Wheelie bad idea..

Unless you've been sheltering from the rain in a wheelie bin you cannot have escaped the news this week.

Provided of course that the wheelie bin in which you sought refuge was not unintentionally invaded by Lola, a four year old tabby from Coventry.

Mary Bale (no relation to Mrsslippy) now looks as likely to be asked by her neighbours to feed the cat whilst on holiday as Gary Glitter would be asked to babysit.

As a cat owner and all round animal lover myself, I found what she did completely abhorrent. If someone was to dump Minnie or Busta in a bin, I would certainly seek to discover the culprit, and press charges.

What I wouldn't do is demand their head on a plate. After a good old fashioned witch hunt she has been named and shamed, and Internet forums are alive with the most medieval demands for how her sick actions must be punished.

Nothing like a bit of mob justice to show the uncivilised barbarians of society the wrongs of their ways. The irony is almost palpable.

It's just a shame the angry hordes can't get as worked up over some real crimes in society..

• Apathy towards the plight of millions of flood victims in Pakistan.

• News Corp, and its fascist flagship Fox News fanning the flames of racial hatred with it's misinformation and propaganda surrounding the 'Ground Zero Mosque' - which interestingly is neither at Ground Zero, nor a Mosque

• Turning a blind eye to the Catholic Churches mutual wonky optics regarding allegations of persistent, endemic sexual abuse of minors, as we welcome Pope Benny to the UK in a couple of weeks time.

At least no cats were harmed in any of the above. Perhaps if they were, the public would care more.

Mary Bale will be punished for her crime.

I don't know the women, but she strikes me as someone clearly not right in the head. Lacking any empathy in the first place to do such a thing, and then lacking the insight into the fact that she had done anything wrong. She really claims to not understand what all the fuss was about.

Let the punishment fit the crime. She caused distress to a living creature, which could have died.

She did not set fire to a basket of kittens and use the embers to spit roast a puppy as part of some pagan ritual

Sadly animal abuse happens all the time, either by neglect, or direct action. Let's not make Mary Bale the poster girl for what is wrong with society just because she was caught on camera.

In a moment of madness she faces prosecution, losing her job, and her friends - and it serves her right. Any physical attacks on her, or her property makes us no better than her. An eye for an eye will make us all blind, and an arson for a kitty just wastes the Fire Services time.

She will find it hard to gain re-employment, and will be ostracised not only by her local community, but by the whole country. Shunned and ignored.

As one, we can send her to Coventry - but as previously stated, she already lives there.

And some would say that's punishment enough.

The Dulwich Defectives

After a brief hiatus of about 4 months where I've been so bored of staring at computer screens all day at work that I just can't be arsed to do it in the evening, I have decided to put pen to paper, or more correctly carpals to keyboard to document a jaunt to London before my aging synapses auto archive it to my minds irreversible recycle bin.

Taking inspiration from the 130th Anniversary of HP Lovecrafts birth, the closest we could get to doing Detective work in Dunwich, was assembling a collection of freaks, geeks and gargoyles to Stoxies stomping ground of East Dulwich and just being wrong.

Prime mission for the day - cricket. Unfortunately due to the ECBs complete incompetence by starting a Test on a Wednesday, and some shocking batting by the home side it was all but over by Day 4 on the Saturday. However there was still the prospect of getting a few hours of entertainment, followed by plenty of booze time.

Myself and Ali trained it from Cambridge to meet Stoxie and Tim already assembled at The Hanover Arms for a prematch warm up drink - soon to be joined by Nick and Stevo and into The Oval to start racking up the pints whilst wondering if the last wicket stand could rack up more runs. A little sweepstake on how many balls England would face was short lived as Broad swiped recklessly at the 3rd ball of the day and as soon as play started, it was back to the pavilion to prepare for a Pakistan run chase.

They were quickly out the blocks, and the chase looked as one sided as Mo Farah legging it after Heather Mills, bludgeoning her with her spare leg as he goes.

As it became more and more apparent that it would be over as soon as it began, the only way to make the most out of the day was going to be to just keep getting the pints in and soaking up the atmosphere.

Seemed atmosphere wasn't the only thing we could soak up, as our section of the crowd became less interested in cricket, and more interested in drinking, and feeding the snake.

I'd never seen a snake at a sporting event before, but the execution was so sublime and simple I'm stunned to be a viper virgin. Simply collect up your empty pint pots in a stack, and feed it by passing it around the stand. Busy hands gather discarded plastic pots adding vertebrae at an exponential rate whilst its head waves ominously several feet above you. Eventually the snake reaches critical mass and it's body collapses, spewing it's innards of warm dregs of Fosters and Pedigree over all and sundry, only to be reborn from its broken body parts.

A phoenix from the flames, or a serpent from the spillages.

Some more incisive bowling from Jimmy and Swanny slowed things down enough to make for a slow painful death, but all over too late to find a local football ground, so instead back to Dulwich, Stoxies local, and Soccer Saturday on the big screen.

What followed was 8 hours of systematic abuse, bullying, and character assassination as each individuals physical and mental flaws were ruthlessly laid bare for the cheap amusement of the others - and it was great.

An extended episode of The Inbetweeners made real, but with 36-37 year olds who have somehow despite holding down responsible jobs and raising families are deep down no better that the 17 year old versions of ourselves sneaking into pubs compiling lists of dream women - some of which remain the same after 20 years despite the fact that some of the women are now world weathered hags, and heavily soiled goods.

Food came courtesy of Stoxies local Mongolian Barbecue joint, which went down just right, as did the drinks which were switched from ale to pitchers of margarita, or as coined by Stevo "Tasty Drink". An accurate description which worked well enough procuring refills in the restaurant, but slightly ambiguous when requested at the next bar, so onto bottled lager it was.

