by Big Boi
Fresh raps, hand claps and ass slaps may ensue once you turn up the volume on this soon-to-be hip-hop classic. If summer for you means a night out in dah club, this is most definitely the song for you. Visions of flowing champagne, bright lights and late nights seem to cascade out of every beat and sultry lyric of this one. Big Boi's quick and clever and quick rhymes seem to perfectly inter grate into the chugging rhythms in this ass-shaking summer jam.

"Bang Pop" by Free Energy
If any band has made a career out of creating good-time party music it's Free Energy. Their brand of 70s-inspired-power-pop gives us the urge to swill mass amounts of beer at any backyard bar-b-que on a hot summer day. Well, the song Bang Pop is no exception. These irresistible Philidelphian's have managed to put hooks from end-to-end in this song making it the song that everyone will be singing along to on a hot summer night.

Jake's picks:
"Where I'm Going" by Cut Copy
Leading up to Lollapalooza, we were wondering if Cut Copy would unleash new material upon the world. Much to our enjoyment, they did, and it's as summer as summer can get. "Where I'm Going" strays from the synthy disco sounds that comprised their last album, In Ghost Colours, but while that statement may worry some, the song is a blast that oozes fun in the sun. Remniscient of 60s beach-rock and pop, Cut Copy somehow made a tune that sounds old school and oh-so-fresh at the same time.

"Yamaha" by The-Dream
Had it been the summer of '84, I probably would've chosen something off Prince's Purple Rain as the definitive summer jam. Then again, I wasn't alive in 1984, and since then Prince has all but lost his relevance, especially in the wake of his "Internet is dead" statement. Luckily, his defining, summery sound lives on, and the best sign of that is The-Dream's lovey-dovey jam, "Yamaha". If you need coaxing, The-Dream wrote "Single Ladies" and "Umbrella". Dude's got the magic touch.

Steven's picks:
"Rill Rill" by Sleigh Bells
Someone had to pick a Sleigh Bells track, so it ought to be their best jam. Or their best Funkadelic sample. Anyway, it just feels like sweaty summer 2010 to me.

"O.N.E." by Yeasayer
I would like to be driven up and down Lake Shore Drive in a convertible filled with supermodels wearing pastel-framed sunglasses, blasting this song, forever. If you don't like it, that's cool, we can drop you off.

"Nothin' On You" by B.o.B.
Because B96 owns the summer.

Aaron's picks:
"Orphans" by Gaslight Anthem
The entire record this track is on, American Slang, should be played on a back porch at midnight with a cooler filled with tallboys at maximum volume. This track just happens to be my favorite, the kind of song that makes 30somethings remark how much better things were when they were 20.

"High Pressure Low" by Against Me!
The main riff makes me think of so many fun 80's pop songs, but yet it's a milquetoast politicalish diatribe with an infectious chorus. A+++

"Animal Backwards" by Minus The Bear
The kind of thing you listen to hold up in a dark, air conditioned apartment at 1pm on a hot summer day, avoiding the sun because your hangover hurts too hard or you're a sparkly vampire. Alternatively, you can dance to it if you want to, but leave your friends behind.

Chuck's picks:
"Vivire Para Ti" by Los Amigos Invisibles
This Venezuelan disco-funk band falls somewhere between the minimalist style of Prince in his prime and "Discovery"-era Daft Punk. This song, from their album "Commercial," fits equally at home at a Wicker Park loft party, a Lincoln Park street festival, cruising Humboldt Park, as the soundtrack for a West loop sushi bar, or blasting from speakers set up outside a Pilsen or Little Village record shop. I dare you not to dance to this.

"Kangpe" by Nneka
How can I describe Nneka? Think M.I.A., before the army of yes men and transparent attempts to shock with her political viewpoints. Or Lauryn Hill before she went batshit crazy. The meshing of hip-hop with the rhythms of the Carribean isn't new, but Nneka does more with the marriage of the two styles in this one song that Wyclef Jean has in an entire album. this is also the catchiest song about an abused woman since Suzanne Vega's "Luka;" certainly the most danceable.

