Pop Culture is Dead To Me 2: The Flying Killer

So here's the irony. You start a blog by pointing out how this kind of blog is the least viewed kind of blog I do and two weeks later it's the 3rd single most viewed blog I've ever written on Farky Nell (this blog). I don't know if the timing was good or if the TV I talked about just happened to be topical enough to be largely patronised, but I decided to do it again, to prove to myself the last one was a fluke.

In this month's thrilling instalment I'll be wittering on about The Walking Dead, Lucifer, The Gifted (and a quick return to the Inhumans), Mr Robot, Star Trek: Discovery among others and having a bit of speculation involving things I haven't seen yet or have yet to be released. This is a spoiler warning. There will be talk about things you might not have seen yet (but in most cases you're probably ahead of me).

[SPOILER WARNING]

Four weeks into the new season of The Walking Dead and I'm quite pleased to see they've revisited a 'style' that worked for me. Back at the start of season five or six (I lose track), the producers spent about six episodes played out in real time about how they funnelled an army of walkers away from their settlement. It was tense, dangerous and illustrated how scary the dead could still be. I have no idea of knowing, but I get the impression that this new season might be played out entirely as one real time 'war' between Rick's gang of altruists and Negan and his Negans. And honestly, how good would that be if the entire 16 episode season was centred around one or two days and the consequences of it?

I expect what we'll get is eight episodes of this, ending in some kind of massive defeat for Rick's team - my guess would be the death of Judith and the majority of the Alexandrians - it seems to be the least defended in case of a retaliation and some of the characters there don't exist in the comics. I also think Enid will off Hilltop's self-appointed ruler and that Gabriel will be the one who does Negan more damage than we could ever imagine. But this is all speculation and the fact there's speculation again suggests to me that TWD might be rediscovering its mojo by keeping it simple.

Possibly the biggest shock on TV in 2017 will be the one 'shit' and two 'fucking's in Star Trek: Discovery. I know I've been about the only person who has been surprised by it and while it felt unnatural and forced, it also felt right... Last time out I was less than complimentary of ST:D and because I was wrong I got two packets of Galaxy Cake Bars as a present!

At the end of the two-part pilot, I felt a little underwhelmed; slightly peeved and the ST fan boy inside me I never knew existed was seething about how everything was far too... advanced. I said to the wife that we'd give it a couple more goes and if it was rubbish it would go the way of every ST series since the Next Generation, it would be ignored. By the end of episode three I was absolutely blown away. It's like some dark and slightly sinister half-sister to ST:NG and half the characters are greyer than a school kid's trousers. There are some moments worthy of the best ST cringeworthy scenes, but there are also Machiavellian plots, psychotic captains, and Klingon tits. It's not Star Trek for your kids, that's for sure. It might turn out to be just style over substance, but it's quickly moved up my list of must view stuff.

The TV series that has vied for top spot for the last couple of years has been Lucifer (always challenging Shameless but never quite beating it) and the last time we did this the new series hadn't started and I was expressing concerns about Tom Welling being added to the cast. For those of you not familiar with Welling, he was the last TV Clark Kent/Superman and Animal from the Muppets is a better, more emotive, actor.

The last series saw the final four episodes dropped and added to this one; whatever the reason it hasn't made this series feel any less Scooby Doo like. There was a point when I seriously considered Lucifer to be the best fun 'fantasy' TV show out there because it was so rubbish. Every week you would tune in for 'lame crime of the week' but you'd really be there to see how the real story progressed; even if the real story only got two out of the 42 minutes. Most people work out the killer before he or she speaks (it's usually the first person Lucifer and Chloe talk to) and that usually takes a back seat while Tom Ellis pontificates around the set like some extremely camp music hall thespian and us clued in viewers wait for whatever new revelation is going to be uncovered. Those four held-back episodes have been distributed among the opening seven (notable by the absence of Tom Wooden, I mean, Welling).

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a great series, but something needs to happen to advance the story a little. It is not popular because of its crap procedural dramas, equally it might not be because of the actual Lucifer/angel/God business, it might be purely down to the way Ellis chews the set up every time he's there; but I can see it losing its way if it doesn't find one.

Speaking of something needing to happen... I'm just about at the end of my patience with the majority of Marvel's TV output. I'm looking forward to the new series of SHIELD because I think Phil Coulson is a great character, but there have been times when I've felt the series needed something more than just an association to the Marvel Universe. Agents of SHIELD is like a John Le Carre novel compared to The Inhumans' small press comic strip. It is not that often when something you want to like gets dropped after just one episode, but the pilot of The Inhumans was so bad you would have struggled to believe it wasn't produced by some cosplayers with a $500 budget.

