Let The Slash Fiction Begin

Whatever the BBC do the story behind the photo below probably won't live up to what you're imagining right now:

TV Detector Vans Through The Ages

The Daily Mail has an article about some new improvement to TV Detector Vans, but the real interesting bits are the pics of the different vans that have been in use. I like this one myself:


Interestingly the article concedes that "it is only within the past 15 years that vans have worked with real effectiveness, helped by on-board computers that can check licence details in seconds", which probably translates as "just as we all suspected they were just for show and the real work is done by checking the records to see which houses don't have licences".

Something That Made Me Smile

But perhaps not for everyone...
As Junichi says:

I just can't decide whether this is an authentic Public Service Announcement, a spoof of a PSA, or just a clever music video.

Whichever way you'll feel like buying a book afterwards.

For Those Who Forgot

For those who forgot that he was doing them in the first place, and it seems to have been quite a while since his last one, Wil Wheaton reviews another Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. This time it's The Big Goodbye.

Simpsons Character Creator

As part of the promotion for the upcoming Simpsons movie you can try and make a version of yourself as a Simpsons character (or avatar as they have it, you can use that character in the site itself I guess). My attempt to do me turned out quite boring, and in all probability wrong, but here it is:

Ask A Music Scene Micro Celebrity

I'm not sure Steve Albini is a micro celebrity. For one, I've heard of him and, more importantly, he has some talent, he's most widely known for having produced Nirvana's "In Utero", which the modern definition of "celebrity" doesn't particularly call for. Anyway, via Glorious Noise, I found that he'd contributed some words of wisdom to an online forum and it turns out he writes real pretty like and seems to be as honest as discretion allows:

there have been many a time i hear an album the band sounds so good, and then you see them live, and you're like, wtf is going on?

which band have you made the biggest improvement on their sound, in this manner?

Well, sometimes a band sets out to make a record that doesn't really sound like they do. To these bands the record is the public face of the band, and the live shows are more of an obligation than an art form, and so they are generally pretty disappointing live.

Other bands enjoy touring and express themselves onstage more than in the studio. These bands see their records as a kind of still photo of their live existence, and you can expect those bands' records to sound pretty much like their live sets. My favorite bands were always like this: the Minutemen, Wipers, Birthday Party, and my own band thinks this way, pretty much.

There are also the rare cases of bands who change from the first type to the second, and they have an obvious cutoff date after which they went from awesome to awful. Aerosmith and ZZ Top are the most obvious examples.

To answer your immediate question, Urge Overkill.

It's also worth reading an old article of his called The Problem With Music, which is a fascinating look at exactly how record companies screw bands over.

The Sopranos: Truer Than You'd Think

The Guardian has a report on behind-bars Naples gangster Walter Schiavone's house. It's modelled on the house owned by Tony Montana in Scarface. The report goes on to add:

Naples mobsters continue to mimic Hollywood gangsters, according to author Roberto Saviano, who wrote in his best-selling Camorra chronicle Gomorra, that hitmen were missing their targets because they insisted on holding their guns tilted like the characters in Quentin Tarantino films.

George Melly: RIP

An excuse, then, to repeat one of my favourite anecdotes about him:

George Melly introduced a Bessie Smith tune on stage at Kirklevington Country Club in Teesside. "This song," he drawled, "was originally titled I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl, but I've taken the liberty of changing it to You Need A Little Sugar In Your Bowl. Not for any chauvinistic reasons, but because with piles like mine you can't afford to take any chances."

How to Ruin A Decent Article

3 Quarks Daily has a list of nine movies made in the last ten years that could possibly feaure in the American Film Institute’s Tenth Annual "100 Years, 100 Movies" List. Mr Tyree's list is a good mixture of the obvious, the personal and the contentious. In his intro, however, he states:

How Toy Story got on the new list is a mystery for the ages

And, well, after that I don't really care about JM Tyree's opinion one way or the other.

The New Age of Ignorance

The Guardian has an article about how "take our young children to science museums, then as they get older we stop. In spite of threats like global warming and avian flu, most adults have very little understanding of how the world works. So, 50 years on from CP Snow's famous 'Two Cultures' essay, is the old divide between arts and sciences deeper than ever?"

It's fairly thought-provoking, as someone with a fairly science-based education and a "pop-sci" reading habit, though, I don't necessarily think it applies to me.

I think one of the things making science feel less important is that people don't tend to fix things anymore, and in many cases are actively discouraged from doing so.

TV is almost certainly to blame. I'd guess up until the arrival of a TV in a house if something was broken then somebody would have the know-how to fix it, but once the TV came and, lately, DVD players priced at disposable levels if it is broke the best thing to do is to replace it.