"Inspiration Information" by Shuggie Otis
Shuggie Otis's 1974 lost treasure "Inspiration Information" (repackaged and released by David Byrne's Luaka Bop label in 2001 as part of their "World Psychedelic Classics" series) predated the rise of Prince and the Paisley Park funk sound by a solid half-decade, laced with Otis's soulful take on the California sound to create an album that is at once classic and contemporary. Otis utilized the earliest drum machine technology, Moog synthesizers and his considerable guitar chops to create a near-flawless record; I daresay this album was an influence on Radiohead for "Kid A." The album's title track makes me want to roll down the windows and ride with the top down... if I owned a car.

Betsy's picks:
"Walk in the Park" by Beach House
It's one of those chill and relaxed songs that seems to capture the essence of a lazy summer. And the lyrics remind me of how short our Chicago summers are. We have such great expectations at the start of the season. Then, when it abruptly comes to an end, we wish we would have done more to make it worthwhile.

"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" by JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound
This band takes the slow-paced and pretty damn depressing Wilco favorite and jazzes it up just the right way. It kind of gets you in that "School's out let's play!" mood. After listening to this, I'm ready to head to the closest outdoor patio and start drinking. And when you hear the song for the first time, it's nice to know the lyrics - kind of like our summers. You expect every year to be just as hot and just as miserable as it has always been, but there's great comfort in familiarity.

Sarah's picks:
"Deadbeat Summer" by Neon Indian
Though this song was released in fall of last year, its drowsy lo-fi pop is a perfect fit for this sweltering heat wave. Blending staccato synth, warped guitar and drowsy vocals, this retro melody has a lo-fi, cassette tape feel that gets us all nostalgic for the lazy days of summer vacation. And because it maintains both a chilled out vibe and catchy dance beats, it’s good for an afternoon eating popsicles in front of the fan or a night sweating it up on the dance floor.

"Tighten Up" by The Black Keys
The Black Keys’ brand of rock and roll is sultry and soulful enough to satisfy even Chicago’s appetite for blues. “Tighten Up,” the first single off their newest album, Brothers,” is a surging, buoyant melody with surly guitar riffs and impassioned vocals howling out lyrics about love, desire and desperation. Still aching over that failed spring romance? This song will ease your blues on those blurry, drunken summer nights and the whiskey-induced urge to text your ex.

Tankboy's picks:
I don't have a pick. Seriously. This summer has been so fragmented music-wise there is no tune that wraps up the whole vibe of the past few months. So instead I offer you a mini-playlist of ten songs that have soundtracked the beach and the fests and the journeys of the last few months. They didn't define the season, but they helped fill in party pieces of the puzzle. Hunt 'em down and load 'em up!

"All The Lovers" by Kylie Minogue
"Coquete Coquette" by of Montreal
"The Deep End" by Hiawata
"All Summer" by Kid Cudi, Best Coast and Rostam
"Goodbye" by Best Coast
"Wanna-Be Angel" by Foxy Shazam
"Free Energy" by Free Energy
"Dance Yrself Clean" by LCD Soundsystem
"Tell Em" by Sleigh Bells
"Erase Me" by KiD CuDi with Kanye West
"Dancing On My Own" by Robyn
"How You Like Me Now" by The Heavy

And this was the summer I rediscovered the mind-blowingness of Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back. Stuck on repeat, for real. Oh, also a bunch of pre-1972 Pink Floyd and a LOT of INXS.

'I began to discover a way to expose the extraordinariness in ordinary things ... After that, it was as if Skellig had been waiting'

David Almond had just posted a collection of stories to his publisher when the opening sentence of Skellig popped into his head. "I wasn't thinking of anything; I was planning to take a few days off. I dropped the manuscript in the postbox, turned away, and bang! Skellig was there."

"I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon," begins the novel, which would go on to win the Whitbread children's book award, the Carnegie medal and the sort of awed encomiums normally reserved for literary greats. It tells the story of Michael, a 10-year-old boy whose easy life has been turned on its head. His family have moved into a filthy, falling-down house on the far side of town, and his parents are distracted by his newborn sister, who is troublingly ill. Poking around one day in the garage at the back of the house, he finds, amid the clutter of tea chests and rotting rolls of carpet, a skinny, pale, black-suited creature, "covered in dust and webs . . . dead bluebottles scattered on his hair and shoulders". This is Skellig: crotchety, arthritic, addicted to Chinese takeaway ("food of the gods!") and brown ale ("sweetest of nectars!"). He's a tramp, to all intents and purposes, remarkable only for the fact that beneath his greasy jacket is folded a pair of tatty wings.

