Year: 2010

Sitting Tennant

Monday’s “Sorry I’m such a spanner, Karen” Sitting Tennants (week 6, 2010)

8 February 2010 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Karen's first Sitting Tennant

Karen's second Sitting Tennant

Karen's third Sitting Tennant

Karen's Fourth Sitting Tennant

Karen's fifth Sitting Tennant

Many people think I’m kidding when I say I have a problem with names. Or if not kidding, they think it’s just an excuse for not being bothered to do research (although they might have a point there).

However, case in point illustrates just how stupid my brain really is. Somewhere before Christmas, despite the fact that they’re labelled differently in my email program, send in their pictures using different methods, and were both on the leaderboard as separate people, my brain decided that Sister Chastity and Karen were the same person. It didn’t matter what evidence was presented to it, as soon as Karen sent in a picture, it ended up in Sister Chastity’s pile and I even replied to her emails as though she were Sister Chastity, despite the fact she came up as “Karen” rather than “Sister Chastity”.

See? Messed up.

Now, that didn’t affect last year’s scoring any, but it’s obviously left Karen a bit behind this year. Apologies to Karen and everyone involved – I truly am a spanner.

So for one week and one week only, we have a very special “Karen Sitting Tennant” Monday (we’ll see about Friday), to enable her to catch up and get her total to where it should be.

Feast your eyes on the pics above: they’re all from her, which means the picture leaderboard now looks like this.

  1. Rullsenberg: 45
  2. Toby, Sister Chastity: 35
  3. Sabine, Karen: 25
  4. Erin C: 10

To prevent my messed up brain from doing similar in future, I’ve a big ask for picture contributors – in future, no matter how you provide your pics, can you include your name in the filename please (eg RobSittingTennant5.jpg)? It’ll help prevent this kind of thing from happening again (probably). Oh, and picture contributors – please be vigilant and make sure I’m not ignoring you or wrongly attributing pics as well? Thanks.

Anyway, don’t forget Friday’s caption competition!

Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below or email me and if it’s judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery.

Every photo displayed on Monday (one per person who sends one in) gets five points; the best pic in the stash each week will appear on Friday and get ten points.

You can also enter the witty and amusing captions league table by commenting on Friday’s Sitting Tennant photo, the best caption getting 10 points, everyone who contributes getting five points.

The full Jon Stewart-Bill O’Reilly interview

8 February 2010 Rob Buckley Post a comment

You may not have realised this, but over in the US last week, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, where they discussed political coverage, Fox News bias. Only edited highlights were shown on Fox, but they’ve posted the full 42-minute interview and you can watch it below. Worth watching if you have an interest in US news programmes

Monday’s “Sandman’s Gaiman’s Smith’s man” news

8 February 2010 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Doctor Who

  • Big Finish to do The Four Doctors, another Mara story
  • Neil Gaiman writing ep for second Matt Smith season

Film

British TV

  • Mark Gatiss, Matt Horne and Marc Warren to star in Boy George drama for BBC. No filming in Eltham, though! Pah!
  • Persuasionists ratings halve
  • Trevor Eve to star as hostage negotiator in ITV1 thriller

US TV

Weird old title sequences: Vision On

5 February 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

If you’re old enough and British, you probably remember Morph and Take Hart. If you’re very slightly older you’ll just about remember their precursor, Vision On, a show designed to educate, inform, entertain and hopefully even get children fired up about art – particularly if they were deaf.

Vision On was the brainchild of producer Patrick Dowling, who went on to produce The Adventure Game. It was designed to replace For The Deaf but quickly picked up a wider audience. The aim of the programme was to entertain but also to encourage imagination, with a fast-paced flow of contrasting ideas, both sane and silly.

The presenters were Pat Keysell, an actress who also taught deaf children, and Tony Hart who made pictures in a variety of sizes and media, and encouraging children to submit their own paintings to “The Gallery”, which they did in their thousands. ‘Actor’ Sylvester “Sylveste” McCoy also mucked around in true silent comedy/mime style.

The show aired on BBC1 for 12 years, from 1964 to 1976, and even afterwards, its legacy lived on through other programmes, including Take Hart starring the now-vocal Tony Hart, and Jigsaw, which was developed by one of Vision On‘s later producers, Clive Doig, and featured Sylvester McCoy as well as the silent “Nosey Bonk”; Eureka, another Doig show, also saw Vision On/Jigsaw contributor and mad inventor Wilf Lunn doing his shtick for another generation.

In its mission to fire up kids about art, it worked. It’s a hazard of the job knowing graphic designers and I know a number who were inspired to become designers purely thanks to Vision On and Take Hart. I doubt any of them were inspired by its very weird old title sequence though.