All Yesterday's Christmases - a trip to the consumerism graveyard

They all stared at us accusingly as we drove into the dump.

I mean the garden ornaments, of course. Faded in the sun and worn by years of exposure, they'd been lined up along the route to the main parking area. I saw any number of owls, gnomes, Rupert The Bears, deer, pigs, badgers, blue tits, lucky wishing wells, Terracotta Soldiers and licensed properties, all watching us like angry exes at a really awkward school disco. 

They'd been arranged there with care by the workers at the dump, or rather, the recycling hub. This was the new name for the place, and it was no longer just somewhere where you went to ditch your crap. It had to be carefully sorted and placed into one of 13 very long, very deep skips - one for plasterboard, one for paper and cardboard, one for plastic, one for electrics and electronics, and broken washing machines...

A melancholy night at the cinema (with The World's End and Pacific Rim)

Often, going to the cinema is a laugh, and for the most part The World's End, the last instalment of Edgar Wright's ice cream trilogy, was fun. It's just that the mid-life crisis angst and oversold comic hooks were a bit worn out and desperate. If the first instalment, Shaun of the Dead, managed to strike a perfect balance between the genre homages, drama and comedy, The World's End was too sledgehammer in execution, like it was overcompensating as it staggered over the finish line.

Throw in a disjointed final act that is unsatisfying precisely because it is so perverse, and the film ends on a sombre note that's a bit too jarring. It does of course pick up all of a sudden in the last scene, but there's something disturbing about the odd belief in sci fi that you have to sweep away the world to save it.

Then there was Pacific Rim. Jesus Christ, what a load of shit. The absurd characters were cut out of cardboard (seriously, there's more life in a Toho sound stage full of scale model buildings), and were, without exception, utterly vile and unsympathetic. After nigh-on two hours, I even wanted the fucking dog to die. The dialogue was beyond parody.

The stars of the show - the big monsters and the big robots - were, meanwhile, obscured by darkness and water for the most part. It makes you wonder quite what it is you're meant to be seeing, as the murk gets in the way of multimillion dollar SFX to the point that it might as well not be there. As a final insult, the film ends with yet another Raid-on-the-Deathstar via Independence Day reset button. I say final, because the entire film spends its duration insulting your intelligence

Throw in a nasty pro-militarism and authoritarian subtext, and a heartless, banal core to the movie, and you have a veritable mountain of kaiju shit falling out of the screen in glorious 3D.

As the credits finally - mercifully - roll, you just have to wonder if directors of any renown should be put out to pasture after a few years, before they start making inadvertent comedies like Prometheus, The Dark Knight Rises and this bulbous turkey. Did the maker of Pan's Labyrinth really crap this one out?

And then there is the soundtrack - DERDERDER-DER-DER! DERDERDER-DER-DER! DERDERDER-DER-DER! It's like a really annoying ringtone, a lot like the rest of the film as it happens.

Having fucked this up, will Legendary do a better job with Godzilla? It's not looking good.

Want to hear the punchline? After watching this cinematic gem, I missed the last bus home.

Encounter with a female stag beetle

This morning, while chasing away a Robin that had perched on our clothes horse (they tend to crap wherever they please), I saw a large black object moving some distance away on the ground.

It was a big beetle, and I initially christened what I thought was a 'him' as 'George Harrison' (the only Beatle no one slags off). On closer examination, it turned out to be a female stag beetle, who had a run-in with a cobweb some time before, as you can probably see. 'He' was actually a Georgina, as only males have the famous 'antler' mandible jaws we normally associate with the species.

Seeing that the stag beetle was exposed on the concrete and there were lots of insectivores either flying around or, in the case of our cat, on the prowl, we picked her up and put her on the soil nearby. Then we realised the area we'd put her on was crawling with ants, so we had to pick her up again, all the while worrying we were killing the poor thing with stress.

Then I remembered that stag beetles like hanging around rotting wood, and we had a suitably large, decaying tree stump in our garden too. Finding a nice big crevice to drop the stag beetle into, I was relieved to see she'd survived and, err, beetled off some time later.

Given the time of year, she was probably trying to find somewhere to lay eggs, like - say - a rotting tree stump. Perhaps we'll have stag beetle grubs on our hands soon? I hope so; they are a fast declining species, and it would be sad to see them become rare or even endangered.

So let me end on a top tip. Fill a small bucket with wood shavings and bury it up to the brim in a warm, unobtrusive part of your garden. This provides a ready-made nursery for stag beetles and helps them during breeding season. Don't expect any music, though.

2012 London Olympics: What a load of arse

While on my way to a job interview near Angel today, I found myself in the middle of the Olympic Torch Relay. Crowds of people were lining both sides of the road, from Islington High Street, down through St. John Street, around the corner towards Rosebery Avenue and then onwards to who gives a toss where.