The question of what Skellig is – angel, monster, next step on the evolutionary ladder – haunts one of the most weirdly beautiful novels to emerge in British literature, children's or otherwise, in years. In plain, pared-back language, Almond picks out the tale of Michael and his friend Mina as they care for the squalid miracle they've stumbled across. It "tells a story of love and faith with exquisite, heartfluttering tenderness," said Raymond Seitz, chair of the 1998 Whitbread judging panel. "Almond treads with delicate certainty," said Philip Pullman, reviewing the novel for the Guardian, "and the result is something genuine and true."

Almond – in his late 40s by the time Skellig came out – had spent the previous two decades plugging away, with varying degrees of success, at adult fiction: publishing a story here and a story there; seeing his first novel roundly rejected; failing to finish a second. Skellig, by contrast, came to the page almost fully formed. It took just six months to write, alongside a full-time teaching job – in part, he found, thanks to the freedom imparted by his new audience. "I got halfway down the first page and realised to my astonishment that this was a story for young people," he says. "And I felt liberated. It was an area where I could renew myself." The ease with which the story flowed staggered him. "There were moments when I was spellbound by what I was writing. I thought, if I can just gather it, control it, then maybe the spell will go out to the reader too."

It did. The novel was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, selling out its first print run in four days. Now – 12 years and nine novels later – Almond has decided to revisit its world. Michael's friend Mina is an odd, bright presence in the original novel, given to pronouncements on formal education and devoted to William Blake. She keeps a journal in which Michael sees her furiously scribbling, and when Almond's US publisher called up to ask him for "a little bit extra" for a 10th anniversary edition, it was the journal that came into his mind. The result is My Name Is Mina: a vibrant mishmash of a book, played out in flights of fancy, blank pages and concrete poetry. "She always seemed the most powerful character to me," Almond says now, "Often, when I had to make a decision, I'd ask myself, 'What would Mina think?'. This book sees her coming to terms with the world and her own sadness, learning how to write and communicate, learning how to think. She's a girl who's growing up and has to transcend her troubles, and she does it through art, as we all do."

Almond grew up in Felling, a town of steep streets and old mineworks set high on the banks of the River Tyne. One of six children, he was raised in a "big Catholic family in a big Catholic community, with a great big Catholic church at the bottom of the hill." His stories are fired by and freighted with the stuff of his home: the 1960s Newcastle of Clay (2005); The Fire-Eaters' folk songs and coaly sea (2003); the pit cottages and pockmarked, heathery hills of Kit's Wilderness (1999); Michael's town in Skellig, which is a shadowy version of Almond's own. And while Almond is no longer a practising Catholic, the ease with which Michael and Mina accept the wonder at the heart of their story has its roots in a religious upbringing that required him to expect and embrace the mystical. Skellig is a thoroughly unremarkable miracle; a hobo-angel who takes his sacrament from the takeaway menu, intoning the order numbers "27 and 53" in place of chapter and verse. Such liturgical echoes ring through Almond's novels in words and phrases that reverberate like chants: "Jeez, Kit, man!" says Allie over and over in Kit's Wilderness, while in Heaven Eyes (2000), Erin and January mutter "Hell's teeth" back and forth to one another like a charm. On the one hand the speech in Almond's books is very naturalistic: his characters aren't burdened with overlong sentences, and he creates dialect through rhythm and vocabulary rather than Irvine Welsh-style transliteration. On the other, the lyrical repetitions create a formal, poetic feeling, mimicking the call and response of a mass.

School has also proved a rich seam for his fiction. "Like Catholicism, it offers deep-seated imagery and rituals to me as a writer," Almond says. "Themes around education and learning run through my work." After passing his 11-plus, Almond went to a Catholic grammar school, and "didn't enjoy it. The nature of schooling back then was so different. There was a lot of corporal punishment; people were strapped for next to nothing. And there was a great deal about moral fibre. If you were seen to be failing in that, you were treated with contempt." The school in The Fire-Eaters, in which the central character, Bobby, is strapped on his first day for "failing to pay attention when a teacher speaks", is a "very heightened version" of his own.

