New Year's Greetings

"and I'll send you a New Year's Kiss, and

I hope you remember me like this..."

Wishing all bloggers a New Year of fabulous experiences, epoch-shattering plays, happy home lives and tumultuous wonderment.

Looking forward to: The new series' of The Wire and Curb; The Zombies and The Boosh; the small business of our wedding

Listening: Flight Of The Conchords radio series (thanks Joy n' Neil! but why did Brian become Murray?); Burial - Untrue; LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver; Rilo Kiley - Under The Blacklight; Roisin Murphy - Overpowered

Underwhelmed by: Extras - It felt like a sixth-form treatise on the meejah, and was just a bit too smug and self-satisfied for my tastes. Larrys' Sanders and David have surely done it better, and earlier.

Quote: The Triffids (sure hope those Sydney shoeshine boys don't keep you on the run)

Resolutions: Writing; alchemy

Happy Christmas from Loz Dee and Cass x

Nice look guys, but Dave Hill's gotta go

I know I published this picture of successful Hull beat exports The Hullaballoos on the blog before, but the guy on the right is still great value. There are some great looks - I'm thinking Bowie, Roxy and the Clash here - and others (white shirts, pudding bowl mullets, homo-erotic bank clerks) that just don't cut it. Great pic tho'.

A McConquest and Plantagenent Burger, please

Could this Barton church, from Anglo-Saxon times, be a protype for the dear old golden arches? A drive-thru and a side order of plague, sir?

The bridge to the north from the graveyard, at dawn

Springsteen - Thunder Road

A conversation I was having with a fellow Springsteen blogger led me to post this - to any doubters, Bruce here really is the boss ...

Grimsby Nativity

Doing the rounds in Grimsby today.

I only have Ike's for you

Hopefully most of the obituaries for Ike Turner will focus on his amazing guitar work, funky threads and hip speak rather than the fact he was (allegedly) handy with his fists. He certainly looked better in the 80s than Tina, who was peddling a look that spawned a million Grimsby haircuts. And his song titles like Funkier Than A Mosquito's Tweeter know no equal. It brought to mind the fabulous sketch from The Larry Sanders Show where Hank Kingsley, caught in the act of punching his own cardboard cut-out, says he is rehearsing for the Ike Turner skit in order to secure the Orange Growers contract. I guess you've got to see it. Rest in peace, Ike. I think it's gonna work out fine.

Darwin's Evolution

Any further proof, if proof be need be, that we live in a mixed-up, muddled-up shook up world of bizarre media reportage (I can say all this now I've crossed to the dark side of PR). In another time, you could almost regard John Darwin and his wife as heroes, who scammed their insurance and made it, with nothing more complex than Secret Seven-esque beards and hideouts and canoes, to Panama before they were rumbled by a have-a-go search engine blogger. The idea of doing a moonlight flit, a la Reggie Perrin, is almost romantic. I'm sure a lot of us have thought of it at one time or another. So the vilification of Mr D - and I've seen headlines like Darwin's Dungeon and The Liar, The Witch And The Wardrobe in recent days, is a bit perplexing. Let's face it, they've given the nation a good old laugh in these bleak December days. I'll probably regret this when they make a fortune on the film rights, but for goodness sake, they ain't Fred and Rose. And all this while Gerry McCann is nominated for Scot Of The Year.

Whatever happened to Kevin Toms?

A random google search for a Grimsby councillor brought up this flashback picture of game designer Kevin Toms. Anyone with a passing knowledge of computers and footie would remember Football Manager, the game Toms designed in the 80s and was at the time thought to be a zany futuristic glimpse of gaming in the future. It always took 20 minutes to load, leaving the casual punter with time on their hands to study Toms' improbable beard. Curious, I found he's got a wikipedia site which has no real answers about Kev's progress in the world of Game Cubes, Wiis and DS-OS. Has he weathered the storm? Has the beard remained? Is he shouting at Hyde Park Corner about bringing back Manic Miner or Frogger? Kevin, get in touch.

Token generic Australian outlaw facial hair piece

What the blue blazes has happened to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, of the amazing Grinderman and majestic film soundtracks, like the Proposition and the new one TAOJJBTCRF? I know the music harks back to Xavier Herbert era Oz, but Cavey lives in Brighton. There's plenty of barbers, so why the cross between John Hughes and John Milton? As for Ellis, he seems to have turned into a cross between Rip van Winkle and Robert Crumb's hairy cartoon. Great sweeping elegaic music however.

Listening: The Departed soundtrack; Jonathan Richman goes Country; the Cherry Ghost (goes great for a walk down Grimbo High Street with the prams and WELCOME TO THE BONX (sic) grafitti; Barbara Lewis soul stuff; Burial - Untrue; Oh Laura; Noah Georgeson (well, Dee's away, so I'm allowed to get all cerebral)

Second favourite Aussie related blog post this week: stonefee.blogspot.com

Favourite Canoe-related headline: "Canoe's gonna explain this, John?" - Daily Mirror
Favourite conversation: A lad on the Grimsby Barton train going through all 27 of the records his boss had given him at work: "Gabba, gabba, grime, evolution, evolution, gabba, grime, gabba" like a demented McCririck. Gabba, gabba, hey hey.

Who the Newton Faulkner?

Does anyone else feel their knarkles rising when white songstrel Newton Faulkner comes on the telly, wrestling every last decibel of goodness out of Teardrop, rocking back and forward in dreadlocked asylum chic? Dee says the only ads they should ban on telly are music and cheese. Combined, in Faulkner's case. Dreads-ful.

Evel forces

The death of Evel Kneivel touched a nerve (it didn't break tho, unlike most of the bones in the stunt-nihilist's body). When I was a kid, I had an Evel Knievel plastic stunt bike, which basically involved winding up a plastic rider and hoping he could maintain momentum long enough to perform a death defying piroutte (like Knievel himslef it always ended up spreadeagled on Rice Trevor lower school's playground. Realisation editor: actually, hang on a sec, that was probably the whole point. Bless the geniuses at Mattel). I saw a doc on Evel a few years ago and he was a narly old cuss who had a tendency to break the hands of any journalist who wrote negative stories about him in a good-ol-southern-bappist kinda way, and made me glad I wasn't plying my trade on Stunt Cycle Injury News or some illustrious publication. But he was a proper hero to the late 70s, early 80s kids, even if he failed at most things. And his disco-funk-country record he made showed a bizarre Barry White bent to his singing timbre. The walrus on wheels, perhaps?

That seals it

Over to Donna Nook for an inexplicable meeting of amazing furry nature (hundreds of pregnant seals, right up close) and annoying people with cameras and kids. The two converge every year on an area normally used as an RAF testing ground. Seals. And bombs. For some people, I feel coming to Donna Nook is more of a box ticking exercise than any love of Faroe Island based aquine-mammalry. I heard one woman say, in a thoroughly pissed off tone: "More seals. Just more seals", as if the crazy phenomenon of the wild was not enough for her and could she please get home for X-Factor. Similary inspired, we hopped it to nearby Cleethorpes to see people playing crazy golf in the December dusk, ate fishnchips in a deserted wildlife garden with the Humber breeze jabbing into our backs and then saw how many actors from The Wire we could spot in American Gangster. The film: basically Heat meets Blow meets every other drugs n' cop story arc. Rise n' fall n' tubby Aussie.