Capri-Sun - like hope in a silver sachet

[alexsarll]

Technically adept types: would it theoretically be possible to make an Oyster card virus?

When I first saw that Virgin 1 was on Freeview, I was mainly excited about The Riches. Then I saw a trailer, and...I'm meant to take that accent of Eddie Izzard's seriously? Like I am Hugh Laurie's in House? There's no punchline? Yeah, maybe not. If I couldn't bear My Fair Lady or The Lady From Shanghai, no way can I take it in an ongoing series. So then I was excited about Battlestar Galactica until I realised it was the crappy original, and while I'd love to see Boston Legal, they've scheduled it against The Sopranos. But just before I dismissed this new channel as a bust, I remembered why I was recognising the name The Unit. It's the collaboration between Shawn "The Shield" Ryan and David Mamet about a US covert ops group (I would say Delta Force except these guys appear to be competent, so maybe think of them just as a US SAS), starring President Palmer from 24 as the operational commander and the T-1000 running things back at base. Tense and manly decisions are made, and stuff blows up. The other plot strand is basically Desperate Housewives except not achingly sh1t, with the unit's wives attempting to maintain both a semblance of normal domestic life, and the pretence that their husbands are in some boring logistics division and certainly not off about to get themselves killed in deniable ops behind enemy lines.
It is on Wednesday evenings. Thus far I have only seen one episode (the second of the first series), but I strongly recommend it.

Phonogram readers and the more-or-less sane will note that everyone interviewed in this piece about the Britpop revival is one of the era's war criminals. Why aren't Menswear touring? Why wasn't the return of Marion met with this sort of mainstream coverage?
(Still, even reading a Northern Uproar interview in 2007 can't be as sure a sign of the End Times as a really rather witty piece appearing in Observer Woman magazine)

Am more excited about Black Plastic later than I've been about a club in a while. I think it helps that this month's cover is the front of John Foxx's Metamatic, an album I somehow only discovered this month.

Comments

[intermix.livejournal.com]

Whee Black Plastic love! See you later. x x x

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yay! I shall be attempting not to get too drunk at hoshuteki's beforehand, but offer no guarantees.

[intermix.livejournal.com]

Well, I imagine I'll be just as tipsy too so I wouldn't worry about it!

Re: return of the bands that were never even cool at the time

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Tipsy? You? Surely not! ;p

Re: return of the bands that were never even cool at the time

[intermix.livejournal.com]

We'll just prop each other up.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

No you will not. I will hear about it.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Come on, I've drawn your attention to a new Mamet series, I think that must buy me some leeway.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

You don't think Mamet's gone a bit mad? I mean, your dislike of monotheists should be alerted by someone who goes from marrying a Buddhist in his youth to writing Torah commentaries in his old age...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

You know I don't count the Jews in that, John. Well, except the very loopiest of the black-hats. And even the cancer monotheisms, while pernicious in politics, can be quite productive in art - look at all the great Catholic novelists (I'm reading a Greene at the moment), or the songs of Cash and Cave.
And if there was any religious content in (this episode of) The Unit, it was extremely well-hidden.

[intermix.livejournal.com]

I believe this is the point when I remind you that I tried to make you come where I was going to be tispy this evening but you refused, so leaning on Barry shall commence.

Also, a man just came in and bought my favourite piece, woohoo! (But also boo, because I've been trying to mke my parents buy me it!)