As a result, Almond did most of his reading at the library. He was obsessed by Roger Lancelyn Green's retellings of Greek myths and the legends of King Arthur ("a fantastic writer – I read Malory at university and was disappointed"), but the first writer who truly spoke to him was Hemingway. "I pulled a volume of his short stories from the shelf and was electrified. The plainness of the writing felt like a language I could relate to." The encounter in part prompted Almond's decision to study English and American literature at the University of East Anglia, where he read his way through the American greats. "I learned to be a regional writer by reading people like Flannery O'Connor," he says now. "She was a huge influence. She said that writers of the American south must wrestle with their southernness 'like Jacob with the angel until they extract a blessing'." I thought, that's exactly how I feel. And the Texan author William Goyen: when I read his wonderful dialect, I could hear the north-east in it. I learned Geordie through Goyen's Texan."

After university, casting around for a job that would allow him to write, Almond, to his shock, found himself drawn to teaching. "My leanings were to head for the backwoods, live in a tent and write, but I realised I couldn't do that," he says. "So I came back to Newcastle and did my PGCE. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done – but I also found it fascinating. It made me think about many things for the first time: politics, society, how one person should treat another, how children's minds work." By the late 1970s, he was teaching in Gateshead, and writing the first of many short stories. Over the next few years, he became a fixture on the small press scene: "getting published in magazines that have disappeared now", bringing out two overlooked collections of short stories, and editing the literary journal Panurge.

At the same time, he was working on his first piece of full-length fiction. The novel, Seances, took five years to write, and was rejected by every one of the 33 publishers who read it. "It was," he admits with admirable stoicism, "disheartening. But on the other hand, like the teachers at school who'd said 'you'll come to nowt', it made me think, 'I'll show you'!" He set off on another novel, but abandoned it, dissatisfied, halfway through and turned again to short stories. This time, however, he effected a double homecoming – as well as returning to his favourite form, he found himself considering the place where he'd grown up. "I'd turned 40 and my mother had just died," he says. "It felt natural to look back to my childhood on Tyneside. Until then I'd shied away from writing about it because I didn't want to be a 'northern' writer. But suddenly I found I could see a way to draw it into my work. I started to write a series of stories set in an imaginary version of Felling." In these stories (published as a collection, Counting Stars, in 2000), his early encounters with Hemingway and O'Connor bore fruit. "I began," he says, "to discover a way to write very plainly about very ordinary things, but somehow to expose the extraordinariness in them. Those stories changed everything. They got into magazines I'd been trying to get into for years: London Magazine, PN Review, Edinburgh Review. I won a couple of small prizes. I could see there was something in them. After that, it was as if Skellig had been waiting."

In the wake of Skellig, despite having written for adults all his life, Almond found himself in the curious position of being viewed as a children's writer. The decision to continue down that path and write his next book, Kit's Wilderness, for children too, was, he says, "organic. Skellig had given me confidence; with Kit, I thought, here's my chance to really go for it."

Skellig, for all its wondrousness, was in technical terms a small tale simply told. Kit's Wilderness, by comparison, is an opera. The old mining community of Stoneygate, where the novel is set, becomes the locus for a tale which digs back through the land's recent history all the way to the ice age; in which the ghosts of former pit disasters mingle with the industry's modern-day victims (an unemployed father, "muttering and cursing, leaning against the pub wall"); in which class, family and heritage all have a part to play. The whole thing is wound about with Kit's Granpa's songs and stories of his time underground, and the symbolic weight of the caves which honeycomb the landscape, acting as shelter for the characters of Kit's stone age imaginings, bringing death to the miners who are trapped in them, becoming a place of memory and forgetting for Granpa, who likens his Alzheimer's to having a "head full of caves and tunnels". "I remember going for a walk when I was writing it and feeling like there were 27 different storylines to keep straight," Almond says. "If Skellig was like wrestling with an angel to extract a blessing, Kit was like wrestling with a gorilla. When I finished, I was knackered. I was in bed for a week."

After that, the books came thick and fast. "I used to look at my output before Skellig and sigh," he says. "People say to me, you're so prolific, and I think, now I am! It's the payoff for all the time I spent getting sentences to work properly. Like anything, you develop a skill through hard work." Kit's Wilderness was followed by Heaven Eyes (shortlisted for the Carnegie) and Secret Heart in 2001. In 2003, he published The Fire-Eaters and won the Whitbread for a second time. "That was a great book to write," he says. "I'd been writing another book set in Northumberland, and it was useless: I woke up one morning and chucked it away. Then suddenly the voice of the fire-eater came into my mind."