Agents of SHIELD introduced the Inhumans as a 'new' conceptual menace, because Marvel doesn't own the film rights to the X-Men and nothing has worked quite as well for Marvel than mutants versus humans, so instead of trying to sort something out with the mercenary 20th Century Fox, Marvel tried to create a new 'mutant' menace by bigging up the characters that were first introduced back in the mid 1960s (who were, originally, of Kree origin, which should tie in with the Marvel films but doesn't). The entire story arc involving the Inhumans in SHIELD was pretty awful and what was originally being touted as a major feature film, soon became a major TV series, which eventually became an eight-part mini-series, which eventually got cancelled before it was launched because, as a friend of mine in Hollywood told me, 'It had already become the laughing stock of Hollywood'.

We gave up on the Inhumans after the pilot because, quite frankly, I've seen more interesting things growing on old dog shit.

We didn't give up on The Gifted quite so fast. We gave it seven episodes before finally deciding that despite having an interesting cast and being a Mutant Underground X-Men tie-in it was actually a load of dull, boring and thoroughly uninspiring shite. It's probably me, but how do some of the scriptwriters on these shows get work? The Gifted's problem is nothing happens, everyone in it suffers from melodrama, the two main actors are essentially redundant and it just feels half-arsed. Perhaps this is the way superhero TV is going, if it is then it belongs to another me.

The fact there's 13 episodes in the new Punisher series fills me with dread... I might give it a miss.

We finally caught up on all of Mr Robot season two just as season three was starting. I dunno if it was suffering from second album syndrome but ... WTF? The first series had a madness; a crazy feel to it; season two was very much after the parade; a bit like Moonlighting after Willis & Shepherd finally copped off with each other. I got through the entire season thinking 'something is going to happen' and nothing did and then it ended on a cliffhanger that could easily have taken place ten seconds after the cliffhanger at the end of season one...

I still haven't gotten around to watching the new Twin Peaks.

Stranger Things 2 was considerably better than season 1 or was it? It certainly had more money thrown at it and it moved along at a pace unlike the first series; but ultimately did it achieve anything; did it further the story; was it any good?

On hindsight it kind of reminded me of a lukewarm bland wank, which, to my knowledge, is something I've never knowingly experienced, but imagine being simply perfunctory and could have been so much better with a bit of passion, vinegar strokes and some obligatory 1980s unnecessary nudity. I expect I will enjoy series 3 when it's on and then retrospectively tear it to pieces like I've done with the first two.

I'm saving the current series of Shameless for when the rest of TV has a winter break; looking at William H Macy's naked arse once a year is all I need to confirm it's the best thing on TV.

Yet again I'm struggling to think of a film we've watched since the last one of these that I'd recommend to anyone I like. I'm sure there has been, but for the last few Saturdays we've been doing something a bit retro and watching old classics. A few weeks back we watched The Thing, followed the next week by Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and then Harryhausen's Mysterious Island (which was so much worse than I remembered) and we have Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Old Dark House, Network, Trafic (The Tati classic), a bunch of other Carpenter films from the 80s and 90s and if I can persuade the wife to watch a Mexican film about a tentacled alien sex monster living in someone's house, then The Untamed is on my list. Obviously I'm looking forward to Thor 3 with almost zero expectation, now that I'm losing the will to live with comics films/TV. Oh and we watched The Limehouse Golem the other day and that's two fucking hours I'm never going to get back (even if Bill Nighy was excellent).

Meanwhile in the UK... I thoroughly love Only Connect. From the Barda-esque (Jack Kirby joke there for my comics friends) VC-M to wanting the twats who say 'Hor-Ned' to die from horrible itching diseases. The problem with Only Connect is it's a quiz show...

Most people I know who have discerning taste in TV have constantly recommended Peaky Blinders and I'm sure it's the best thing since multiple orgasms but I know a lot of people from Birmingham and I struggle to take any of them seriously and a cowing nutritious pot noodle.

Big fan of Simon Reeve. We play the "How many times will he say 'Bloody Hell' in a series?" all the time and I won with 6 for his three-part journey across Russia.

Sue Perkins's trip down the Ganges wasn't a patch on her Dan-Dare-tastic trip to see the Mekon.

Struggling to think of anything else we watch that is good or bad enough to mention; so it's probably time to end this nonsense.

Next Time: It'll soon be Christmas and that means falling asleep during Dr Who, wondering why the BBC even bothers now and probably NOT me taking the time to discuss ITV's new format. you know the one... based on the USA's idea of having FIVE advert breaks in an hour instead of four, the last one being just before the last fucking 30 seconds and credits. Honestly, TV executives are just complete cunts.

