Category: Favourites

I know I’m like 3 weeks late, but yesterday I finally got to see “Kill Bill Volume 2“, or simply, as the British Board of Film Classification called it, Vol. 2. So I figured I’d give my thoughts on both volumes at the same time, kinda like the way it was meant to be seen.

Kill Bill Volume 1

I’ll assume that most people have seen this, but if you haven’t, might as well look away now.

Kill Bill opens with a shot of a bloody and beaten bride (Uma Thurman) talking to a disembodied voice before she gets shot point blank in the head which doesn’t kill her, but puts her in a coma for 4 years, when she finally comes to she sets out on a “roaring rampage of revenge” against the DiVAS (Deadly Viper Assassination Squad) who put her where she is today. In typical Tarantino fashion the movie then starts jumping about the timeline like no ones business as the first target, Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), is really the second.

The opening fight is a pretty intense, if a little catty, affair broken up by a funny moment when Green’s infant daughter arrives home from school in the middle of a knife fight. If you think that’s good, it only gets better as it goes on… We flashback to the aftermath of The Bride’s wedding massacre and her time in hospital, and it wouldn’t be a Tarantino film if there wasn’t something sick going on, like say a hospital worker renting out her comatose body to guys to have sex with… Of course, she wakes up as the latest guy climbs on top of her and the blood begins to spill like no-one’s business. Fast forward to Japan as The Bride tracks down O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Lui) who runs the Tokyo underworld, cutting off people heads for fun, we see a bit of back story on O-Ren done in an Anime style which was probably the best decision as it deals with a few disturbing moments, paedophilia for one.

So we get to the big hyped fight between The Bride and O-Ren’s personal army, The Crazy 88. And is it worth the wait and all the hype? Of course it is… The Bride literally cuts a swathe through The Crazy 88 with a samurai sword, limbs are sliced off, jets of blood stream everywhere as, one-by-one, everyone meets the business end of The Bride’s Japanese Steel.

Well that’s the plot outline, the movie it’s self is simply fantastic. Completely differing styles merge together seamlessly, like the anime bits, the fight scene with The Crazy 88 cuts to black & white halfway through as well as various slow motion bits. It also has a great soundtrack as well as original music by Wu-Tang Clan member The RZA, plus what not to like when it has a special appearance by The 5,6,7,8’s?

Highly recommended.

Kill Bill Volume 2

If you haven’t seen Volume 1, don’t even consider seeing Volume 2 as, like the Lord of the Rings movies, there is no recap of what’s happened (as such) at the start, but we do find out the Wedding Massacre wasn’t a wedding at all, it was a wedding rehearsal…

Anyways, 2 down, 3 to go on The Bride’s list, next up is Budd (Michael Madsen), brother of Bill, who is now living in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere in Texas, bouncing a titty bar for a living, but Bill tips him off about The Bride’s recent events and he’s ready for her as he unloads a few rounds of rock salt into her as she breaks into his trailer, he then takes her to a graveyard and buries her alive. We then cut to the Bride’s brutal training in China some years before with Pai-Mei (and his comical beard stroking).

She, of course, breaks out of the coffin and escapes the grave and makes a beeline straight to Budd’s to finish the job, but Budd has made a deal with the only other member of the DiVAS left, the one-eyed Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), who double crosses him and kills him. So The Bride breaks in and the two fight it out… Needless to say, Elle is beaten in a really wonderful, yet sickening, way… So all that is left is Bill (David Carradine) and the small matter of The Bride’s & Bill’s daughter (which she thought she lost when in the coma). The title of the movie gives the ending away.

This movie is totally different from Volume 1, which was more of an oriental feel, this one is more of a spaghetti western (with a touch of 80’s martial arts movie training montages thrown in for added measure). In retrospect it was probably better to split the movie into 2 movies as the pace would probably have been totally screwed up at the join (of course, a bit of sly editing could eliminate this) but as a movie on it’s own, Volume 2 is probably better than Volume 1, both are fantastic and I’m hoping that Tarantino and Miramax see sense and release a single cut of Kill Bill on DVD in the not-too-distant future, probably with a bit of editing in the way scenes are played out but it would be good to see the whole thing.

Highly recommended, if not more so, but again, you’d be stupid to go see this without seeing Volume 1.