On the surface, the book is a straightforward coming-of-age story: 11-year-old Bobby Burns, on the cusp of adolescence, finds himself negotiating old and new friends, starting at a different school, worrying about his father's cough. But the year is 1962, and Bobby's commonplace concerns are reflected and amplified by a wider threat. "I was the same age as Bobby during the Cuban missile crisis," Almond explains. "And I remember that sense of dread: looking out of the window for the missiles coming over, watching for the mushroom clouds. It was an amazing moment in history, and the fire-eater was the perfect metaphor to build it around. I had something right at the heart of a book about the crisis that mattered. When a story comes well, it's like a gift: it brings in all this other stuff."

Readers and critics have labelled Almond's novels modern fairytales. But for Almond himself, "the pressing thing is the realism. Skellig had to be in a real garage. Kit sleeps in a real mine. The Fire-Eaters, while it has a miraculous element to it, takes place in a real coastal town, and features a real fire-eater – he was based on this character we used to see on the Quayside in Newcastle when I was a kid. Once you've got that solid, touchable world you can do anything. Maybe that's something else to do with being brought up as a Catholic: you're taught to think about the other world, but you grow up in this one, and you realise there couldn't be anything better. So you find the miraculousness in reality."

Next month, Almond will travel to Santiago de Compostela to receive a gold medal from the Hans Christian Andersen award committee. The prize, given every two years to a living author whose work has "made a lasting contribution to children's literature", is children's fiction's highest accolade, and a remarkable achievement for an author whose publishing career is just over a decade long. "It's happened so fast," Almond says, with something like wonder. "The last 12 years have been extraordinary: from a standing start, there was Skellig, the Whitbread and the Carnegie, Kit coming out and winning the Michael L Printz award in the US, The Fire-Eaters winning the Whitbread . . . it's just gone on and on. But with the Andersen award, for the first time, it felt as if everything stopped. There was a moment of stillness. And now I'm going on again."

Almond on Almond

It's SATs day at school. Mina reads the instruction on the test paper: "Write a description of a busy place". The headteacher is staring through the classroom door. He looks like he's spent a night with ghosts. He mouths the words: Write. Don't Worry. Please write. So she starts to write:

In thi biginin glibbertysnark woz doon in the woositinimana. Golgy golgy golgy thang, wiss wandigle. Oliotoshin under smiffer yes! Glibbering mornikles which was o so diggibunish. Hoy it! Hoy it! Then woz won so stidderuppickle. Aye aye woz the replifing clud. Yes! Clud is cludderish thats trew. Tickles und ticklin woz the rest ov that neet dun thar in the dokniss. An the crippy cralies crippin unda the path doon thar. Howzit! Woz the yel. Howzit! Sumwun nose a sekritish thang an wil holed it unda. Aye! Unda! So hoy it! Naa. It is two riddish a thang for hoyin. So giv it not a thowt. Arl wil be in the wel in the wel ay depe don in the wel. An on it goze an on an on an on an on an on an on an on til the middlishniss is nere. An the glibbertysnark wil raze oot the woositinimana an to the blewniss wi the burds.

Are you taking the mick, asks the despairing headteacher. This is a page of nonsense! Mina agrees, but for her writing nonsense can make lots of sense. Would Chaucer have done SATs, she wonders. What about William Blake? The words are rebellious not because they rail against the institution, but because they're happily themselves, with their own rhythms and beauty. And they help her achieve her aim of being taken out of school. Afterwards, as she walks away with her mum through the park, she listens to the singing birds, reflects on her achievement, and is filled with claminosity.

It often did feel as if Mina was speaking through me as I wrote her book, scribbling her stories, poems, memories and dreams, and leaving empty pages like empty skies waiting for birds to appear.

Since right around the beginning of the year, running has grown into a passion of mine. For years it had been nothing more than a 3-4 time a week 3 mile or so calorie burn, that allowed me to splurge a bit more at meal time. Honestly, it seemed more like work than anything else. But in the last several months it has blossomed into a near obsession, complete with training plans, training logs, mapped out routes and spreadsheet schedules that finance nerds like myself so much enjoy creating for all facets of our lives.