I walked some of the route with a friend. I was tired and stressed, so didn't feel like mincing my words. "Hubristic", "waste of money", "ovine" and "glorified school sports day" were some of the words I was using in a very loud voice as we proceeded through the throng, while the strigiformic stare of  Jessica Ennis emanated disapprovingly from bus shelter advertising.

The thing about the British is that they claim to be individuals, but tend to go along with the group. Anyone around during the time after Diana Spencer snuffed it in a Paris Underpass in 1997 and the resulting hysterical mourning will know this only too well.

The British also don't really have a sense of irony or the absurd, which may come as a surprise to some, but how else to explain people getting excited about a superficial non-entity, fag-end celebrity or Person You're Officially Meant To Feel Sorry For running down the road with a lighted torch? The last time anyone got this collectively excited about flammable objects was during last year's riots. Now that certainly brought the community together.

As I was about to cross the road, all the while wondering if I was going to get arrested for doing so (there were a lot of police about, which makes a change), two of the bicycle outriders collided, with one rider thrown off his bike. He didn't seem too badly hurt, but I didn't want to stick around to see a fight.

While I hurried along, I noticed someone had left a dolly and a pair of sunglasses on the edge of the low-lying wall that surrounds The Lab Building. Even as the crowd chattered loudly amongst itself, I felt an odd sense of melancholy, like something was being lost.

I glimpsed the two bikers cycle past as if nothing had happened.

I managed to get down an empty side street into a secluded avenue of shops before the main spectacle staggered along. That way, at least, I didn't have to see it. In the background, the onlookers sounded like a rowdy funfair full of candy floss-addled 14 year olds while some MC roused the crowd to cheers, despite the torchbearer not even having arrived yet.

The street was comparatively peaceful, though some people were sitting in the coffee shops. I also spotted a fair number of bikers going past as the pedestrianised road had a cycle lane going through the middle of it.

The quiet didn't last long. I saw lots of people run around the corner and past me at speed. They were spectators who couldn't get a good view of the torchbearer and wanted to try their luck up the road, using this backstreet as a shortcut. It was a weird paralell to the run going on nearby.

A little girl was running with her mother. She fell over hard and started crying.

"Oh is it THAT bad?" the mother complained, exasperated as her daughter wept loudly with pain.

Then the mother remembered her priorities. "COME ON! We'll miss it!" The still-sobbing girl limped slowly as she tried to catch up with her mother, who was already running on ahead.

Is it wrong to want to punch someone on the street? No more than wasting huge amounts of money on cheap spectacle and vanity projects for politicians. Other priorities can just go to hell.

I was reminded of what Will Self thought of the 2012 Olympics. They "suck dogshit through a straw", he said. I could only agree.

It seemed like a dreadful waste of a bright sunny day, under the pure azure gleam of a clear summer's sky.

Prometheus - The Film Says What The Movie Does Not Say

Prometheus was a mess; an incoherent, badly structured mush full of appalling characterisation, hilariously bad acting, a criminally squandered Idris Elba, and shoddy dialogue. The latest by Ridley Scott also offers deus ex machina, plot holes the size of a chest-burster's exit wound and a story by some plonker who used to write scripts for Lost (apropos of nothing, one of the shittest shows ever).

In many ways it's a perversely grand achievement. Put simply, someone has effectively remade Inseminoid with a $130 million budget. And if you don't believe me, compare the 'disco impregnation' scene from the former with the caesarean scene from Prometheus. It's laughably bad.

The monsters (as opposed to the aliens) were bloody awful too, rendered with obviously fake CGI and looking very much like props from one of those godawful Alien rip-offs they churned out in the early 80s. (Like, err, Inseminoid.) It hurts to see a once great Ridley Scott make Phantom Menace-levels of arse. And you thought Alien Resurrection had problems...

Even the blatant Alien allusions (like the Ripley-esque sign off at the end) seem a calculated slap across the face, a stinging reminder of what could have been, like a punishment for daring to expect a better experience that this.

That, at least is a review of Prometheus The Movie, as in, the experience Ridley Scott and friends wanted you to have. (For some reason.) Prometheus The Film (as in, the non-corporate, genuinely artistic bits) is a different matter altogether.

So let us deconstruct the film and draw the obvious conclusion: It's really about David the Android, played masterfully by Michael Fassbender, who channels Peter O'Toole via John Le Mesurier. Fassbender endows his character with a depth and soul that eclipses the cardboard cut-outs that pass for the 'real' humans in the film. A complicated, nuanced character, he ends up, by accident, as the real protagonist and, indeed, the only point of reference for the humans watching in the cinema.

