It's as close to official as it can get. Sounds like nobody was meant to say anything but Peter Hook let it slip last week, and confirmed it on his MySpace page yesterday:
"so i went on and lo and behold mentioned the N>O> split so i suppose because it was me sayin it it was out at last. im relieved really hated carryin on as normal with an awful secret"
So how do I pick one song to post to mark the passing of my all time favourite group of all time?
If I had a recording of it, I'd post the dreadful version of State of the Nation that "my band" performed at Kirby Muxloe Church Hall circa 1991. With a bonus added rap - I kid you not. There's many reasons I don't have a career in music. For this travesty, even though it was a one-off, I'm very very sorry indeed.
Thankfully, this will have to do. Incidentally, this is also the song I want played at my funeral.
On tonight's show, Derren Brown went to Las Vegas and brainwashed an American lady into thinking that red was black. The effect was dramatic. She was pretty freaked out to see that her red car had apparently been resprayed whilst she enjoyed an evening at the Peppermill. But what the cameras didn't show is the complete meltdown, possibly followed by night in jail, she must have had trying to play roulette shortly afterwards.
In the Trick or Treat feature, he apparently taught a 75 year old granny to play poker. For this show victims are asked to choose from two cards to pick whether they'll get something nice or something nasty. I have to admit I thought the whole series would be manipulated so it was always a trick, but tonight's sweet old lady got a treat.
There's no psychology involved in forcing the choice: both cards are identical, with a cunning and overly elaborate typeface used so that it reads "trick" when held one way up and "treat" when flipped over. I confess: I had to pause the show using Sky+ and turn my head right round to check this out, and had to use Google to find out that the word I didn't know I was looking for is "ambigram".
Super Gran is given a crash course in Texas Hold'em and then dropped into a tournament situation with five professionals. Probably not ones you'd have heard of. Derren has taught her superlative reading skills, which is apparently enough to ensure that she will win a made-for-TV crapshoot poker-style tournament. They said it lasted a 90 minutes start to finish, fast even for a six-handed tournament. We only got to see three hands.
She called an all-in bet with a king-high flush draw. Perhaps she learned to recognise weakness from the bettor, but depending on stack sizes and money in the pot this could be a pretty standard call anyway. They didn't say. We don't know how much she'd learned about playing draws. Perhaps it looked like the nuts against a player with a twitch, but with one overcard and a draw you're rarely a favourite. Except the few times you come up against a smaller unpaired flush draw. Which she did.
Facing an all-in preflop with K9s, Derren's horse makes the call. The other player has T7o. Given the emphasis on how good these other players all are, we have to assume that he made an automatic push with a short stack, so this was probably an automatic call.
With AQ on a flop of A88, our hero decides that her hand is good. Maybe I still have a lot to learn, but I'm going broke here every time the other guy has AK or any hand with an 8.
She came second. A one in six chance to win, and she still missed the glory by one.
A similarly close-but-still-busto result in Derren's Russian Roulette stunt would have been much more interesting.
I had to Google around a bit to find the spelling of Mahna Mahna (and I'm so glad I did, because I also found the complete lyrics). To be honest, I'd never even thought about it before, but I was a bit disappointed to see that it contained vowels.
So how the hell did this win a text vote? What a fix!!
Last week finally got to watch Tom Cruise running lots and doing very little else in War of the Worlds. I'd been looking forward to this for ages, and then it was such utter bobbins that we had to watch a good film afterwards to try and forget about it. I picked six DVDs and Claire was to have the final say - the way we choose what to watch so very often in fact.
Given the circumstances, this shortlist could be considered my de facto greatest movies of all time. Or at least greatest movies that I have the DVD of. Not sure I'd completely agree with that - I chose one of them purely for it's short running time, and avoided some I'd seen recently or didn't think there was any chance of Claire actually picking! - but it's definitely not without its merits. And quite diverse too.
