Your place or Myspace?

 Set your grey knowledge sponges back to a simpler time. The country was run by one man and not two buffoons, petrol didn't cost the price of a small semi in Essex and a band from the Warrel, England called 'The Seal Cub Clubbing Club' launched them selves into the public eye. For those of you still in the dark like a trainee chef locked in the walk in freezer or, and I wince at this, are to young to remember it was in fact 2003. I was working in a completely dull and somewhat pointless job in a magazine and news paper sorting depo. Sending out misplaced mag's and papers to shops that would eventually send them to a returns department when they didn't sell (I had also worked there). Across the pond a new website was about to be set free into the mysterious and wonderful world of the inter-web. Myspace, and it was all about being yourself. Design your page, add a photo and get all your mates to sign up and message and laugh and post witty comments and oh the fun we had like crazy internet fools. It was like a big bloody phone chat that you didn't need to stay in for but with pic's of drunks and glitter writing. You could even have a Myspace for your band, and we did. You could upload your dodge rehearsal room recordings to inflict on anyone who had the misfortune to venture on to your space. For awhile this was great, I would spend hours and hours looking for new and exciting backgrounds or layouts. I used to write blogs almost daily and in the hight of our time I had over a hundred readers a week. Which is no mean feat in this day and age when you can't take a breath without having to read someone's theory on how bad it is for you. But all this was about to fall apart like a shoddy built house of cards. A new social network site had arrived and it was building a reputation fast. Facebook was marketed on its simplicity, gone where the eye bleeding, badly made layouts and backgrounds that any spotty gimp could build. With Facebook everyone's page looked the same, a simple blue and white interface. It was all about status's and comments and Facebook was poaching Myspace users by the bucket load everyday. Myspace tried to stop this by changing its homepage layout over and over again to the point where every time you signed in you would have to learn how to use it all again. I still have my Myspace but rarely use it, it has changed beyond all recognition. Its now like being hit in the face by a load of misplaced fonts. The whole thing feels like the good people at Myspace have let the new guy have a go at designing while they go out for a fag. I look back at my Myspace years like a hazy summer flash back from an over mushy TV movie. They where great times and we were the true kings of the social network.

TV if that is its real name.

 

January, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Well no, it's good for feeling fat after Christmas, being cold and hating that all those birthdays will be coming around again, with the cards and presents and banners and bloody balloons, damn it, January is crap. It sits there all optimistic about how this year could be a fresh start. So what has this year got going for it to lord over 2010 like a snotty big brother who won a tenner on the lottery. Lets have a look at the forth coming TV like the spirit of Nostradamus. TV is the reason I started The Radiation Tube and have carried it through the different forms it has taken over the years. So to 2011 well first up and this has already started is CSI: Vegas, the best of the CSI's in my view. Miami has Horatio, who has two talents, taking off his sun glasses and suddenly appearing from nowhere like he is the only person to own a teleporter. New York just seems dull, but I can't say to much because I've never really sat down and watched a lot of it, due to the fact that if I was to watch all the CSI's I wouldn't have time to watch anything else. I'm personally waiting for CSI: London which would feature a group of cockneys trying to stop the rain washing away the evidence from a murder in a beer garden in Peckham. The one program that never fails to attract a fever pitch level of anticipation is Doctor Who. Of course a lot of viewers left with David Tennant but I like Matt Smith he brings the foolish fun aspect back to the Doctor something that Tennant managed to drain towards the end of his shift. It seems River Song is back like curry trapped wind. Don't get me wrong I don't mind the character but if I hear her 'spoilers' catchphrase again I might just have to write a harsh E-mail using the words 'knob', 'bum hole' and 'arse face'. One thing they need to do is to do a good Cyberman story after the complete balls up of that Christmas special with the f**king Cyber king. The Daleks might pop up again but lets hope not they need a rest, the poor pepper pot bastards. There is a new series starting on ITV called 'Marchland', the ads tempt with an almost Twin Peaks style drama but I won't hold my breath. I fear we have all been spoilt by the likes of Lost and 24 and not in the good way but with the over used and tiresome shocking twist, that is as shocking as the sun rise. Also the new series of Sherlock which on paper sounds like a complete nightmare, a modern take on the classic Sherlock Holmes character with that guy from The Office as the good doctor. But in fact it was quite good and I hope Professor Moriarty returns, a great evil mastermind with a camp and crazy side, yeah even as I write this its sounds crap but you will have to trust me and tune in

The Celuloide gag.

