Aka Monday 8th
June – 14th June 2020
…working in the
office this week…and there’s not much new to say about it, the new procedures have
embedded in and it’s just the “new normal”…this week I:
…brought ‘Bloodshot’
and ‘Bad Boys For Life’ on DVD. Originally I was going to see ‘Bloodshot’ in
London with friends, but then the virus came along and shut the cinemas and kinda
took away the desire to use public transport and to be in busy areas 😊 , so it was nice to finally watch this film. And from the first watch, I’m
kinda glad that we didn’t see it at the cinema as it’s a slight disappointment.
The action scenes are cool and kinetic, but the non-action scenes are kinda dull
and predictable and at the end of the film you’re not chomping at the bit to
see the next ‘Bloodshot’ or Valiant Comics film. It feels more like a pilot for
a TV series rather than Cinematic Universe. In short not a bad film, but
not a great film.
And ‘Bad Boys For Life’
is kinda the same. There’s some great action scenes and some great comedic
moments, but the rest feels very predictable. Almost like the writers have taken
the best bits of the first two Bad Boys films and added in the most overused
cop film/TV clichés they can think of – partnership broken up, but they come
together for one last time (although this could be a shout-out to Bad Boys II?),
the bad-ass baddie, who kills every-one, but can’t quite manage to kill the lead
character, a key moment for a character that has never been mentioned before,
but which is pivotal for the whole plot, working with an ex, etc. But the charisma
of Smith and Lawrence goes a long way in helping the film rise above these clichés,
making it a mostly enjoyable romp.
…I also brought the
latest issue of 2000AD, for Alex de Campi’s ‘Full Tilt Boogie’ (Ms de Campi
provides the script, Eduardo Ocana provides the art and Ellie de Ville is the letterer),
the latest latest 2000AD Partworks, which is a collection of ‘Future Shock’
stories written by the crème de la crème of 2000AD writers, including Grant
Morrison, Peter Milligan and Jamie Delano, and artists, including Steve Dillon,
Geoff Senior and Frazer Irving, and these New Comic Book Day goodies:
…also, the postie delivered
my copy of South’s ‘Constantly Burning’:
…a compilation of some
of South’s early(ish) work and some exclusive remixes (and the exclusive track ‘Remind
Me’) and it’s a great collection of acoustic/indie rock ‘n’ roll/downtempo/electronic
songs. And now I feel like I need to do a deep dive into South’s catalogue,
especially the stuff they did after Mo’Wax (although I do have a nearly six
foot pile of ‘new’ CDs and a few gbs of music to listen too as well!)
…I also brought, and
ate, too much of these peanut crisps:
…which are basically
Wotsits, but instead of being cheesy they’re peanuty and rather yummy! So, it’s
a good thing that at the weekend I went for a Long Walk:
…and then chilled in
the garden:
…and read ‘Green Lantern: Black Stars’ #1 - #3 and ‘Green Lantern: Second Season’ #1 and #2 and
2000AD 2018 Sci-Fi Special and 2000AD 2130. All top-notch sci-fi stories.
‘Green Lantern: Black
Stars’ carries on from the end of ‘Green Lantern: Season One’ and explores the new
universe that Hal Jordon/Blackstar Parallax created for Controller Mu, before Hal
saves the day/universe and the fallout from this is carried over in ‘Green
Lantern: Second Season’ (hence Second Season!). In which Hal is instructed to remain
in Earth until further notice, but he still manages to get into exciting sci-fi
scrapes.
The 2000AD 2018
Sci-Fi Special and 2000AD 2130 are anthologies chock full of sci-fi stories (and
yes it did take me like one - two years to read these issues! My to read pile
is an ever growing pile that never seems to get smaller!). Ranging from tales
of Judge Dredd and Judge Anderson to adventures of Rogue Trooper on Nu Earth to
robot school kids. The reason I got these progs (2000AD speak for issues) is
the Alex de Campi stories a Rogue Trooper tale in the Sci-Fi Special (Rogue Trooper
is a genetically created solider for a war fought on, and over, Nu Earth. By
Alex de Campi, Sam Beck, Eva de la Cruz and Annie Parkhouse) and Full Tilt Boogie in prog 2130 (a tale of Tee, a teen mercenary (but with a good heart)
and her crew, her Grandmother and her cat, rescuing a prince and starting a
massive saga, maybe. By Alex de Campi, Eduardo Ocana and Ellie de Ville), but
there were plenty of other cool stories. Such as, the Future Shocks story, That
Weird Kid’ (by Karl Stock, Brett Parson and Simon Bowland), Finder & Keeper
(by Leah Moore & John Reppion, Davide Tinto, Pippa Mather and Annie
Parkhouse) a great Judge Death story (by Leah Moore, Xulia Vicente, Pippa
Mather and Annie Parkhouse) and Demarco, P.I., a PI story set in Mega City One (by
Laura Bailey, Dani and Ellie de Ville).