I'm finally getting round to selling a load of old stuff on ebay and my Creative Zen MP3 player is amongst the casualties. I just cleared off 20Gb of stuff (resenting the fact that as sweet as my iPod nano is, 8Gb just isn't enough) and then thought I should probably leave somthing on there so the buyer can see that it actually works straight away when he or she gets it.
So, having to choose just one song to leave behind (with the condition that I couldn't be bothered to rip anything from CD, so it had to be on my hard disk already) here's the absolute cheesiest thing I could come up with, proving that I really do download some utter crap.
Legendary composer John Williams' theme from the classic movie Jurassic Park. Remix. Press play and be ready to cringe.
This is a big ask, because you need a good ten minutes to appreciate it. But I've not heard a cover version that's made me tingle so much since I first heard Orbital do the Doctor Who theme. And this is nothing like that.
I could never have imagined this 20 years ago - last night I saw Kylie Minogue in concert. The girl who was a significant part of the reason my family's bought their first video recorder puts on quite a show. I do remember that first summer holiday of a twice-daily Neighbours fix - new episodes at lunchtime, repeated the next morning - with a skewed teenage fondness. Eventually the BBC caught onto the fact that this was actually the biggest TV programme on the planet and moved it to the early evening slot it has had ever since, but until then I know we were far from alone in the world in compulsively recording half an hour of Australia's finest export every day.
Let's be honest - Kylie made some shocking records early in her career. But this was a greatest hits tour, so all the offenders were there and stood up to be counted in suitably cheesy fashion. The karaoke version of Especially For You was somehow nothing like as bad as it should have been and I just found myself laughing uncontrollably during I Should Be So Lucky - not so much anything to do with the show, more the fact that I realised I was actually enjoying a live performance of a song that I detested with a passion.
Amongst this and other retro campness, including a candidate for t-shirt of the year - "Kylie Says Relax" (you don't need a picture) - there was even, surprisingly, a moment of musical genius in the swingin' cabaret arrangement of The Loco-Motion. Absolutely stunning (really) and God bless YouTube and camera phones for letting me share it here.
As I've finally made the effort to figure out how to post YouTube videos on here, what could be better than a little festive music.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Please welcome
Performing "Christmas in Las Vegas"
From his new album "Silent Nightclub"
Which HMV told me was in stock
But won't deliever in time for Christmas
And it's now too late to order from anywhere else
The legendary Richard Cheese
(ripple of applause)
The simple reason - he has the easiest name to type on a mobile phone. VOTE BEN. It works just fine with predictive text, and nobody is going to come close to spelling it wrong. These things are very important. Last week's evictees, The Unconventionals, were doomed before they got going. VOTE UNCONVENTIONALS. Their voting details stood out like a sore thumb against all the other text keywords. Even though predictive text (on my old Nokia at least) finds its way there if you can spell it at the first attempt, you are really going to have to like these guys to be bothered to vote for them at all. I actually thought they were OK, and with a shorter name they may just have survived.
Today we saw the dismissal of Wolverhampton's finest boy-band-on-a-TV-show, 4Sure. Their pre-match interviews have given us plenty of enjoyment remembering how Claire used to speak, and she'll demonstrate that she still can add a "Y" sound to pretty much every woyrd if she trieys. VOTE 4SURE. It is actually possible to do this all in one go with predictive text enabled if you press and hold 4 then type SURE but their name choice could have been better. Voters have to remember the clever pun that makes up their name, and then have to figure out how to type it.
Next week it must surely be either the grimfully dismal MacDonald Brothers, or Nikitta that suffers. Neither of these acts spell their name correctly - having it the same way as burger clown Ronald, or the girl from the Elton John song would help considerably - and neither work with predictive text. We end up with VOTE MACE? and VOTE MILITU? respectively. The MacDonalds' time is next week. Surely. Please?
