In taking a break from thinking, something I do often these days, it was time for a random blog post about wandering round and see what new and exciting things were going on that ultimately doesn’t lead anywhere…

For starters it was the monthly protest against the scientologists in residence over in Tottenham Court Road:

Ah, isn’t it nice when people can get together dressed as Darth Vader and the guy from V for something to complain about a dead man’s make believe fantasy that not many people believe in which is currently getting sued in France for fraud? Hey, who am I to say anything, some people have a drink problem, some drink 170 coffees a day to make sure they don’t fall asleep, and these guys have found their hobby. Everybody’s happy!

And then it was over to Regent Street as they had closed most of it off to get people down for a taste of Spain.

Yes, for a brief time, you could wander round the area looking in various white tents with different things that Spain offers, such as a fashion show where all men were at the front wishing they could do something about the tight trouser situation they were now facing with the wives/girlfriends standing at the back looking annoyed.

There was also a main stage where we had various acts on during the afternoon including some dancing and for some reason, Scottish bagpipe players….err….ok I may not know everything about the Spanish culture, let’s be fair, I still think Super Noodles is the best contribution to Western civilisation since electricity. But pretty sure that music came from somewhere else…wait, need to ask resident Spanish expert at work….

Several hours later…

Right, apparently they could be Galician or Asturian. I have no idea what that means.

Mind you, forgive me for being the cynic, which let’s be fair, since being down here has become incredibly easy, it seems that such is the level of desperation of wanting people to spend their cash going back abroad instead of staying at home, that things like this are bound to happen more and more, as most of the tents are were about “Visit here, we have running water” or “Visit Cordoba, the fatality rate is actually lower than you think.”

But it’s not often you have Regent Street closed to traffic, and it’s not often you get to eat paella from a big wok in the middle of a street so it’s all good! And I suppose that was an afternoon spent out in the sunshine which we’re not used to here in Blighty, with a good hour spent lying in the park by Buckingham Palace, without worrying about anything that’s broken, it was what the doctor finally ordered. Granted this whole post is not dealing with the massive issues of the day or asking profound questions but then again; bugger it.

After another thrilling week of working many hours, crying over the empty hole that my bank account now sees fit to mock me with over and over again, and at one point, not even knowing what day it was to turn up at the cinema for Terminator: SallyJessy a week early, there was also something else which had come up as a topic was the fact I had lost all sense of adventure.

Now given previous fun and frolics that have both frightened and convicted people of arson in the past, I was shocked about this, but then given the definition of what exactly is a sense of adventure these days, it may not be far from the truth.

You see, what people say when they are adventurous now is: they go on holiday somewhere other than Blackpool. Is that really being adventurous, or is it just a fact that people have to go travelling, spend lots of cash and walk to a place, take pictures of it, and then come back to tell everyone else what little they did while in this magical theme park of fun, which I tend to equate to what the travel agents call: a city break.

Come on, surely being adventurous means doing something you don’t normally do or taking risks? Hell I take a risk to having a wash, I could melt you know, being made of 40% dirt and disease. But perhaps it all means you have to take massive risks, and not just ride along the tube hoping that no-one farts.

I guess that’s maybe the bigger picture and maybe a more fitting question to be answered; at what level can you say you are being “out there”, appearing in the X-Files, eating something with two colours in it, telling a woman they are fat….what exactly is enough of a adventure?

Sir Ranulph Fiennes would probably turn round and say climbing a mountain while claiming a pension would be an adventure, and well, seeing as he did do it recently, he can now sit down in the pub and laugh at everyone who just had a run-in with the checkout staff at Tescos.

But what I’ve noticed is that to have some of these wonderful adventures, you have to pay through the fecking elbows for it. You’re not going to climb Everest via using EasyMount (though that does sound like a different service you get round London in the right places so I’m told….) nor visit the Valley of the Kings using a 50p coupon from a cereal packet.

So with this in mind, does this mean that most adventures are pretty much a non-starter for the average person on the street, and therefore what we have to look forward to is simply trying out various things on toast? We are all still worried about losing our jobs, more industries are still having problems with Ohell and Valhalla of GM Europe only being saved by some other firm we hadn’t heard of before (that’s probably what you get for being Canadian).

Or is it perhaps better to think: F**k it we only live once, run up huge debt, and hope no-one notices or tells us, go away you smell of wee and thanks for playing?

Tis a difficult issue to resolve, and one I face with sadness as it’s kind of a catch 22. What should the Lord of Leisure actually do?