The 2017 Preview

[Mild applause]

Thank you, thank you. That was 2016. How will we ever forget? Do let the door hit you on the arse/ass on the way out, will you.

Phew. Still alive? Good. It's important to remember that January 1st to December 31st is only a year in the way that 1760 yards is a mile, it really doesn't matter where you place it, it's just a measurement of distance, if you look at time as a journey.

So... What can we expect from 2017 bearing in mind the odds for forecasting every single event in 2016 would have won you more money at the bookies than has ever existed or will exist until 2457. Had you been insane enough to have guessed just 200 of the celebrity deaths in a Yankee with Brexit, Donald Trump, Treeza May and Bruce Forsyth still being alive you could have bought earth and have the moon thrown in for good measure. You'd own everything, everyone, even wombats.

Applying a wee bit of logic, considerable amounts of drugs (mainly historical), and a kind of Salvador Dali procreates with Nigel Farage surrealism, here's 20 things that could happen in 2017:

1. 'Taking a Shitie' - The question on everyone's lips by the end of the summer will be 'What's your shit face like?' Take your picture while having a dump and then Instagram it. Crapper Snappers will be on the prowl and the name John-Henry will become the most popular name by December.

2. Staying on the anal theme; Kanye West's ego is lost down a rest room basin just outside Las Vegas. The 'rapper' blamed a taco he'd eaten earlier and would under no circumstances blame himself for eating it. President Trump has vowed to deploy many Mexicans to retrieve it from the shit mines of Iowa.

3. A photograph of Jamie Vardy will emerge at the end of May, shortly after Premier League Champions Leicester City are relegated, of the striker pissing on a photograph of the Arsenal team taken shortly after turning down the opportunity (in July) to play for a consistently average team rather than a bunch of one-season wonders. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, being French, just shrugged.

4. Kirk Douglas announces his wedding to Olivia de Havilland and the honeymoon will be two weeks at an S&M club in Deptford.

5. The government announces on the same day that ### ##### dies that due to a lack of money the NHS is being relabelled Virgin Health Service and it will only cost you £25 to see your GP.

6. A petition to have Jimmy Savile's remain dug up, desecrated and then thrown down a disused mine in Siberia is signed by over 10,000,000 people.

7. The Daily Express forecasts a ice age/heat wave this winter/summer with a likely apocalypse to follow if the immigrants and asylum seekers don't get you first.

8. Tim Peake is savagely attacked on Twitter and by media outlets for having a nice quiet two-week holiday with his family in the Algarve when he should have been appearing on television or radio at least once a week making a dick of himself.

9. Dolly Mixtures get a new name as not to offend people called Dolly or the odd sheep. The news is greeted by riots, social media outrage and the PM making a statement in the House. When the Daily Mail reports that the children's confectionery has been made with beef lard for the last 30 years the story dies overnight.

10. Rich people admit the 'trickle down effect' doesn't work because they only accrue money and never spend it. One multi-billionaire admitted to only eating $100 bills, sometimes with some egg mayonnaise.

11. Someone's arse explodes because of implants. Bits of gluteus maximus land in a woman's soy latte.

12. With a third of the world's best musicians dead, the other two-thirds refuse to leave their homes to record new music for fear of dying in some freak fan-related incident meaning for best part of the year nothing in the pop charts means anything to anyone over 30. New musical trends include DubChicken and Slime n Bass.

13. Slovenia elects a Toilet Duck as president.

14. The BBC offers to sell people the dates when Nigel Farage will not be appearing on their channels.

15. Donald Trump suggests that White American men should be allowed to have several wives and a small number of slaves to keep their plantations profitable and because most Americans are responsible people he disbands the police departments and allows the people of the USA to police themselves.

16. To be allowed to comment on or write letters to the Daily Mail you will first have to provide evidence that you are a vile scumbag - perhaps a photo of you beating a black dog or urinating in the doorway of a Polish deli or shitting on the face of a homeless person.

17. There will be more 'drama' in the USA as people begin to admit they only buy certain types of music because their 'homies' do and that 94.7% of Americans think most of the music they hear is shit. In the UK over 90% of people under the age of 18 go into a state of shock and delete all their dubstep mp3s.

18. After facing a third leadership election, Jeremy Corbyn wins both Strictly and I'm a Celebrity (his eating of an alligator penis pickled in Cameron jizz clinching it for him in the Bush Fucker Trial) and still the UK media think he's an old useless tool with a wonky handle. With Labour on 4% in the polls, Tom Watson makes a move to have Katie Hopkins elected as leader.