As for the rest of the pack, Dionne has problems (VOTE DINOME), Eton Road will struggle (VOTE FUNN) and Ashley needs intervention in order for the message to be sent properly (VOTE ASHLEX). Ray is not as safe as he looks either, despite being the most likeable character on the show. VOTE RAY does get there fourth time, after cycling through SAY, SAW and PAY, but many texters won't bother to look at their screens before sending. Coupled with the fact that he's introduced as "Ray" but the huge scrolling banner lights on stage and the X-Factor web site announce him as "Raymond" (possibly a better choice, with no alternative spellings in predictive text), he might just lose a few thousand crucial votes when it matters most. Similarly, Kerry will come in second to somebody named Jerry who is not actually in the competition.
The final three will be Leona, Robert and Ben. Having said all that, it's worth pointing out that I don't actually vote for things like this. I still think the idea of being charged 50p a time to cast a vote or answer a competition question is ridiculous. Instead of paying for a stamp to send in your vote, you're paying the price of two stamps you don't need, on top of whatever your normal text message cost is.
If I think back to when I used to enter competitions on Saturday morning kids TV, this would be like Philip Schofield asking me to send in my answer in on the back of a postal order.
Last weekend I impulse-bought an iPod nano. This is actually the first thing made by Apple I ever bought. I've had a portable MP3 player of some kind before the word (?) iPod was invented, harking back to a 6Gb Creative DAP that was as big as a CD player. I did have one coat that it would fit in the pocket of, but it wasn't exactly portable. The Creative Zen I replaced it with three years ago was the tinyest thing you'd eveer seen at the time. It's about three times the size of a standard iPod now, let alone making the nano look like like an ickle tiny baby.
My move to the white side has been on the cards for some time, but amazingly I've shown enough discipline to actually wait until the new 8Gb version came out. I didn't quite have the discipline to go through with my plan of actually getting something useful with my PokerStars FPPs though. I just checked this, and they do have it in stock, and I actually do have enough points, dammit. Hey if anyone wants to buy an iPod let me know :) Otherwise I guess I could order a few dozen stress stars...
So of course now I have to use iTunes to get my CD collection back onto the thing. Which is pretty nifty - I particularly like that it will find album artwork automatically (When Claire got her iPod last year this wasn't a feature and she spent days downloading pictures...!). And I'm impressed at just how much of my music finds a match straight away. With the exception of Radiohead (who are clearly too good to be downloaded) and a few early Saint Etienne albums, I think it's all there.
I knew getting everything I wanted into 8Gb would be a squeeze but I hadn't quite prepared myself for how long it would take to rip all this stuff again. After a marathon session last night (after dumping out of the Poker Dome satellite in unspectacular fashion, and trying to clear $750 in stacked up bonuses on PokerRoom.com) which it had to tell me resulted in 1006 tracks being transferred, I twice thought I'd cracked all my regular CDs leaving only some dodgy MP3 downloads and whatever compilations I want to chuck on there. Apparently not, and I've still found yet more.
Maybe I'm going overboard - it tells me I already have about five days worth of music to listen to already (why tell me that?!) But it's not over yet. Must ... keep ... ripping.
Part Two: Leaving Las Vegas after getting your ass kicked [20m32]
In case you hadn't noticed there are many ways to lose money in Vegas. As I'd been playing mostly tournament poker then many times I'd be driving home empty handed, usually as the result of a sudden and cruel beat. The soundtrack I've tried to put together here is based on those times although the same kind of thing would very likely work if you just dumped your bankroll on blackjack or craps. I just didn't try that on the last trip to find out
Faithless - Salva Mea [10m48] And yo, reality is dreaming, just below my skin I'm screaming
Yes, there is a radio edit, but I can remember thinking it sounded completely cut to shit when I heard it on Radio One for the first time. So half of this playlist is taken up by one track - a bit greedy, but what a track! It takes four minutes to get going, just long enough to make it onto the freeway before the euphoria kicks in. Sure you lost this time, and sure you're mad about that moron who couldn't let his flush draw go when you had him in a world of hurt. Just below your skin, you're screaming, but the rest of you is ready to move on.