And in another of these film reviews in quick succession, well quick enough considering all things, we find ourselves at another remake, another franchise, rather than left to history as it stood, Hollywood having ran out of ideas some many years ago, have been raping and pillaging like good little Vikings anything that may make some quick cash. And this is not the first time this type of thing has been remarked on within this digital writing ice fortress of doom, lest we forget the likes of Batman: The slightly off colour knight and Get Smart (by watching something else).

So now as we come galloping along to the big summer blockbuster film season filled with big actors with equally big salaries for doing the same thing 20 times as directed by other people (not that I’m bitter about such things), it’s time to remark upon the the cult hit:

Star Trek

Oh dear, we’re in for a bumpy ride. The film has received so much praise with the smallest amount of lament, so in essence the smartest thing to do right now is to say the film is the best thing since Klingon Blood Pie and wander off for some experiments involving the transporter system and some livestock.

But seeing as I have severe mental problems, I prefer to question a few things before we even get to Star Trek, something which perhaps I should have addressed with the last review.

I suppose I begin by returning to the opening paragraph and expanding upon it; We know the main reason for bringing back the dead franchise; Money talks, and right now it’s positively shouting at the makers of Hollywood to come up with major hits year after year after year, and we’ve seen some pretty bad films reach the screen, such as the recent Crank 2, which basically had shown Jason Stately do the exact same crap as per the previous film which let’s be fair, was actually quite funny and should have ended there.

And of course, XXX-Men staring Wolverhampton who needs a better agent right now, and we possibly have more shining examples to come with Terminator: Salisbury, Transformers 2 with the wimpy Optimist Primark and Maggie Fox using her breasts to try and keep the audience from lapsing into a coma. And please, don’t get me started with Angels and Demons, it would be less dull to be forced to read a copy of the Angling Times for 100 years.

For those film purists right now, I know we’ve had Slumdog with extra mustard, The Curious Tale of Banjo Button and Watchmen (though even some of that was a big silly) actually dragging back up the average with myself even enjoying Taken showing Liam Neeson he can kick arse in France and make sure Holly Valance’s body remained sexy after a poop concert (no, the extra o is meant to be there) but mainly it hasn’t been fantastic for a fair while now.

So when it comes to looking at Star Trek, the JJB fella’s version of events with new people playing those roles we came to love and then despise, you can almost be forgiven for thinking “Please for the love of god, can someone just make all this stop?” After all it was the network along with questionable first and second seasons of Enterprise which basically called a day on the whole thing in 2005, after all why bloody prequels? Shouldn’t we be seeing further into the future with new stuff rather than go back and replay the same again?

But, and this is a big but when it comes to this Star Trek film, it’s a prequel that pretty much looks at the established storyline for the whole lot, says “f**k it!”, and goes off on one by itself without adult supervision. Well sort of, remember there are Star Trek purists to please and they have as much money as the normal-non-skin-coloured-in-to-look-like-a-slave girl-public so at some point we’re going to have to address that little issue aren’t we?

So to the spoiler-refic plot part of the ramblings. It’s the year something-or-other, and some Romanians people have come from the future and decided to be jolly rotten to a nearby starship, and it appears after a breif conversation the Romanians are after Ambassador Spock for some reason. Oh no, they’re going to kill everyone unless one brave chap flies into the naughty vessel firing at them allowing people to escape. Isn’t it convenient that old James T Kirk was being born at the time of all this and it was his daddy that saved the day.

Cut to further along, and our James is a little rascal, starting fights, going after ladies, then he joins Starfleet, meets the gang (not from Scooby Doo) and tries to stop the naughty Romanians from succeeding in doing huge amounts of naughty, which was surprising they could still do so after getting banged up a fair bit years before. Old James and his stalwart fellows sort of fail to do this half way through with shit hitting the fan quite a bit for one planet being destroyed, and another is on the cards later on to fall the same fate. But it’s only when all the crew are together again that the day can possibly be saved with catchy lines, lots of shots being fired and lots of noises in the background.

Let’s be fair, it doesn’t take much working out that the day is saved and they will have ensured more films can be made with the intrepid crew, hopefully with yet more things to be made to make money like those funky uniforms. But it is just a load of old balls which will clap out after 3 seconds, or is it in fact something which activates the warp drive over 60mph?

Well, I have to say, this is Star Trek for the masses, you really don’t have to know who the guys are before and there are tons of action going on, with enough funny bits to tide you over till tea and biscuits. But there is even things here for those who actually paid attention to all the crap that came before from the millions of episodes before, and an appearance from one of the original cast too, which let’s be fair, wasn’t a massive secret given the fact it was given away in the trailers. But it’s not known how much he is actually key to the plot until later which was a little bit welcome, but you got the feeling it was a bit of a cop-out to tie things up nicely.

