70% + 60% + 63% = 100%.

Or something.

Oh, loads. Anything on Queen's Greatest Hits II, for a start, which I seem to listen to very often in the car to and from work. Large chunks of Pet Shop Boys output (well, I am a fan; speaking of which - three weeks to go until the O2...), especially Always on my mind, which always gives me a certain...primal thrill (and I end up playing air keyboards to it...so much less messy than air guitar...). And of course, at this time of year, one gets reminded about Fairytale of New York. The original, unexpurgated, Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues version. Accept no substitutes, and we'll just forget to mention that the former prevented the latter from being the Christmas number one it so deserved to be...

Some lovely heartwarming news - Bernard Cribbins received the Special Award at the Children's BAFTAs last night. I want to go and watch an episode or five of The Wombles now. *g*

In more worrying news, David Hasselhoff has been hospitalised after brain seizure - that looks like it happened a couple of days ago, but I only heard about it this morning. *prayers and hugs*

Only t'other day, I was commenting in reply to something gem_pinkeh had said that John Farnham's You're the Voice is a song you don't hear enough of nowadays.

And then yesterday's Merlin - Secrets and Magic comes along and... *giggle* What a bizarre coincidence. What a bizarre sequence... *g*

And I still haven't seen the actual episode yet, so I'have that (with bonus Georgia Moffett, so *yay*), not to mention The Real Merlin and Arthur (which sounds like being an absolute blast) to look forward to...

But I think I'll be rewatching the You're the Voice a couple more times... *g*

If anybody would like Christmas cards from the Sarah!David gestalt entity, leave a comment (which will be screened) with your name and address and something will be sent to you. If Sarah gets me organised enough, it might even hit the post before last posting day... If you've ever filled in one of these in previous years, I expect we'll send you one anyway. Unless you'd really rather not, in which case just say so.

And if you've done one of these posts, could you point me to it so I can let you have our address? We'll be spending Christmas day here together, but all the decorations are buried somewhere in the lock-up in Barking, so it would be nice to have something to add a bit of seasonal cheer to the place! (So far, we've received two cards; one was from the postman and the other was for a previous resident...)

Actually, that's not entirely true. I bought the first four Christmas presents yesterday without any particular prompting from Sarah. Heck, one of them was for Sarah.

However, that's probably cleaned me out for the rest of the month. *erk*

I have an iPhone.

Sarah has a Blackberry.

On the - admittedly not too frequent - occasions when I have cause to borrow Sarah's Blackberry, it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to remember that, unlike the iPhone, it doesn't have a touch screen.

:o/

This trailer - for a new season on BBC4 - looks interesting. Not sure about Charlie Brooker's assertion that BBC Micro owners were "posh". For that matter, it wasn't Spectrum vs BBC - I owned one of each... (Maybe that does make me posh...)



♥ this trailer for the latest series of Top Gear...



And this from the latest ep of HIGNFY...I've no idea what it actually is (beyond not being Channel 4's new children's character), but...I want one... *craves*

Why does Lush insist on making products that smell good enough to eat?

'Cos I'm convinced that one day I'll fail to resist temptation. And regret it immediately...

• 12:46 @missgems In the words of Gaius..."I don't believe it!!!" #
• 12:50 Is there anyone who hasn't seen The Muppets singing Bohemian Rhapsody? www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY Go watch. 'Tis fun. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Well, BT are trying their best, but at t'mo, we still have rubbish broadband. Even watching a Youtube vid is a struggle.

As a result of which, it was only this morning - and thanks to http://www.youtubeavi.com, which I left downloading it overnight - that I finally got round to seeing what large chunks of my Flist had been raving about yesterday evening.

The Muppets performing Bohemian Rhapsody.

It's just *lovely*. Enjoy!



Mamma. Mamma? Mamma? *g*

(And y'know what? The muso in me is absolutely *convinced* they're using the original Queen production for the instrumentation...I could be wrong, but some of it sounds so damn' close to the original that that could actually be Brian May...)

I realise this isn't entirely unprecedented, but...

...before it goes on mid-season hiatus, FlashForward is being pre-empted this week because it's Thanksgiving weekend.

Well, it's being pre-empted in the US.

In the UK, however, episode 10 (which goes by the gloriously memorable title of A561984 - sounds like an OU module...), is being broadcast as usual on Monday 30th November, i.e. three days ahead of US transmission.