I could easily have put this song on the driving to Vegas playlist, and quoted "I want to go where the people go. Cause I'm forever lost". There's almost no bad time to play this record, one of the best jangly pop songs ever written. Piled full of musical cliches, just you try not to tap and sing along with this, and see if you aren't smiling by the end of it.
Moby - New Dawn Fades [5m33] Directionless, so plain to see a loaded gun won't set you free. So you say.
OK I don't really get this either, but humour me. How do you follow an uplifting dance classic and a bouncey happy pop song? With something very angry and very depressing of course! Obviously we still have something to scream about. One last chance to get it out before we get home. And with this Moby takes a great Joy Division wrist-slasher and holds back the urge to run it at 1000 BPM. On paper it sounds truly dreadful, but the result is simply spinechilling. Possibly the only Moby track to not be used on a commercial yet.
Near misses, on account of having nearly 11 minutes taken up just by Faithless... Take a long drive home and add these. In this order.
This is something I was toying with in Vegas for ages, then ran out of time before I could actually post it. So as a result it's probably lost something in transalation. The idea was that I was trying to build the perfect ipod playlist for driving into and out of Vegas. Our house was about a 20 minute ride from anywhere, with the strip lights visible from about half way.
The first thing I found was that Vegas is just so intense that if the music you listen to driving there is too fast or too cheesy it just becomes sensory overload. Much of the music I would normally drive to is excluded this way; whereas Orbital's Impact kicks ass when you are driving in and out of the tunnels around Birmingham City Centre, or you can use the pure cheesy goodness of anything by Flip and Fill to make almost any journey go faster, these didn't last 30 seconds on my drive from Green Valley to the Strip.
I've allowed myself four different playlists - about 1h20m in total, depending on traffic signals - for four different occasions. There is no way I'd have been able to pick just four or five tracks for this so cut me some slack! It also means I get four blog entries for the price of one... Until my web host (hey wait, that's me!) tells me to take the illegal MP3s down, you can listen to the tracks in full! Oh and look, I slipped a few links in there that didn't make the final cut too...
I actually do have a video tape of the drive in both directions (camcorder wedged in passenger seat headrest - ok, yes, it's very sad) and I might edit it up one day with this soundtrack just to see how it works.
For now, here's part one: Driving into Vegas for a Night o' Poker [20m57]
1. The Who - Baba O'Riley [5m01] Teenage Wasteland. They're all wasted!
This playlist has to be uplifting, without being too intense. The Who give us a perfect opener that builds slowly and has classic fast-a-bit-slow-a-bit moments that make your hair stand on end. I can't take credit for this selection, it just happened to be on The Point one evening as I left. It wasn't on my ipod before, but it is now.
2. Freeland - We Want Your Soul [5m07] Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom
This is about as intense as it can get, so it has to come on the playlist before the Vegas lights are fully visible. For a song that requires your body to move in directions that are just not possible whilst driving, it's almost dangerous to include it here. But it's great.
3. Pet Shop Boys - The Soddom and Gomorrah Show [5m19] It's got everything you need for your complete entertainment and instruction. Sun, sex, sin, divine intervention, death and destruction.
A song about sin city, although admittedly not this one which still has plenty of destruction to make way for yet more new construction. Divine intervention need not apply. This one works just as well during the day as at night.
4. The Donnas - Take It Off [2m40] Let me take you on vacation, just do it, you don't have to ask. Go on and take it off, shake it off baby for me
The Donnas are the band The Darkness should have been. Classic, fun rock music. Which track I pick here really doesn't matter, let's face it this does all sound the same. I could just have easily put Andrew WK in its place, partying hard, except he's just a little less sexy. Just rock out and enjoy this one for exactly what it is.