19. The Sun backs a campaign to make it legal to beat people of Eastern European origin if you think they stole someone's job.

20. The internet gets switched off.

Number 73

Health Matters

At about 8.30 last night, I felt like a fraud. The wife had suggested earlier in the evening that we - the two of us - could go along to the Vic quiz and I said that as much as I know she enjoys her quizzing, I didn't think it was a sensible idea considering I was off work with a chest infection. But the thing was I was actually thinking/wondering if I actually had a chest infection...

The thing is, I knew I had this COPD test on Monday and it seemed a bit of a coincidence that I should start feeling a bit crappy a few hours before it was due to happen. The thought had crossed my mind that it might be psychosomatic and I was just terrified of being diagnosed with the same thing that ultimately killed my mother. So my body made me feel ill to put off the test. It seemed plausible; I have an ancient history of making myself ill in stressful situations (I had School Phobia when I was 11, gave my mum all kinds of grief).

Instead of going out, we settled down to watch the dog programme from Monday night and within half an hour I was thinking that perhaps all of the above was a load of bollocks. "What's up?" Asked the wife.
"You know the last time I had a chest infection, I said a few times that it wasn't like infections I've had before, that it comes in waves. One minute I feel like a fraud, the next I feel like death in a fridge?" She nodded. "That's how I feel at the moment." By 10.30 I was feeling human again and I was sitting in the office thinking that it would be nice for my body to either be ill for a bit - so that I know - or just fuck off and let me get on with my life.

I was in bed by 11.15 (something of a rarity for me) and I appeared to have a really good night's sleep; waking briefly at 6am when the wife got up. It wasn't until I got up about 8.15 that I realised something was wrong. I might have caught this chest infection early and almost by accident, but it hasn't made it any less... grotty. I said yesterday that I felt lousy (not lice ridden) and like I said, felt a bit like a fraud when I didn't feel lousy later in the evening. I don't feel like a fraud at 9.30 this morning.

I have a chest full of junk. I have a splitting headache, sore throat and actually feel ill enough to be off of work. I don't know why, but that oddly makes me feel better...

Warped Nostalgia (ish)

My spare time has been taken up by the fantasy of George RR Martin since the beginning of the summer. Having watched the first two series on TV, I decided to read the books, so I bought them with money I had been given for my 50th and have been working my way through them slowly.

Obviously the first two seasons pretty much reflect the first two books (although the second book is in many ways completely different from the second season of the TV show; mainly because huge swathes of it have either been ignored or have been extrapolated on) and as Sky 1 has been re-showing the first series, I figured I'd record them and watch them when an opportunity arises. Such as now.

Blummin' eck. It's amazing how you (or me in this case) can either forget or have a slightly different memory of something, even if it was less than two years ago that I watched it. The first episode was pretty much how I remembered it, except it was also completely different. The opening scene didn't have the same impact as it had this time around, because I've now read 4½ books and know full well what the threat from beyond the Wall is. It was also the vastness of the story and the interesting thing for me is going to be comparing series one with two, which is still relatively fresh in my mind. The first season absolutely bristles with money; the special effects are impressive (apart from the dead bodies which looked a bit wrong, a bit false) and the entire series feels BIG. The first two episodes alone feel as though they had a feature film's budget spent on them, whereas my memory of season 2 was much more... restrained. Like the money pot was now a precious thing that needed to be guarded. I'm going to be wrong and the second season is going to look just as impressive, but my memory is telling me that isn't the case.

Go Team Go

Another bit of warped memory has come from my decision (at the end of the last blog) to play 25 CDs I haven't played for more than five years. I began with Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team, mainly because it caught my eye while scanning the racks and also because it gave me the chance to listen to it twice...

I have two versions of this album. I have the one I downloaded from the Internet and I have the one I bought because I was so impressed with the downloaded version. They're both roughly the same length - around the 35 minute mark - but the earlier version I downloaded sounds different; it sound clearer, fresher, like it hadn't been produced to death. Someone suggested that I possibly had downloaded a poor quality version, but some tracks actually sound different; some don't even sound like the corresponding album version. There's also two extra tracks on the downloaded version.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Go! Team, they are not the kind of music you would normally associate me with; yet this album sounds like a bizarre mish-mash of Vince Guaraldi (the guy who did the Charlie Brown music), a 70s TV series soundtrack, Toni Basil's song Mickey, and a kind of indie production, which gives it a completely unique feel.

http://youtu.be/goCdrBd01d8 will give you an idea of what I mean.

