Today... is... International Talk Like William Shatner Day

So declareth Maurice LaMarche - the voice talent behind such animated greats as 'The Brain' from Pinky and the Brain and the self-proclaimed "third most prominent imitator of William Shatner" - and who are we to argue? The mighty Shat turns 78 today, and LaMarche urges us all to celebrate this great man's birthday by adopting some of his highly idiosyncratic verbal mannerisms.

He even offers some handy tips on how to do it right:



You'll never say the word 'sabotage' in the same way again.

Happy birthday, Mr Shatner.

Oxford, Cambridge and Hull

We arrived back home from Hull the other week safe and sound and ever-so-slightly knackered. Or at least I was. Knackered, that is. Clare, Lily and Optimus were just safe and sound. As I mentioned previously, we went to Hull to collect a pram that can change into a pushchair and that's why we call it Optimus Pram. Or, at least, that's why I do.

I was a student at Hull University between 1990-1993, so returning to my old stomping ground for the first time in a long time was always going to be weird. Over the years I've carefully maintained a massive stockpile of rose-tinted recollections associated with the place. I suppose that's something that most people who went to college do, with the possible exception of graduates from Sarajevo Poly.

Still, Hull was where I met some of my closest and most trusted friends. In that respect I'll always have a lot to thank it for. During those three years there were good times, bad times and some extremely batshit crazy times. This was, after all, the place where I was interviewed on a local radio news programme after fleeing for my life from an exploding aerosol factory. It was where I spent every Sunday afternoon at a workingman's club that offered a regular line-up of bingo, live yodelling and striptease. It was where I shared a house with three friends and a 6-foot tall mechanical bear. It's a place that's hard-wired into my history and has helped make me the person I am today. In that respect, then, it probably has a lot to answer for.

As Clare, Lily and I approached Hull the other week and I caught my first, still-breathtaking glimpse of that ridiculously long suspension bridge spanning the Humber Estuary, I found myself thinking of all those other times I did this journey, back when my Dad did the driving and I just struggled with directions. My dad passed away in 1995, and now - years later - it was my turn to be the responsible adult sitting behind the wheel. I mused on the way that life has a funny way of throwing up such ironies, until I remembered that I still struggle with directions.

After picking up the pram from Hessle, we made our way towards the city centre. As I'd expected, things had changed in the way that things invariably do. Having lived in Birmingham for most of my life I know that modern British city centres are more than a wee bit partial to extensive plaster surgery. Hull, it seems, was no exception. The change in the retail landscape was the first thing I noticed: the Jacksons chain of regional supermarkets had all turned into Sainsbury's Locals, the Armadillo comic shop was now a coffee shop and the sight of the massive new St Stephen's Shopping Centre (next to the revamped Paragon railway station) caused my eyes to do a reasonable impersonation of Marty Feldman's. Hull's been hit hard by High Street homogenisation, I alliterated wistfully to myself.

This feeling swiftly passed as we swiftly passed the neighbouring LA's nightclub. From the outside, at least, it looked exactly the same as I remembered it from 18 years' ago. This was quite an achievement, as back then it looked rather dated.

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose," as they say in South Yorkshire.

The Destroyers

As yesterday was St Pat's day I spent the evening visiting my Mum. While I was there I caught up with my brother, Rob, who asked me about the fabulously riotous Brum-based band The Destroyers. For Rob's benefit - and anyone else who might be interested - here's their video for Out of Babel:



The Destroyers are a genre-breaking 15 piece group who describe their sound as "Eastern European folk music with a gothic turbo charge." They're a phenomenal live act who seamlessly combine the spirit of The Pogues, a Black Rider-era Tom Waits and The Wedding Present's Ukranian John Peel Sessions to powerful effect.

They are, to use the common parlance, good shit.

Japanese Spider-Man

It's Spider-Man, it's Japanese and it's crazy as a shark's knee:




Thanks to Phil for pointing this madness out to me.

Watchmen: Bigger, Louder and Uncut

I went to see Watchmen last night.

As a somewhat obsessive fan of the original comic book (alright then, graphic novel), I expected this to be something of a Manichean moviegoing experience. I'd leave the theatre either loving or hating the film, hailing Zack Snyder as a cinematic genius or denouncing him as the New Schumacher. Like the moral standpoint of Rorschach, one of the anti-heroes from the film (alright then, motion picture), there would be no middle ground, no compromise.

That was yesterday. Now, I'm not too sure.

My good friend Phil likened the film to the Ludovico technique, that fictitious aversion therapy from Clockwork Orange in which Malcolm McDowell's Alex was forced to watch a barrage of lurid, violent images with his eyes prised open. Watchmen was two hours and forty minutes of relentless sensory overload which made me feel happy, annoyed, ecstatic, angry, gleeful and perplexed and often all at the same time. It's also left me feeling a bit like Malcolm McDowell.

I'm still trying to process it now. Like Schrödinger's Cat - which is both alive and dead at the same time - I find myself simultaneously loving and hating Zack Snyder's Watchmen. I'll try to write something more coherent once my neurology settles down.

Or I might just go to see it again.

Nite Owl and his Amazing Friends

Re-reading the Watchmen

As you might have already noticed, the Watchmen movie comes out this week. Unlike most online commentators with geekazoid tendancies, I'll try my best to reserve judgement on the film until I've actually seen the damn thing. Whether I end up loving it film or loathing it, at least it's given me an excuse to re-read Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' original comic series for the umpteenth time:

"Moe Vernon was a man around fifty-five or so, and he had one of those old New York faces that you don't see anymore. It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again."

I first read Watchmen when it was released as a 12 issue series between 1986-7. A lot of things have changed since then, but it's still my favourite comic.