The actors they have on hand are a fair bunch to tell the truth, with the stand out performances coming from Karl Urban, who played Dr. Mccoy very well but wasn’t on the screen enough and strangely despite the bad accent and being introduced quite late, Simon Pegg who was chosen to play the wee Scotty man, now with accompanying furry thing who I have no idea what it’s meant to be. The best was Spock, played by the bloke from Heroes, and at least for once he was playing a good guy while looking annoyed. And he got himself a woman too. Clearly he be the man.

James T Kirk, Chekov, Sulu, they were all played rather well, which again caught me by surprise but then there were even more good performances from Spock’s dad, Captain Pikey and well Winoda Ryderhard was there too. Still never mind about that last bit eh? All in all it had enough pace to keep going with plenty of change throughout, but the only parts you could be moaning about was Eric “was crap in Hulk” Bana not doing, well, anything really, he just got angry a lot and roared. That was about all he was allowed to do which was a bit pants, but at least he looked the part with the funky art all over his face.

Sometimes I do wonder if this film would work without Star Trek being put as the title, as you could have what happened in any story going with any characters, it’s just we had names and things like the Enterprise to fit into everything so we had a frame of reference. What was the bleeding deal of things just going along as they did, at times it really does look like “Oh this has just happened, that was handy and allows us to nicely bodge bits together without anyone asking questions.” And another, and so on. Almost too easy….hmm…

And another problem of course is every time we get things updated, they end up looking far far better than the original thing it was all based on, now we have an Enterprise that’s got so many tellys on and background noises, you wonder if those poor people are going to end going insane with sensory overload and scream “MAKE THE NOISES STOP!?!?!?”

Oh yes, the Enterprise, it kind of looks the same, except the warp bits at the back look like they’ve gone on an eating binge at an all you can eat buffet and have just let out their trousers to breathe. Other than that, it looks swanky, as does the special effects doing more than a good job to make us pay attention for more than 3 seconds.

So basically what we have here is actually a good film that could have actually launched the entire lot in the first place if Star Trek had never been made in the first place, and it has done something no-one thought possible; made Star Trek cool for the first time ever, and it’s a remake that was actually worth making. Time travel bit to get around all the past and future stuff aside, this really could have legs if they continue the way they are going. Just a wee bit more thought on not making everything go conveniently the way you need to shoehorn in something else, and like I said, get the Scottish accent worked on, and more Bones god damn it!

And in the distant past, the past where this film review was greatly promised and then disappeared, a great event occurred and lo, the people were happy, with some other people happy as they were able to get it on the Internet before we mere mortals viewed at the cinema. And let’s be fair they probably did the right thing downloading as they then saved the money for smack.

Now for the rest of us, sit back and cry along to the train wreak that was:

XXX-Men Orgasm: Wolverhampton

(The above image made me think of far too many captions, I had to stop after half an hour and move on…)

Hmm, not a overly good start to call a film a train wreck before you even start writing, but allow me to explain.

You see, Huge Jackiechan hasn’t really had a film by himself as the main fella since that film with Kate Beckinsale with the dodgy accent and really tight corset…what that film again, all I’m remembering is Kate…err…and the stage was really set to have a film dedicated to one of the best characters in the X-rated film trilogy, how he grew up to be a real boy, and then kick some arse or three in the process.

The trailer looked good enough, people looking angry and bitch-fighting, things exploding, some over-the-top oh my god music, and the premise of one man doing everything that clearly should real-life ever come into it, he would be dead before he had a chance to fart his plan for revenge out.

Problem was as with quite a number of films that came before this epic, the trailer was better than the film itself.

Basic storyline, for it is basic, Wolverhampton and his brother who happens to be a bloke with claws, fangs and a bad temper called SabreThing, go through a set of happenings in the first few minutes which show them surviving wars, naughty people, and something else before being offered to be with other special people shooting and larking about the place.

(Same with this one, just too many things to think of. They really should think about releasing fewer film stills where the characters look constipated.)

Wolverhampton doesn’t want to do naughty any more so wanders off, gets a girl, becomes a lumberjack who isn’t gay, and all is good. Then the people he wandered off from kill the woman he loves, then hijinks aplenty occur all leading off in a nice bow which just so happens to make sure that the events of X-Men 1 aren’t pissed all over.

Skipping past most of what actually happens because let’s be fair, it’s not worth mentioning, as the film does a pretty good job of skipping past a lot of the potential good story parts like the wars, and then skims wonderfully over Huge’s ideal life before making him the bloke with the kitchen cutlery hanging out of his hands and then making him fight various people until a couple of buildings are destroyed. Roll credits, job’s done.