Ignorance Isn't Bliss

Fucking Lithuanians... Yes, it's the latest adventures in the Sexually-Explicit Family!

Do you know ignorance pisses me off. Not genuine ignorance, like not knowing who someone or something is, but doing something that actually suggests you're a fucking moron rather than just uneducated. Many years ago, just after Fishwife's first child was born, I watched him stick a bunch of disposable nappies into his brown recycling bin and when I pointed out to him that disposable nappies have a fucking half-life; his piss-poor pathetic excuse was that his black bin was full. So. Fucking. What?

I'm pretty sure Fishwife still puts the wrong things in the wrong places (oo-er), but at least if he does it I don't  have to witness it. Yesterday, however, I saw a similar case of wilful ignorance and this time from the lady I like to think of either the Wank Woman or the Masturbating Matriarch.

As some of you will be aware, yesterday was a bit windy and the Sexually-Explicit family seem to have used their recycling bins for something else and have for the last couple of years used a couple of old black bins to keep any or all of their recycled waste in. Now, this is good up to a point and that point is when it is really windy it is more of a target and subsequently always falls over, rolls around and distributes their recycling shit on everybody else!

The Old Man always used to come out of his house and clear up the mess, because you got the impression from the Lithuanians that once it was on the pavement it was no longer their responsibility. However, the Old Man is dead that means when the bins went walkabout yesterday there wasn't a friendly old geezer to clear up the mess. It was everywhere! There was so much shit in the road that cars were stopping and driving round the mess. The bin men were never going to clean the mess up (why is that?) so unless some kindly neighbours decided to clean up, it was going to make the street look like a fucking landfill site. During this redistribution of junk, the family returned (in their fuck off Mercedes), drove right past their own black bins and completely ignored them, despite them lolling about the street like two monstrous tadpoles out of water.

Eventually Fishwife and his wife went out and cleared away the stuff in the vicinity of our two houses, but left all the rubbish that had found its way onto my front garden for me to clear up a little later. Fishwife even picked up the two bins and took them over the road. He knocked on the door, Sexually-Explicit man came to the door; there was an exchange of words. Fishwife walked back across the road shaking his head; it was the first time I'd seen him look disgruntled at anything.

The Lithuanians then left again and for the next hour what rubbish had found its way onto other peoples yards was now being stirred up again and dancing around the street. A little red Peugeot pulls up out and in it is Wank Woman (so called after giving the street an exhibition in self-stimulation a few years ago from her window). She gets out, spies a plastic yoghurt carton and what looked like a polystyrene container and picks them up. Huzzah! Unfortunately, she walks to the nearest brown garden waste recycling bin and deposits them into it. BOO! It was my brown bin!

I ran downstairs, opened the door and called over to her. Now, this is a woman who can speak English very well. I've heard her. However yesterday her English had suddenly deserted her. "Excuse me, you're not supposed to put plastic in this bin." I said and she stared at me blankly. "You put plastic in this bin," I said, pointing at it.
"No understand." She says, turning away.
"Fucking ignorant bint," I says not too loud, but enough for her to hear it. Her reaction suggested she completely understood that.

As the bin had been emptied, I had to fish out her rubbish and put it in the proper bin. Yes, it probably should have gone into some recycling bins, but I'm not having her shit clutter up my bins and she wasn't about to conform to what is expected of people who live in this country. But this a family that has at least four cars. There are only three adults in the house. Parking sometimes can be a nightmare. It's a good job the Old Man is dead because they've been using his drive...

Edukashun

I was given some work by a teacher the other day. She was an IT teacher - that's Information Technology. The work asked a student to check out some 'web sights'. I almost choked on my complete and utter amazement.

Stuff & Nonsense

• I have been listening to The Go! Team (as mentioned above) and also Nikka Costa who I have a special place in my heart. This is worth checking out - http://youtu.be/E3XZbfzg6DQ because it is a great live version of one of her best songs. Queen of funk rock! I also have Hot Fuss by The Killers and the first Hot Chip album to listen to today. There's a distinctly groove thang going on.
• My dogs are more popular than me on Tumblr.
• We will see just what kind of backbone UEFA has this week when they fine Serbia considerably less for racially abusing black English footballers than they fined Nicklas Bendtner for showing a t-shirt with an advert on or Man Citeh for being 38 seconds late onto the pitch for a game against Porto. UEFA is a joke and we have to do something drastic for these idiots to acknowledge that racism isn't allowable.
• Today's neologism: Blates - means 'blatantly' apparently...