As a result, several people recommended that I pick up the book Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall, a writer for Men's Health magazine. Prior to reading this book, I always assumed completing a marathon (or multiple marathons) was the absolute apex of a runner's life. The term "ultra marathon" meant nothing to me. I had no idea that all across the country, races of 50 or even 100 miles were being held quite frequently. I didn't know you could run 100 miles at one time without dropping dead.

McDougall does an excellent job discussing these races as well as taking a close look at why many Americans in their triple-digit costing running shoes break down on a regular basis while a virtually unknown tribe in the Copper Canyons of Mexico run literally hundreds of miles a week, injury free, in little more than sandals. This tribe, known as the Tarahumara, invisible for virtually for the history of their people, showed up one day to dominate the Leadville 100 mile race in Colorado, and then just vanished, as quickly as they appeared.

When the book starts to become a bit technical, McDougall is able to lighten it with fascinating, true stories, involving colorful characters such as, "Cabalo Blanco" and "Barefoot Ted". The book culminates with McDougall's account of, "The Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen", a grueling race through the Copper Canyons between the Tarahumara and the mysterious white people, considered the worlds greatest, brought together by Cabalo Blanco. Not only does McDougall recount the details of the race, but he also partakes in it.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is even a little bit into running. It is very likely to spark a fire within you to further pursue this sport. If you're not a runner, I'd still recommend this book just for some of the stunning tales within it. It may just inspire you to strap on the running shoes (or maybe run right out the front door barefoot....Ted would be proud).

Speaking of running...I managed to bang out 19 miles in the last 7 days. As always, I owe a lot of it to my trusty ipod (and some badly needed new headphones). Here are some ipod highlights from yesterday's six miles:

• Flobots - Handlebars
• Pixies - Monkey Gone To Heaven
• The Streets - Let's Push Things Forward
• The Sheila Divine - Hum
• The Lemonheads - It's a Shame About Ray
• Alice In Chains - Would?
• Smashing Pumpkins - Drown
• Garbage - Special
• Fuel - Shimmer
• Hole - Miss World

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Our latest look at Treyarch's Cold War spin on the Call of Duty series takes us underwater and up in the air.

The new demo of Call of Duty: Black Ops that Activision is showing here at Gamescom 2010 doesn't quite start off with a bang. In fact, it's more of that gurgling sound you hear when certain objects start sinking underwater. That's not a bad thing, because we're not talking in metaphors here--you literally start the level trapped inside a downed helicopter sinking to the bottom of the Huong River. It's a tense sequence that sees you making a desperate escape while swimming through murky water with more than a few dead bodies in it.

If the sight of those bodies sinking to the bottom of the river while you're trying to swim to the top of it doesn't grab you, then the level's rollercoaster pacing will. The whole level, dubbed Victor Charlie, is one great big crescendo that starts of slow and methodical, explodes in the middle, and slows back down for a bit toward the end. To give you an idea of how it builds up, let's go back to the beginning. Once you get out of that river, you make your way through some waterfront huts and meet up with your squad mates, those grizzled deniable ops super soldiers who operate with vicious efficiency and sport some pretty awesome tattoos to boot. With them at your side you slowly and silently creep into an enemy hut while one of the bad guys, asleep on the job, is taking a nap.

What happens next isn't for the faint of heart, but the basic jist is that you cover his mouth and and sink your knife quickly and silently into his throat in a grim scene of surgical violence. Okay, so maybe that's not so much the jist as much as it is precisely what happens. At any rate, you continue along at a similar pace in order to get through this dangerous area unseen while dispatching a few more foes and taking another dip or two into the river (complete with first-person swimming) before getting to a village a bit farther inland. And that, well, that's when things get really hot. The mission requires you to plant some C4 on a target building, and that explosion obviously attracts a lot of attention. The transition from all that sneaking about to this swarming bee's nest of a shootout is something else, and definitely seems like it'll keep a lot of players on their toes.

The firefight is a bit more of that classic Call of Duty, with fast-paced gun combat and more than a few explosions. A few of the highlights we noticed were the ways those wooden houses explode in a flurry of debris when you hit them with your M16's underslung grenade launcher, and those handful of desperate enemies who come charging out of nowhere with a clear desire to skill you not with a gun, but with a gentlemanly knife to the chest. After that you hop into a dim, claustrophobic tunnel in a sequence that has you crawling through some pretty creepy scenery while encountering a few grim surprises along the way.