If you’ve already seen both, why not check out the Kill Bill Reference Guide to see where the inspiration for some places came from…

Well, a day or so late, but finally I return of news of the Barenaked Ladies gig at the Glasgow Academy last night… And what a show it was, lasting for 2 hours with 2 encores and a whole load of great songs and laughs in between. One of the, if not the best show I’ve been to…

The support band was The Honeymoon who were pretty good, and played 7 or so songs over 30 minutes but the 2,500 capacity audience was really only here for one reason… And they proceeded to go wild 5 minutes before the band took the stage and kept it up for the duration.

They kicked the show off with a song off the new CD, Everything to Everyone, “Maybe Katie”… and played every song you could possibly want, from old favourites like “Be My Yoko Ono, “The Old Apartment”, “Alternative Girlfriend”, “One Week”, “Brian Wilson”, “It’s All Been Done” and “If I Had $1,000,000” to new songs like “War On Drugs”, “Another Postcard” and “Upside Down” as well as the usual adlibs and randomness that surrounds a Barenaked Ladies concert.

I wish I had a set list as it was quite expansive, but I’ve ordered the bootleg cd from the Barenaked Ladies Live Website…

Also, it was my first event at the Glasgow Academy, and it’s a pretty nice venue, walking distance from the centre of the city, and the floor has been split into 3 different levels, we positioned ourselves at the front of the middle level to I could take a few (hopefully) decent pictures… All in all I took about 113 pictures and 4 60 second movie clips, not a bad haul for a nights work, anyways here is more than a few pictures from the show.

And the more than obrigatory panorama, my favourite one yet…

Since last Thursday it’s been a little bit hectic as my friend Scott is visiting from Scotland and we had a full extended weekend planned…

It started Thursday afternoon with us (Robyn and I) picking him up from Hartsfield Airport and driving out to Athens which is the home of The University of Georgia and, I was told, a great nightlife… So we had a few drinks, got something to eat and shot some pool till Scott could stands no more.

Friday was walking around downtown Athens then back to Atlanta to see Cirque du Soleil which was quite a sight… Plus we had scored front row seats in the corner of the stage, so at times we were a little too close for comfort. I would have loved to take more pictures than the 3 I did, but security was pretty tight about cameras and the last thing I wanted was to have it confiscated (see my thought on this from 2 years ago and the infamous Dublin Foo Fighters incident).

Saturday was spent doing the CNN Studio Tour at the CNN Center then a trip up to Six Flags Over Georgia, home of the ride that makes my ass pucker up… Batman The Ride… Never again I tells you…

Sunday was a nice relaxing day down at Turner Field to see the Braves beat the Marlins 3-2 in 10 innings and a game that saw 2 homers, 2 ejections, Chipper Jones carried off injured and an exciting finish with Andruw Jones running from 1st to home after a Marlin outfielder lost the ball in the sun to win the game.

And now it’s back to work until Thursday when I head back to Scotland for a month, it’s going to be very weird being back there, I’m too used to living here now. Who in their right mind would swap 81° sun for 51° (if I’m lucky) wind and rain?

Anyways, here’s a few pictures from the weekend…

Unfortunately I need to get pictures of Athens off Robyn, and I won’t see her till just before I leave…

Oh, and here’s what you’ve been waiting for… A CNN Center panorama, The Great American Scream Machine at Six Flags, Turner Field and Turner Field from a different view.

Sorry about the lack of posting… I had a wonderful weekend in the company of Robyn, the woman I semi-mentioned in last Wednesday’s post, and it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time…

Friday night was a home cooked meal at her place followed by a movie, the wonderful Bottle Rocket. Saturday was a full day, starting with errands to Barnes & Noble and Borders to return books, then off to Turner Field to pick up tickets for the Atlanta Braves game against the Florida Marlins on April 18th.

Then we headed over to Stone Mountain, which is literally, a Stone Mountain… It’s only distinguishing feature is a huge carving of Confederate war heroes General Robert E. Lee, General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and the first and only President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis… We went up to the top of the mountain to watch the sunset over Atlanta before watching the lasershow that’s so stirring, it makes you proud to be an American…

Quite…

Anyway, here’s a few pictures…

Obligatory panorama action… Firstly… The Stone Mountain carving, then a 180° view from the top of the mountain and finally, a full 360° from the top of the mountain.