Next up - something we've never done before. We've dabbled in all sorts of nonsense on all day sessions with things getting particularly messy. The full stories of which can only be pieced together using combined flashbacks, and contents of cameras, phones, receipts in wallets, and an absence of all cash money.


What had we never done?



Six men, let loose in the big city with a weekend pass from six very trusting ladies?



Six men with a combined track record of some of the most debauched puerile shennanigans?



What's left to do?



An early night....



We went home before 11...



No late licenses, no clubs, no titty bars, no casinos, no roaming the streets naked looking for random trophies to transport home balanced on our heads.


Home - Match of the Day - all tucked up in separate beds by 12.



And if you believe that you'll believe anything.



For which I commend your trust - because sadly, it's true.

Crash of the Titans

Although not a complete train wreck, there is no denying that the 2010 remake of the Classics classic 'Clash of the Titans' is certainly a multiple car pile up.

****SPOILER ALERT****


Louis Letterier has spoiled it.

I have a very fond recollection of Desmond Davis original, from Ray Harryhausens beautiful stop motion animation, to Vida Taylors beautiful bare arse as she and the young Perseus are washed up on a island at the start of the film.

Harry Hamlin may have been a bit wooden, but his constant look of bewilderment helps endear us to a mortal coming to terms with the fact that he might actually be a God.

Sam Worthington is just shit. In theory he has this 'everyman quality' which is why we have seen him come from nowhere to staring in Avatar, Terminator, and now this. He's cut from the same cloth as countryman Russell Crowe, but unfortunately it's the off cuts at the end of the roll.

From the outset the film veered strongly away from the original, in a plot that just made no sense at times.

In a summary of the 80's classic...

Beautiful Andromeda is engaged to demi-god and son of Godess Thetis, Calibos.
Calibos pisses of Zeus by hunting and killing all but one of his herd of flying horses, so he turns him into a hideous monster. With the wedding off, Thetis puts a curse on Andromeda that no man may marry her without solving a riddle - the answer to which is a ring on her disfigured sons hand.
Cue Harry Hamlin. He fancies a bit of Andromeda action, so connives to solve the riddle, and cuts off Calibos' hand.
Calibos now even more pissed off begs his mum to take revenge on Harry/Perseus. She can't because he's Zeus's son, so vows to destroy Andromedas home town instead, by unleashing the Kraken in 30 days unless Andromeda is sacrificed.
Stygian witches and a Medusa later, and the Kraken is dead, and Perseus and Andromeda live happily ever after.

Back to 2010 and it's all a bit different...

Perseus is now pissed off with Zeus's brother Hades for killing his family in a fishing accident.
Hades is pissed off with his brother because Zeus gets to wear ethereal shiny armour, and he has male pattern baldness and has to live in the dingy underworld.
Hades vows to destroy Andromedas home because she has a gobby mother, but we don't really care about her, and neither does Perseus, as he's spotted the much fitter Io, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the also fitter than Andromeda, Gemma Arterton.
Grumpy Perseus and a not so merry band of soldiers head off in search of a way to stop Hades pet sea monster.

Why he doesn't just tell them to go fuck themselves and shack up with Io, I'll never know.

But off they jolly well go, until their path is hampered by Calibos.

Only this time Calibos isn't the son of a Godess, he's King Acrisius - husband of Perseus's mother but not his Dad! Sneaky Zeus had got the Queen up the duff, and Acrisus in a fit of rage chucked his wife and son into the sea in a wooden box at the start of the film...

Via the same route of Stygian witches, Medusa, and a (black) Pegasus we still get to see Perseus defeat the Kraken, and save Andromeda but he doesn't care about her, and neither do we.

Instead we see him reunited with a (killed by Calibos in Act III), Io. Resurrected by Zeus as a 'thanks for bitch slapping my brother - I couldn't be arsed to do it myself', despite the fact that she was apparently immortal anyway....

All....very....wrong.

I want Burgess Merideth, Booboo the mechanical owl, and a Medusa that looks 10 times scarier as a stop motion plasticine monster than as an expensive CGI monstrosity.

I want a Mount Olympus populated by Knights and Dames of the acting world wearing their best togas, not an armoured Irish Zeus with his wrinkles inexplicably airbrushed out.

I don't want post production 3D that just doesn't work. It was no more 3D than a pop up children's book. A layer in the foreground, a layer in the middle distance, and then a back drop. 3D objects are exactly that, 3 dimensionnal. They are not just a couple of 2D objects placed a little distance away from each other.

In some parts it became overly distracting, particularly in close ups where people appeared to be stood in front of a second version of themselves. Peering over the top of the 3D glasses confirmed just that. All the acting (if you can call it that) is strictly 2D, with the CGI effects mashed in to try and give some depth.

Normally when I see a film like this I can take some solace in the fact that it's all just a bit of silly nonsense. Escapist tosh that it really doesn't matter if the plot leaks like the back four at Blundell Park, or the effects are a bit clunky - provided it's fun.

But sadly this is not. It takes itself far too fucking seriously and has all the charm of Piers Morgan, tanked up on WKD Blue, out on the pull in a Cleethorpes nightclub, with Richard Littlejohn as his wingman.

If you've not seen it yet, don't waste your money at the cinema - wait until it's on Sky and watch it as it was shot, in 2D - then yearn for the original, and just be glad they haven't done it to any your other favourites such as The Birds, Death Wish, Gremlins, Robocop, Westworld, Escape From New York, Flash Gordon, The Black Hole.....

...sorry...what's that?...They're ALL IN PRODUCTION AS WE SPEAK?

God in heaven help us.

Because the ones on Mount Olympus are all shit.