My sister and I are big fans of They Might Be Giants. I`ve been a fan since I was probably 12 or 13 years old, which is a long, long time. When I asked her if she fancied the “Here Come…” CDs for Christmas, she said they`d be too childish. I`d heard a few of the songs online, and thought they were damn fine, so went ahead and found Here Come The 123s, Here Come The ABCs, and Here Comes Science in the dual CD / DVD combo and packed them neatly away. When I say “neat”, I mean “wrapped up like a fish supper”.
On Christmas day, she put on the 123s DVD for the kids, and they were mesmerised. So was I. So I had to go and get them for myself. Wonderful music, wonderful videos, and a little bit of education for the younger viewers.
On Tuesday night, I put on Here Come The 123s whilst the better half did a crossword. “Oh, I`ll not be listening, I`ll be doing the crossword”, said she. 5 minutes in and she was glued to the screen.
Long may TMBG reign supreme in their very odd, colourful side of music.
Recently, the BBC`s bastion of social commentary, EastEnders spawned a sidekick show in the form of EastEnders E20, and thank Christ the programme is only available online or via the red button interactive thingie.
The premise is thus: take a bunch of new characters, introduced during 2 episodes of the regular show, and spice it up for da kidz. Add a dribble of Drummond Bass soundtrack, including a bloody awful remix of the EastEnders intro music, and top off with lots of bad lighting. To shit things up (I think that`s what the kids say), show a bit of ugly character skin. Recipe for a televised bollock.
If you`re old enough to remember the Ricky and Bianca spin off, it`s much the same. An even shitter Hollyoaks, with a splash of regular DeadEnders characters. One thing I`ve noticed about DeadEnders over the years, being a techie, are the awful shite websites they slip into storylines. The worst part of this is that webbies have been employed to actually build some of these bloody sites. Classics include:
www.godlypodly.co.uk – a sick, kickin`, wicked, nang website making Jesus street, innit. Word. What a bag of arsebudgies.
www.search-wise.net – the search engine of choice when anyone on the show does a bit of laptopping. This is the 555- search engine, cleared for use on TV or films. Wish I`d thought of this. The owl sucks though.
www.rudemasood.co.uk – Tamwar Masood`s “hilarious website” in which he parodies regulars of Da Square, innit.
Having watched a good 15 minutes of EastEnders E20 (AKA EE-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE), I`m confused to hell. Mainly due to the crap acting, street-speek, and constant music. “Da fair maiden cud be a buff ting”, proclaims one of the characters, “Failsafe Fatboy”. This show is one for da nang subtitlez innit. Another character is going through the overplayed teenage pregnancy scare story. The most scary thing about this character is her massive mane of ginger hair, turning her into some kind of Lion-O from Thundercats. Every so often, where adverts would appear on any other channel, we`re treated to a giant 3 second EastEnders E20 logo just in case we`ve forgotten what we`re watching, or it would provide distraction from reaching for a shotgun.
I`m not sure what kind of post-processing they`ve applied to the show, but it looks a little like someone has turned the brightness on the telly down to zero, smashed the screen to ensure no light escapes, then covered the telly with thick tights. Then the TV is pushed into a black hole. Perhaps regular EastEnders wasn`t gloomy enough.
In summary: park a strip-underlit Vauxhall Nova outside the house, turn the stereo up, and picture Hollyoaks narrated by The Clangers.
Having had what can only be described as the worst year in living memory, I`ve taken the headstaggers and ripped the website apart and squirted it all into Wordpress. These facts are somehow linked, probably something to do with occupying THE BRAIN. Having put the lot together over a few years using handrolled PHP, I couldn`t be bothered. So I`ve managed to shoehorn the majority of the site into Wordpress, which hopefully means search engines will see some more stuff and my hit rate for “donkey porn” and “dankey porno” goes down a little. Donkey pornography made up something like the top 9 search terms to reach the site. Shame on you, Internet weirdos. Shame on you.
Anyway, expect some further bugs, but I should be able to update the website more often if and when I do anything new. It`s been a while, and I`ve a feeling the guitar will be popping out for an appearance. Jim`s feeling a bit rusty, and there`s a whole world of ELO out there to be recorded… You`ve been warned. This will be payback for a truly shitty 2009. Jim now has at his beck and call a gorgeous 12-string semi acoustic guitar. Let`s see how bad he can make that sound.
Over the next few days and weeks I`ll put in some redirects so links to the site aren`t so broken. Can`t have you lot missing out on the crap ringtones and whatever else pops from your search engine.
Last, but certainly not least, The Illustrated Smiths has been moved to its own little web site, www.illustratedsmiths.co.uk – my imagination knows no bounds – and I`ve redirected all the Smiths stuff over there. Phase 2 will be to redesign the site to make it look nice. I had a little feedback about the navigation, so that`ll be something to think about.
I also found the cause! Yes, since I applied all Windows updates to a newly formatted laptop, the whole thing has turned to crap. Well done guys. You`ve pushed me one step closer to moving to Apple. Cunts.