On Sunday we more or less just lazed the day away before going to Highland Point, a housing development in Marietta that offers a great view of Atlanta on a clear day, in fact it was so clear we could make out the Georgia Dome beside Downtown Atlanta

All in all, a wonderful time…

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
– Alexander Pope

I saw the new Jim Carrey movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” last night and it’s a really great movie…

If you’re expecting the usual kind of Jim Carrey movie, you’ll be disappointed and probably leave the theatre with a headache. Eternal Sunshine tell the story of Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), Joel skips a day of work and heads for an impulsive train trip to Mautak and the beach where he meets Clementine. She’s as quirky as she is attractive, and he’s not the most normal guy in town, and they fall in love.

Or do they?

Something odd appears to be going on, reaching a crisis when Clementine starts reacting to Joel as if they’d never met. Eventually he discovers what’s happened, deciding to end their affair, she’s gone through a bizarre brain procedure that’s erased her memories of him. Rejected, insulted, and downright miserable, Joel seeks out the mind-meddling psychiatrist and requests the same treatment.

Along the way he regrets his decision, realising how good their relationship was for him. He persuades his mental Clementine to evade the memory-killing process, hiding in ever-deeper layers of his mind where the shrink’s psychiatric software won’t penetrate, which invariably leads to bizarre moments as a game of cerebral cat-and-mouse take place as Joel lies unconscious while the memory erasing technicians (played by Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood) and the distracted doctor (Tom Wilkinson) try to figure out why his brain waves are falling off the computer screen.

I won’t give away too much, but there are some simply brilliant moments in the movie with the editing, especially of the chase down the street after Clementine leaves. Director Michel Gondry does an excellent job of telling a story that could have very easily been a complete disaster. He is able to keep the scenes moving in such a way that you feel like you are watching someone’s actual memories. Joel and Clementine move through the space of Joel’s mind with great fluidity. Watching a relationship in reverse and seeing the participants make comments on how they screwed up gives real insight into how relationships work, and fail.

It’s a really complicated story that requires your full attention, the film isn’t for everyone and most will probably not like it. Basically it’s a smart, intelligent story that looks at relationships and how they go from first love to self-destructiveness as time goes on. Ultimately it asks it’s audience, “If you knew how your relationship would end, would you start in the first place?” and only you can answer that…

Today was another gorgeous day… Plus in the space of 5 days, all the trees have literally burst into bloom, back in Scotland it’s barely above freezing and forecast for rain as far as the eye will see. Homesick? Me? Never… Right now it’s as hot as most Scottish summers get, and it’s only March, Jealous? You should be…

So this is another redesign, and straight off I’m gonna say it’s HEAVILY inspired by both Michael Hanscom‘s and Simon Dodson‘s sites respectively… I like it, I’ve just been lacking in creativity for so long now. So many projects have been sitting on the back-burner, like my portfolio site, though I’m quite happy with my current job of content management with a little graphical work here and there. Desigining individual sites is a big no-no now, my last job of churning out 3 shitty sites a day burned me out I think.

But back to the matter at hand, today the pets were SO cute, Linus snuggling up to Woody and 3 cats hanging out…

Plus there is this nice picture of Charlie and Woody tangled up on the couch.

Is there anything better than seeing celebrities cussing like sailors?

I don’t think so, so I present to you a funny little Channel 4 advert that came to my attention via neuroblog…

WARNING! It’s pure, unadulterated swearing, so just assume it’s not safe for work or suitable for kids…

I love Sarah Chalke saying “Merde”, Laura Innes “It starts with c and ends with t” and everyone’s favourite Janel Maloney “I love c**t”.

Time for a cold shower methinks.

In other dumb celebrity news, everyone’s favourite newlywed, Jessica Simpson, dropped another of her famous faux pas over the weekend…

Simpson, whose verbal gaffes are also legendary, pulled another one Sunday visiting the White House, our sources say. The singer was introduced to Interior Secretary Gale Norton and gushed: “You’ve done a nice job decorating the White House.”

Not as bad as El Presidente Bush calling Ford’s Theatre “Lincoln’s Theater”.

I swear (recurring theme), I ain’t making this up…

As promised, a few pictures from my time in Portland.

And, as usual, here is the obligatory panoramic shot of the city.

It was another night at The Boiler Room for Tiffany’s birthday (no link necessary, you surely got it by now) and man, do I rock?

After a brief phase of procrastination, I got up to sing and completely killed Van Morrison’s “Baby Please Don’t Go” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”… Never again will I sing Landslide, even to myself… I wasn’t quite sure how to go with it, so it was a little bit Stevie Nicks, a little bit Billy Corgan with a dash of Dixie Chick-ness thrown in for added measure.