…and I did this
week’s G2 Crosswords:
…and Monday’s crossword gets the week off to a pretty good
start, as we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). Which
is especially nice as the answer to the first clue is my home town
‘Southend-on-Sea’. Although there this some controversy about this score, as
for the clue ‘edible shellfish (4)’ we went with ‘crab’, but the official
answer was ‘clam’, however, with ‘crab’ (a) we got the intersecting letters
right, ‘c’ and ‘a’ and (b) wiki states that crabs are shellfish, so I’m going to
take it as a right answer 😉. And sticking with intersecting letters,
it’s thanks to getting the intersecting letters, ‘u_s_a_t’, that we were able
to work out that ‘upstart’ was the right answer from the clue ‘arriviste’, ‘cos
we would never have gotten ‘upstart’ without them. We also learnt that a
‘cloche’ is a ‘horticultural cover’ and that ‘Chianti’ is a ‘wine from
Tuscancy’…
…Tuesday's crossword keeps things on a positive upswing as
we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 23). The little grey
cells are cooking on gas and are knocking it out of the park (or at least
mostly knocking it out of the park!) Would have been a clean sweep if, for
‘polite apology’ we had gone for ‘excuse me’ and not ‘pardon me’, we forgot to
check whether the intersecting letters fitted with the other clues, and amateur
mistake! And if we hadn’t of got stuck on ‘abides’ or some version of ‘lives’
we might have gotten ‘reside’ from ‘dwell’…but apart from that so far so good…
…and Wednesday’s crossword keeps the hot streak going as we
only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 25). The little grey
cells are just surfing on a wave of answers! A nice straight forward grid, even
when we weren’t sure what the answer was, such as with ‘BBC’s first director
general, d.1973’, but once we’d got the intersecting letters ‘R_i_h’, it was
obvious that the answer is ‘Reith’. And we learnt that ‘nether’ means ‘bottom’
and that ‘leg side’ is ‘cricket’s “on”’…
…and the not streak continues with Thursday’s crossword as
we only had to cheat on a twelfth of the clues (two out of 24). Again, we got a
fair few of the answers via the intersecting letters, although I’m still not
sure if a ‘pond’ really is a ‘small lake’. And we learnt that Jaffe is in
Israel and that ‘indigent’ means ‘pauper’. Will the streak continue for the
rest of the week…
…well it dips a little with Friday’s crossword, as we only
had to cheat on a seventh of the clues (three out of 22), mostly thanks to the
intersecting letters. Like with 10 across ‘gob (informal)(8)’ the intersecting
‘k’ made it obvious that the answer was ‘cakehole’. And those three we didn’t
get, we would never have gotten. Which means that we learnt that ‘Robusta
Coffee’ is a ‘drink made from West African beans’, that the ‘Fuchsia’ is a
‘pendulous-flowered shrub’ and that the ‘Ebro’ is the ‘longest river in Spain’…
…and Saturday’s crossword ends the week on a pretty okay
note, we only had to cheat on a ninth of the clues (three out of 26). The
little grey cells just jogged their way through these clues (except those
three!) and they were some nice ones, like ‘school – game’ for ‘Rugby’ or ‘sell
– whip’ for ‘flog’. And we almost got ‘sotto voce’ from ‘(said) quietly’, we
went for ‘sotta voca’. And we should have gotten ‘broadband’ from
‘high-capacity transmission technique’, especially with the intersecting
letters. And our near geography illiteracy meant that we were very, very
unlikely to get ‘Durban’ from ‘largest city in KwaZulu-Natal’…
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