5. The Go! Team - Panther Dash [2m50] (Instrumental)
A tune that somehow sounds like it's ending before it's begun. And then it carries on a bit longer. Impossible to explain, just click the damn link! This sounds great at any big hotel-casino when you are bombing around their service roads to get the car dumped quick as quickly as you possibly can.
A very near miss was Delgados version of Mr Blue Sky. Runnin' down the avenue, see how the sun shines brightly in the city.
But I assumed it's always dark - or at least the sun is on its way down - at the start of the journey. If it's still light, substitute this for track one and bounce around a bit.
The cheese on toast that is Las Vegas is finally back on Sky One for a third season. Not content with using and abusing every possible Vegas cliche already, they had to end the second series with a casino being imploded, and now it's been rebuilt.
The most impressive thing is that during the construction work, the Montecito hotel appears to have moved a couple of miles along the Las Vegas strip! In the previous seasons, there were some fairly clever computer generated shots of a shiny fake hotel sitting across the road from Mandalay Bay. This is the south end of the strip and keep going any further south and you get to see not a lot more than desert, the airport and a freeway intersection.
This is roughly the site of the Klondike casino, as featured in the movie Miss Congeniality 2 - semi-essential Vegas viewing, and although far from a great movie, it's really not that bad for an unnecessary sequel to a film about a beauty pageant.... The Klondike is 45 years old, and is actually due to be getting knocked down itself any day now (although I don't think an implosion will be necessary on this tiny place!).
So then there's a shot of the strip from a distance in the season opening episode of Las Vegas that shows the all new Montecito glimmering in the distance, right between Aladdin and New York New York. Monte Carlo has been obliterated, and Manadalay Bay stands alone at the right of the screen.
You can be absolutely certain that if it moves again I'll be taking notice! In fact I'm starting to wish I'd burned a copy to DVD so I could post a picture :) There must be someoneelse who cares about this stuff as much as me...?
It's T-23 before we head off to the bone-melting Nevada heat so it's really time to start getting in the mood. So, prompted by my DigiGuide renewal reminder, I've been searching for what Vegas related TV is coming up over the next few weeks and hit upon these gems that I've not seen before.
I promise - as ridiculous (or as ridiculously dull) as these sound, they are the genuine synopses from the TV guide. I couldn't make this stuff up.
FILM: Leprechaun 3 Warwick Davies returns as the nasty wee demon, and this time he's on the loose in Las Vegas... but he's not exactly bringing good luck with him.
COOKERY: United States of Reza After officiating at a biker wedding in Vegas, Reza hits the road back to the airport. As a last gesture, he stops at a classic burger bar and creates a curried hamburger.
FILM: Hell Squad In order to rescue the son of a diplomat who has been kidnapped by terrorists, a group of Las Vegas showgirls undergo commando training and organize a rescue operation.
SITCOM: Two and a Half Men On a boring, rainy weekend, Charlie persuades Alan and Jake to go on a trip with him to Las Vegas. When Jake becomes ill Judith forbids the trip.
I honestly do not think that I'll be setting Sky+ for any of these.
Some good news though, the third season of cheese-fest show Las Vegas finally starts on Sky One next Friday! Here's some stunning episodes teasers from the official web site.
"Monica is furious that nothing can be done to stop a rich 'whale' who always wins at the tables while Mike (James Lesure) searches for a wallet-nabbing thief."
"Mike (James Lesure), Mary (Nikki Cox) and Delinda (Molly Sims) are amazed by the Montecito's guest magician, Criss Angel, as he performs magic tricks for the Montecito patrons on the casino floor."
"Jilian (Cheryl Ladd) sprains her ankle and convinces Ed (James Caan) to walk the family dog at a local Dog Show."
Until my web host (hey wait, that's me!) tells me to take the illegal MP3s down, you can listen to the tracks in full! Oh and look, I slipped a few links in there that didn't make the final cut too...