But then I found my niche, songs that don’t require singing at all, by that I mean screaming and psuedo-rapping… Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel the Noize” never sounded so good, I was channeling Liam Gallagher for the Oasis version for most of it… Then the big finale, Kid Rock’s “Bawitdaba”.

Hell yeah! I’m sure we’ll be back there tonight, and I’ve got a few more songs I love that I want to murder, should be fun.

Following on from Tennessee, we thought we’d add another state to our list and seeing as Alabama is the closest one (apart from Tennessee) we headed over there.

That was our first mistake. Though I’m sure Alabama is a nice state, we managed to find our way to the scariest, most rundown shanty town I’ve ever seen… It was straight out of Deliverance and yes I know Deliverance is set in Georgia, but let’s not get petty here. Erika was driving and for some god unknown reason, she kept driving deeper and deeper into this ruin of a town who’s name I forget… And trust me, I’ve looked on plenty of maps and it doesn’t even show up! It’s a Scooby-Doo ghost town!

So yeah, that was my brief run in with Alabama, my 11th US state after Maine, Florida, New York, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois, Massechusetts, New Jersey, Georgia, Tennessee… Later on this week I hope to add North and South Carolina to the list making it 13 states in 10 years, most in the last 5.

Though, one funny moment came out of the trip. We stopped by a river for a break and to stretch the legs, and beside the river was a little dock of sorts, so Erika goes walking towards the end and what do we see lurking under the dock?

An Alligator!

Well, it looked like an Alligator at first, so we’re screaming at Erika to come back on to land and she’s having none of it, which was funny cause the “Alligator” was just a bit of wood. But I swear, for a few seconds we were sure it was an Alligator. Scary but funny in the end…

Yesterday we took a trip up north to Tennessee and Chattanooga to be a bit more precise… And it was a pretty cool day.

We stated out at about 10am and eventually arrived at the first destination somewhere between 12pm and 1pm, the place was Ruby Falls at Lookout Mountain, which is a 145′ underground waterfall deep inside Lookout Mountain, not for the claustrophobic amongst you as the cave trail gets pretty tight at times.

Ruby Falls:

After the Falls we headed through what we called “the scary part of town” to Downtown Chattanooga, which really isn’t much to write home about, to the Tennessee Aquarium, which houses the largest freshwater aquarium in the world and walking round it, it was pretty easy to believe…

Tennessee Aquarium:

And finally after the Aquarium we headed to The Chattanooga Choo-Choo (c’mon, you knew we were going to) but unfortunately my camera had long since died of power by then, so hopefully I can steal pictures off other people… After the trip back in time we went to Rock City, but unfortunately it was closed, much to our annoyance.

And here’s a few obligatory panorama’s, firstly the actual Ruby Falls and Chattanooga its self.

I also found out the third round of BlogMadness was open (and now closed) and I got beat by 7 votes to 11. Thank you to everyone who voted for me in these 3 rounds and taking me 2 rounds further than I expected to go, it’s been fun.

By way of Dawnkeyotie comes an interview… I’m torn between being serious or joking around, perhaps a bit of both will do…

1. What’s the most important thing in the world? And why?

Right now it’s the belongings I have in two suitcases and a cupboard upstairs as it’s all I have to my name… Without those I’d be smelly, dirty and naked somewhere, which doesn’t sound altogether bad but not really good if you’re living with people.

2. Imagine you are supreme ruler of the world. Nice, huh? Anyway, name two new laws, initiatives, or holidays that you would institute.

Hmmmm, yeah, first of all, it would be a freakin’ utopia people!

This utopia would be a lot like the world we live in today, except with one critical difference. We don’t have a fucked up world because we honestly believe in all the things we say, we have a fucked up world just because we’re assholes. Everything is open 24 hours a day, everything has a drive through window, and Mad Max is head of the highway patrol.

Don’t like your boss? In my world, we have a radical communist revolution every time its my turn to buy the beers. Hey, everyone has their own set of ethics, just that mine is better than yours..

Bored? WWII era Japanese ToJo Zeroes scream out of the sun and strafe people who stand still outdoors for too long. How long? Nobody knows. There’s no welfare, but citizens are guaranteed the right to as much junk food as they want.

Women aren’t allowed to talk about their feelings, but then men can’t brag about getting laid either. Everyone is required by law to be naked when alone, but I haven’t figured out how to enforce it, since surveillance is illegal.