The main villain Stryker makes about as much sense as a japenese instruction manual, as he plans to wipe Wolverine’s memory at one point but only after he’s been turned into a super human with metal inside him, and bugger me, he even brings out a gun which can magically make Wolverine forget things if you fire at his head. Which you would have thought would have been mentioned way before, but nope, here it is for all to see now.

He behaves like a little bastard at all times, yet people still trust till he twiddles his moustache, kills them and flies off in his hot air ballon, all the while we think “No wonder he’s dead, no wonder she’s dead….”

All of this lead to the point the film was a crying shame as it had so much potential and I actually enjoyed parts of it, including SabarTooth played by some fella whose name I can’t spell without referring to IMDB.

Some mutants were introduced and forgotten quickly like Scott with the bad eyes, and Gambit who could for some reason as well as throw cards that explode, fly a plane and be very helpful.

There was even a mutant introduced that would have been kick ass in the earlier films as the ultimate weapon, but that didn’t even last that long. Damn.

At the end of the day, it’s designed to be watched without a brain, don’t look at the plot holes and spelling errors that clearly went into this, and laugh at the point they try to make Patrick Stewart look like he was in his twenties. Camera was more fudged than the 2000 US election.

Come on Huge, you’re a good actor, you’d be better off elsewhere now mate.

Very confusing day today and one that has filled me with many questions about things, how to act and what to say, do, feel at various points. I suppose if nothing else, London does provide the odd day where nothing happens the way you expect, and then it comes that you actually look forward to tomorrow.

Love the feeling.

I suppose today being Sunday, it was a typically boring day, shot more things in Plants Vs. Zombies, a silly concept that is sweeping across those with far too much time on their hands, and bought some over priced shirts from Debbiehams.

So to take myself away from the annoyance that MPs expenses are out in the open, and instead of still wishing I could do the same, I have gone on the deep end: Internet Dating.

Yes it’s true, I signed up today in seeking out new lifeforms and new civilations, to boldy go where all those other people who failed to actually acheive normal bonding through normal interaction like other human beings.

Some say it was due to the Lord of Leisure’s previous failure which has brought him to this point, others say it’s the cabin fever getting to him. And then there is myself who says, bugger it, may as well, can do it as a little experiment to see if the things actually works. So for one month only, I am online, again in-between killing zombies with plants and trying it out. No more after that, and will report the findings back here.

Now before you all cry “Paul you desperate widerbeast, what is wrong with you?” The plus side of this is at least, that people on these things are actually looking so you don’t have to jump through all the damned hoops that normal conversation requires.

Strangely, I worked it out with the bad maths prowess i obtained from years of being asleep, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper when meeting as you hopefully don’t spend as long in bars, slobbering over the various people, shouting I love you before collapsing in a pool of your own vomit.

This being the internet, it does mean that lies are the order of the day and therefore, my profile should have included facts such as I am the world’s strongest millionaire who has cured cancer, and basically wants to do nothing else in life but be there for the love of my life, holding her and the 17 kid’s hands together while being able to talk about my feelings.

Though if I actually wrote that on there, I think most would rumble it being a major pile of dog poop.

So I guess time will prove that the money spent on the venture would have been better spent on Cobra beer to take the pain away but never mind. We shall see, and hell what’s the worst that could happen? Aside from another Dr. Pepper advert….

And also, could I put this on expenses as part of the blog?

It’s 22:35 on a Saturday evening and today all I have been thinking about is loosing weight, spending money to do things and then wanting to go through the entire back catalogue of South Park.

Seems to be more honest than the MPs who have been stealing our taxes. Can I have a £2,500 home cinema via a tax rebate please? Because the establishment within the UK seems to have so much spare cash around to fund MPs “expenses” with a great many of them saying sorry for people finding out they have been taking the liberty for a good number of years.

Shame I never had the same chance to do the same as they have, I’d own half of Manchester as my “second home” before I got caught.

Suppose at least I got a very little rant out the way, perhaps I’ll do more tomorrow. Good night all!

Hello campers. Remember I said about writing at the weekend about Wolverhampton’s new film with Huge Jackman starring and also about the week in Reading. Well as with all good plans, it’s fallen into the toilet. It seems the very instant I get the crap together enough to achieve something of even the smallest success, the energy goes, the will is broken, and the bad man touches me in the wrong place again.

To make matters worse, sleep patterns are once again erratic, so for once I am going to attempt to go to bed early in the vain hope of sleeping a normal night’s sleep. Christ, this is how Fight Club started out….