Elizabeth Shaw's ridiculous line of dialogue at the end of the film (as opposed to all the others), where she proclaims that there are things that humans know that robots can't, acquires a certain poignancy from this perspective. Because David is the only real 'human' in the film, and the movie realises this. It seems desperate to over-compensate with a single bigoted remark.

There's also a genuine sense of wonder to the film, when Ridley Scott deigns to remind himself that he once knew how to make rousing cinema. The landscape shots, set designs and grandeur of the setting are amazing, though fittingly only David seems to notice this, the child-like delight on his face during the star map scene hinting at what the film could have been.

The aliens – or rather the Space Jockeys - (never mind that ‘Engineers’ bollocks) are impressive too. Understatedly unearthly, and strangely in sync with their surroundings, the Space Jockeys constitute the only other achievement the film manages – you really can imagine them piloting the original ship the doomed crew of the Nostromo encounters in Alien.

But it’s not enough. The film has promise but the movie sucks balls. Why, Idris Elba, WHY?

Still, there is one intriguing possibility. Perhaps the Space Jockeys didn’t create humanity, but rather, they were created from human DNA. If so, by whom?

If David is right and the Space Jockeys destroy life before creating it, then perhaps the true creators of the Space Jockeys took all they wanted from Earth (human DNA), like cosmic jackdaws, then decided to order their servants to purge the rest of the planet prior to colonisation.

The Space Jockey sacrificing himself at the start of the film may have simply been softening up the planet’s gene pool for the final attack… But don’t expect any sequel to have such an intriguing premise. In fact, don’t expect much at all.

FOOTNOTE: It’s worth pointing out that Inseminoid was produced by Sir Run Run Shaw, who redeemed himself by then producing Blade Runner. This was, however, directed by Ridley Scott who directed Alien in the first place and then went on to piss it all away with Prometheus. It’s all rather circular, when you think about it.

FOOTNOTE 2: As the ‘Elizabeth Shaw’ reference suggests, there’s a bit of Doctor Who worship going on here. Though ripping off Inferno and characterisation that would shame RTD is hardly a fitting tribute.

The High Street Dies Softly in North Finchley

Care of the recession, my local high street is dying. For example, here's the message left on the window of what used to be my local branch of GAME:

'Insert Coin to play again' - What used to be North Finchley GAME

You can't fault them for the wit, and besides, I always had good service there, and they even polished some of my slightly scratched CDs and DVDs. (I have a CD player and console which both seem to freak out the moment they detect the tiniest of scratches.) Then the recession happened.

Worst of all, it's really hard to get jobs right now. I've got a whole brace of qualifications and working 'experience' (oh, what a dreadful cliché!), and I'm finding it difficult to get employed after my own redundancy. What are a couple of young workers, whose main on-the-job training was in the dying art of high street retail, going to do now? The Job Centre is never the most enjoyable place to visit, and that's when the recession beast isn't on the loose, making one start having Yosser Hughes flashbacks.

The rest of recession-era Finchley High Street isn't looking too good either. Many shops, restaurants and businesses have either closed down, are closing down or are surreptitiously selling their properties on Estate Agent sites. More jobs lost. The big shock was our local branch of Irish themed boozer O'Neill's. I had discovered it for sale, albeit not too openly, while researching properties near the high street for a martial arts club I belong to. It's the first time I've seen a branded pub close down since the Firkin chain keeled over and died in 2001.

There is, of course, a recession on. (In fact we're now officially in a second recession...) Rents remain over-inflated and symptomatic of a country that's far too dependent on expensive money and over-priced property. But while George Osborne, a history graduate with no sense of history, tries to save the economy by destroying it, and big chains like GAME cut their losses and stave off oblivion (at least for now), there is another big problem, namely parking charges.

These are particularly onerous in the Finchley area. First of all, you can't even use a parking meter yet must instead spend 20 minutes arranging a ticket by telephone. It also costs up to £2.00 an hour for the privilege.

Most people go to the supermarket instead. Colney Hatch Tesco's, after all, has free parking.

Meanwhile, the local high street goes dark. On the other hand, parts of the UK have been experiencing this long before the 2008 recession took hold.

Too Old, Too Cold? Playing older characters in D&D/Pathfinder

I must declare an interest here - I hate the ageing rules in 3.0 and 3.5 D&D, not to mention Pathfinder. Apart from making non-magical characters ever more useless, and giving an unfair advantage to Magic classes, it also makes no sense:

At middle age, -1 to Str/Dex/Con; +1 to Int/Wis/Cha.
At old age, -2 to Str/Dex/Con; +1 to Int/Wis/Cha.
At venerable age, -3 to Str/Dex/Con; +1 to Int/Wis/Cha.

SOURCE: The D20 System Reference Document

After all, characters are not like normal people. They heal quickly with magic, survive things that would kill most people, they come back from the dead (preferably via a Cleric and not a Necromancer) and they are generally larger than life.