Which is neat.

It's also being accompanied by a little mini-doc, FlashForward: Revealed - "a fascinating look back at the series so far, including interviews with the show's actors and writers, as well as celebrity talking heads." Sayd the Radio Times.

Meanwhile I can't work out whether Paradox is going to be a.) deeply fascinating or b.) Bonekickers II, but I suspect I'm going to watch the first episode anyway.

On the drive home from work last night, I was listening to our* "Every Number One Ever" collection, the 1987 section, which reminded me of two things:

a.) How much I utterly adore Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, especially the guitar solo. So shoot me.

b.) That if you listen to every number one from 1987, sooner or later (track 15, if it's in chronological order) you're going to get Rick-rolled.

*ahem*

David.






*Mine and Tim's. Augmented with all the double A-sides and EP tracks that normally get missed off such collections.

I was going to watch An Unearthly Child today.

It was going to be the first of a daily rewatch of every Doctor Who episode from the beginning.

I didn't get round to it.

And am currently too tired to do it.

Oh well. Might start tomorrow. A day late, I know, but it doesn't matter greatly in the scheme of things.

Still.

Happy 46th birthday Doctor Who.

*raises a glass*

Or at least Secrets and Magic...

"In a land of fandom and a time of blogging"?

Whut?

*squee*

Just realised that due to a technical cock-up known as "leaving a box unticked in iMovie" I managed to rip a silent copy of Saturday's episode. Which is annoying, as I've already wiped it from the Sky+ box. Still, doesn't prevent me from doing this with the final scene:

( Spoiler-y for the final scene of the latest episode... )

Sarah's recently been watching a fascinating series called Life After People, about what might happen to the planet were the human race to suddenly cease to exist (it's just finished airing on the History Channel over here, but worth checking out if it's repeated or comes out on DVD, IMO).

Its final episode is called Waters of Death.

To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't discuss the fate of a base on Mars getting invaded by a mysterious water-based parasitic organism (although y'never know, I might have blinked and missed that bit). But coming only a week after Waters of Mars*, the Doctor Who fangeek in me couldn't help but be rather amused by the juxtaposition.

David.







*OK, it was originally shown in the US back in June. But who's counting?

Just got back from the Merlin at the Barbican event, and...*whee*!!! A lovely afternoon, with Katie McGrath (doing some great swordfighting on stage), Bradley James (ditto, and coming across as really confident and relaxed), Colin Morgan (who'd just flown in from Scotland), Julian Murphy (who confirmed that a third series in pre-production - *YAY*), someone from the make-up team, the stunt arranger and a stuntwoman (who were also involved with the swordfighting), one of the composers, one of the directors, and Will Cohen and another guy from The Mill, all being interviewed by...I forget the guy's name, but he does CBBC presenting and ISTR he was doing the in-vision presentation back in the mid-90s when they did their huge repeat run of Grange Hill starting from the beginning...*eep* anyone help? Anyway, a great afternoon, and although it didn't go into *huge* depth about behind-the-scenes stuff, I learned some odds and ends (chief among which being that, contrary to my assumption that he probably dubs his lines afterwards in a recording booth in Soho, John Hurt's work is actually motion captured before the live action plates, and his facial movements go into the CGI work on the dragon). There were also some really fascinating shots of the build up of a scene (Morgana being attacked by giant scorpions, obviously from an episode I missed...), from the raw footage of Katie in a wood near Cardiff, throough various stages to the final dubbed material with full CGI scorpions.

And then to top it off, Katie and Bradley and Colin were signing stuff afterwards, and I may have squeed a bit too much about Bradley's face-off with Tony Head in last week's ep, but seriously I think he was wonderful in that one and I don't care who knows it. So anyway, I now have Katie's and Colin's siggerns in my Merlin - The Complete Guide book along with Bradley's and Angel's.

Deceased? Well, I'm not really a proper fan of any dead musicians, but I do love Queen & it would have been great to see them back in their heyday while Freddie was still with us. Also, as I'm going through a bit of a Beatles kick, to have been around to see them in the 60s would have been Fab.

Just wondered, which of the Merlin fans on my Flist is going to this tomorrow? Anyone want to meet up before or after for drinkies/chat/geeking? Are there any meetups already going on?