After Victor Charlie wrapped up, we had the chance to see the helicopter level that Treyarch demoed during Microsoft's E3 2010 press conference a couple months ago. Named Payback, this level takes the aircraft sequences we've seen from time to time in previous Call of Duty games and lets you actually pilot the thing (while still operating the guns, of course). After sneaking up on a group of soldiers guarding a Russian Hind helicopter and taking them out, you hop into the attack chopper and fly through a river canyon shooting down on-foot enemies, armored trucks, helicopters, and entire bridges. You can read our initial impressions from the press conference demo for more details, but suffice it to say this level managed to put a new spin on the type of vehicle moments the Call of Duty series has previously been known for.

All told, Call of Duty: Black Ops is looking quite good. That's not exactly a surprise for a series that's garnered plenty of glowing reviews over the years, but it's good to see that Treyarch has been able to jump into a new timeline--Cold War-era conflicts--without missing a step. Expect to see more coverage on Black Ops before the game releases on November 9.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

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Our latest look at Treyarch's Cold War spin on the Call of Duty series takes us underwater and up in the air.

The new demo of Call of Duty: Black Ops that Activision is showing here at Gamescom 2010 doesn't quite start off with a bang. In fact, it's more of that gurgling sound you hear when certain objects start sinking underwater. That's not a bad thing, because we're not talking in metaphors here--you literally start the level trapped inside a downed helicopter sinking to the bottom of the Huong River. It's a tense sequence that sees you making a desperate escape while swimming through murky water with more than a few dead bodies in it.

If the sight of those bodies sinking to the bottom of the river while you're trying to swim to the top of it doesn't grab you, then the level's rollercoaster pacing will. The whole level, dubbed Victor Charlie, is one great big crescendo that starts of slow and methodical, explodes in the middle, and slows back down for a bit toward the end. To give you an idea of how it builds up, let's go back to the beginning. Once you get out of that river, you make your way through some waterfront huts and meet up with your squad mates, those grizzled deniable ops super soldiers who operate with vicious efficiency and sport some pretty awesome tattoos to boot. With them at your side you slowly and silently creep into an enemy hut while one of the bad guys, asleep on the job, is taking a nap.

What happens next isn't for the faint of heart, but the basic jist is that you cover his mouth and and sink your knife quickly and silently into his throat in a grim scene of surgical violence. Okay, so maybe that's not so much the jist as much as it is precisely what happens. At any rate, you continue along at a similar pace in order to get through this dangerous area unseen while dispatching a few more foes and taking another dip or two into the river (complete with first-person swimming) before getting to a village a bit farther inland. And that, well, that's when things get really hot. The mission requires you to plant some C4 on a target building, and that explosion obviously attracts a lot of attention. The transition from all that sneaking about to this swarming bee's nest of a shootout is something else, and definitely seems like it'll keep a lot of players on their toes.

The firefight is a bit more of that classic Call of Duty, with fast-paced gun combat and more than a few explosions. A few of the highlights we noticed were the ways those wooden houses explode in a flurry of debris when you hit them with your M16's underslung grenade launcher, and those handful of desperate enemies who come charging out of nowhere with a clear desire to skill you not with a gun, but with a gentlemanly knife to the chest. After that you hop into a dim, claustrophobic tunnel in a sequence that has you crawling through some pretty creepy scenery while encountering a few grim surprises along the way.

After Victor Charlie wrapped up, we had the chance to see the helicopter level that Treyarch demoed during Microsoft's E3 2010 press conference a couple months ago. Named Payback, this level takes the aircraft sequences we've seen from time to time in previous Call of Duty games and lets you actually pilot the thing (while still operating the guns, of course). After sneaking up on a group of soldiers guarding a Russian Hind helicopter and taking them out, you hop into the attack chopper and fly through a river canyon shooting down on-foot enemies, armored trucks, helicopters, and entire bridges. You can read our initial impressions from the press conference demo for more details, but suffice it to say this level managed to put a new spin on the type of vehicle moments the Call of Duty series has previously been known for.

All told, Call of Duty: Black Ops is looking quite good. That's not exactly a surprise for a series that's garnered plenty of glowing reviews over the years, but it's good to see that Treyarch has been able to jump into a new timeline--Cold War-era conflicts--without missing a step. Expect to see more coverage on Black Ops before the game releases on November 9.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

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