Television content is as unregulated as internet content, but there’s only one channel. The crazy bastard who owns it keeps playing Xena: Warrior Princess 24/7.

Freedom of the press is for the people who own the printing presses.

Also, May 31st would be a global holiday as it’s my birthday… Wild celebrations would be the order of the day before a number of names are picked at random to go on “The Carousel™” to keep the population of the world down… In fact, anyone over 30 or 35 get’s their ass slammed into “The Carousel™”.

3. You are going to be convicted of a crime, real or imaginary. What is it and why?

Everything I done in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City… Which was a lot…

4. What is your favorite quote (or at least the favorite one you can find in the next 5 minutes)?

“Television is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs”
Hunter S. Thompson

5. If you have to be a mammal other than human, what would you be and why?

A cat probably, they get to sit around all day doing nothing while the humans are really their pets

6. You, too, must do haiku.

Haiku on Scam City?
That will be the day, buddy
No culture is here

Finally…The Rules!!

1 – Leave a comment below, saying you want to be interviewed. Prolly best if you leave an email address. The questions are different every time. I will make up your questions if you volunteer.

2 – I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.

3 – You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.

4 – You’ll include this explanation so that this may spread, like a disease, over blogs everywhere.

5 – You’ll ask other people five questions, of your choosing, when they want to be interviewed.

So I’ve made it alive to Atlanta, GA. with only the minor inconvenience of losing a chunk of data on my hard drive that’s rendering it pretty much useless, I think a trip to a data recovery specialist is needed to see what they can do with it as I’ve lost a lot of programs, pictures, mp3’s and even the new version of this place… So the new launch may be a bit later than expected if at all.

So without further adieu I present the pictures of my new home just outside Atlanta.

The House:

The Office:

The Pets:

Here’s a gratuitous panorama of the office.

4 people, 3 greyhounds and 3 cats… A bit of a mad house at times. So yeah, alive and well and blogging again (even got my GeoURL updated to show my new location).

Here’s a little story for you all…

Imagine the scene, it’s about 1am, I’m ready to go to bed but for some strange reason, I decide to check the stats for my website… Now with the original website of pingu disappearing, I put it on scamcity.co.uk to share with you guys (and people at a few chosen messageboards too)… So imagine my shock and awe when my bandwidth is through the fucking roof… My host allows me about 1gb of bandwidth and I’m scraping by with that (due to various images being posted here and there and mostly at design communities)

Now my previous best day, bandwidth wise, was at the end of October when Rich Baran died and I posted a little tribute to him, that day it topped out at 130mb (which I though was a helluva lot)

Todays not even over and it sits at 1.2GB (total bandwidth = 2.14GB)

How did it get this horrific you ask?

BLOODY FHM.COM leeched the fucking Pingu game off my ass! (as well as a couple of dozen message boards around the world)

They even have this cheeky description

Smack The Penguin

Animal cruelty can be fun!

A true phenomenon this one. Over the space of a day (January 21 2004 to be precise), FHM.com received over one thousand emails asking – nay, demanding – that we include this penguin/baseball bat brilliance in the top 100. Current office record is 593.5.

So my host has left a message for them where pingu used to be (www.scamcity.co.uk/pingu/) and I’ve sent them a nice, yet blunt, email saying if they want to continue linking to it, they better pony on up… I ain’t paying for stolen bandwidth, cause that’s what it amounts too…

The file for pingu is 300kb… 300kb into 1GB is a lot! 3,300 hits, give or take. There was a time I used to get that kind of traffic in a whole YEAR! Never mind a day…

I don’t expect to see a dime, and all I wanted to do was share the game after the original place died (prolly in much the same way as I have)…

What NOT to say in an already paranoid country.

Yeah, stupid girl for sure, that prank rates up there with:

The more I think about Saturday, the more I’m not looking forward to being fingerprinted, photographed, iris-scanned, weighed, poked, prodded, stripped naked, denied access to sanitation, handcuffed if I so much as raise my voice to complain, and generally humiliated because of the American government’s Patriot Act, and I do not anticipate that I will be comforting myself with the thought that, hey, it’s okay because I’m doing my bit to ensure the security of the American people… Though I wonder how my American readers would feel if it was the other way around and all that happened to them at Heathrow because, conceivably, one of your fellow American passengers might be a bomber.

Somehow I don’t think they’d be terribly happy with it.