TMINE

Happy Birthday blog

21 June 2006 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Happy Birthday, The Medium is Not Enough. Yes, a year ago (sort of, subject to blog migration, blog splitting, blog reunions, etc), this blog emerged into the light of the Internet with its first two posts: a preview of the still-popular Prison Break, the not-unpopular Supernatural and the still-unseen Global Frequency; and tedious cruft about The Omega Factor (which I’m still just about to write a review of, amazingly enough).

Since then, we’ve discovered that if you call a blog “The Medium is Not Enough” and write about Most Haunted, all sorts of people get the wrong idea; that if you blog almost every day for a year, you can get regular audiences of anything up to 16 people (and robots); and that the most popular blog posting I ever would write would be about whether Pot Noodle adverts are racist or not (the traffic has been phenomenal, honestly).

I’d like to say a great big thank you to Anna, Holyhoses Rob, Jason, Lisa, Marie, Matt, Rosby, Scott, Stu and everyone else who’s come here to provide literate and entertaining comment – it’s made the blog far more entertaining than it has any right to be, and camouflages the fact that without you all, I’d be that strange man in the corner at the party, talking to himself. Thank you all, and I’ll endeavour to keep you all at least moderately entertained for another year, I hope.

TMINE

Daily Mail’s usual counter-productive vitriol

19 June 2006 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

MaggieYou have to appreciate the Daily Mail for really failing to do most things it sets out to do with television. It’s its own worst enemy. It screws up so badly, so often. Campaigns against shows that involve nudity (typically illustrated with nude pictures, thanks to Mail hypocrisy), blasphemy, homosexuality, women, etc usually result in massively increased viewing figures and more shows in the same vein being commissioned.

So how about this headline of outrage from the weekend:

BBC portrays Maggie as a whisky-soaked warmonger

Don’t you just want to watch that programme now? Doesn’t it sound like just the best programme ever?

The Mail helpfully tells us it’s called Coup! and will be airing on BBC2 later this month.

PS More amusingly, why is there a gallery of images to allow you to take a sneak peek at the show if it’s so reprehensible?! Just to really get those fires burning?

More Welsh on BB

19 June 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Turns out that Imogen comes from a Welsh-speaking family. So she and Glyn haven’t come up with a ‘code’, as previously thought, but are in fact just conversing in their first language. For some reason, and maybe it’s because I haven’t watched any episodes of Animal Hospital this week, I find that the most heartwarming thing I’ve heard for a while. It makes me all happy inside, even though Imogen and Glyn aren’t exactly the best adverts for Wales, to hear people on a mainstream programme getting to speak their native language. Bizarre, huh?

Ian Fleming’s BS continued

2 June 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Stu and I were having a nice little chat about Ian Fleming’s capacity for BS, back on my earlier laugh at the psychology in The Man with the Golden Gun. Stu you are so right. Fleming was the king of BS.

I’m working my way through Goldfinger now, having previously only thumbed through it a couple of times in a book shop, and came to this cracking piece of martial arts BS. The Korean Oddjob, Goldfinger’s chauffeur, has just smacked his way through some oak bannisters on a staircase as a demo of his fighting power.

Bond: I was very impressed by that chauffeur of yours. Where did he learn that fantastic combat stuff? Where did it come from? Is that what the Koreans use?

Goldfinger: Have you ever heard of karate? No? Well that man is one of the three men in the world that have achieved the black belt in karate. Karate is a branch of judo… Karate is based on the theory that the human body has five striking surfaces and 37 vulnerable spots…

Wow. That man can really tell porkies. I’m in awe.

A celebrity deficit?

2 June 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

So I’m walking down Harrow-on-the-Hill high street when I spy a great big picture of Paris Hilton. Or is it Chantelle? Or is it Paris Hilton? Or is Chantelle?
My thought processes continue in this binary fashion for a while, before I realise I have absolutely no idea which it is.
What’s more worrying?

  1. That I can’t tell the difference
  2. That I should care about this
  3. That there is apparently such a shortage of celebrities that we’re having to clone existing ones to make up the numbers?