Movies, aren’t they the best. Little moving picture packages of escapism. Anyone who says they don't like Movies are filthy liars and should be taken to the town hall, dipped in offal and thrown to a pack of hungry jack russell's, because Movies are great. They can make us laugh, they make us cry, some make us angry and some are just there to entertain, unless it has Sandra Bullock in it. No matter what genre you prefer there is a movie waiting, smuggley knowing you will love it. But jump in your time machine and travel back to the mid to late 1970's and you'll find a band of rag-tag rascal directors that had only one aim, to induce vomit fuelled disgust. These movies where made with the intention, to shock the viewer by showing everything in graphic detail. No stone was left unturned or indeed unused to bludgeon. From a power drill to the head, right through to the savage lopping off of a man member. The more brutal the better and a new format was approaching on the horizon more then willing to bring all this into the so called safe haven of your front room The home video player, a foot high by about 4 foot wide with button’s that took the force of a jack hammer to press, a wired remote that stretched 20 centimetres from the unit and the whole thing soaked up about the same amount of power used by Italy in a year. Everyone wanted one. Lower budget movie makers saw the untapped potential of this new media, this was their escape from kissing the fat money grabbing ass of the people that controlled the cinema’s. So a tide of extreme movies flooded onto your local video store shelves. We all ventured out and hired 'Blood for the cannibal virgins snatch 3' with its over coloured and very graphic cover art, hopping to get a delightful romp for a Saturday night in with the family and most of the time what we got was a poorly made romp full of a 1000 gallons of blood, an always naked (most of the time ugly) lead actress with huge boobs and a plot as thin as budget bog paper. But we didn't care, or did we? A small group of middle class do gooders where banding together to voice their absolute disgust and outrage, claiming that these movies would 'corrupt and deprave'. No longer would it be OK for little Johnny shit face to watch 'Nazi alien whore girls on crack 4' while eating his sugar puffs. Because this would without doubt turn him into a vicious cross dressing, stappler wielding maniac before he could grow his curly ones. And so in 1984 a Act was born 'The Video Recording Act 1984'. which meant by law a group of hard assed upper class suit wearing toffs could cut, edit and ban anything they deemed extreme. The British media being what it is, lovingly named these movie 'Video Nasties' telling of true life horror story's about how Mark Volvo from Norfolk had sat down to watch his hired copy of 'Death Boob island 12' only for the video tape to leap from the player and repeatedly smash him in the fizzog. With the help of the media pooh storm the public lived in fear and raids on video shops where undertaken. But as with everything, if your told you can't have it, you want it more and so the underground black market video tape business was born. This is how I managed to watch 'A clockwork orange' (never a real 'video nastie' but still banned) which was well made and quite a good movie. I also saw 'Cannibal holocaust' which is the type of movie that robs you of an hour and half of you life and then sits there grinning about it like a adolescent knob. I also got a very suspect copy of 'I spit on your grave' which turned out to be, as I had suspected just a bunch of killing strung together by a rape. There where about 35 films that stayed on the list for any period of time. Most of these have now been released uncut and you can go down to your local DVD retailer buy one and mock at how once a whole country had feared that this would bring chaos to the streets and eventually destroy everything we hold dear to us including fluffy teddy bears. Even now, although the restrictions have been reduced to the minimal the ramifications of the era still show. This was the golden age of video where people talked in hushed corners and handed over brown paper bags with over viewed video tapes in, I miss the blood soaked old days.