John Walker's Electronic House

One of Dexter’s most delightful and infuriating habits is to follow us when we leave the house. While completely independent, and capable of taking care of his own matters outside for hours at a time, he’s also always up for coming on any journey, no matter how inconvenient.

A number of buses have been missed after reaching the end of the road and hearing the jingling of his useless bell. Turning around I’ll see him gambolling along as fast as he can, crying, “I’m coming! Don’t worry!” He’ll not turn back no matter how far you go, so the only choice is to turn around and walk back home, and shut him inside. By which point the bus is a speck on the horizon.

Shorter journeys on foot, such as to the off license near the bus stop, don’t seem worth the hassle. If you’re lucky a scary man will walk near him and he’ll run off, but if not he’ll come all the way, and then trot into the shop with you. Interestingly, people in shops don’t seem to object to a feline customer as they might a canine. The novelty seems to win them over, and Dexter’s meowing complaints at being held, and at his not being allowed to roam free behind the counter to sniff out the finer booze, are interpreted as sweetness.

He is now a recognised patron of the newsagents on our road. Since the monsoons ended, Dex now follows me every time I go there, politely lying down outside the shop door while I buy things. Until he gets bored, starts crying, and then sneaks in and tries to explore. Unlike frantically losing him to catch buses, this is fantastic. The looks you get from passers-by as you walk out the shop, say, “Come on Dex!”, and then have your cat trot behind you as you walk home, are fantastic.

Now, it’s important to note that Dex isn’t like some faithful dog, staying to heel. He’s far too cool for that. It’s essential that he be either a long way behind sniffing something in an independent fashion, or far ahead after scampering to catch up and then lead the way. Should he lose sight of me, he immediately starts whining, but that in no way implies that he needs me at all, no sirree, not one bit.

I’ve taken this to the next step, deliberately taking Dex out for walks now. He’s obviously limited by the reaches of his territory when going on his own expeditions, but with me he can brave farther lands. Today we went for an explore down the road in the opposite direction we’d normally walk, and found some woods to explore. This was excellent, as Dex was immediately able to use all his jungle instincts, and stalk a bush until it was out of breath, then viciously attack it. I climbed a couple of trees while he rushed around chasing bugs and sniffing many new smells. Then he wanted to explore further, and made the rather terrifying discovery of an abandoned chainsaw. I might pop back and recover that later, lest some other small creatures with opposable thumbs stumble upon it.

Being too scared (not that he’d admit it) to be left on his own, getting home again is simple – I only need walk back to the road, and he’ll chicken out and sprint to catch up with me. But I often find myself in the position of a mum with a toddler, having to pretend “I’m going home now and you can stay here forever”, and walking off. Eventually he’ll let out a mighty “MEOW!” then appear around a wall and bound toward me.

Today he also tried to punch a greyhound in the face.

EDIT: Chainsaw recovered, with Dexter getting a second, and much more ethusiastic runaround.

For every person who complains, there’s three more who bitch at me for not posting enough Dex pics. So here’s a bumper collection.

Click on the pictures to see the full set.

Dexter Vs. Toilet Paper

For reasons unknown, Dexter’s list of hated things includes: pens, DS styluses, Spyro The Dragon, bedtime, and toilet rolls. If a toilet roll is ever discovered, it must be destroyed at all costs. We have discovered the bathroom carpetted in shredded paper first thing in the morning after a roll was particularly naughty the previous night. Here a roll that was nearly finished was put in his way.

Dexter Bowling

We often have excellent ideas in this house. The excellent idea the other night was to take our spare microwave onto the patio, and see what happens when we microwave different types of metal. Another excellent idea was Dexter Bowling. Combining his hatred of toilet rolls, along with the ideally suited long, thin downstairs hallway, and his love of chasing Mousey, we struck upon gold. Arrange toilet rolls in the shape of bowling pins, then with Dex at the other end of the hallway, throw Mousey over the rolls, and see how many Dex knocks over.

Dexter Vs. Wil

There’s only a month’s age difference between my nephew, William, and my kitten, Dexter. Wil has the advantage of age, but Dex does appear to be developmentally leaps and bounds ahead. For instance, he can leap and bound. While Wil may be starting to stand up without holding on, Dexter has been climbing curtains and catching butterflies in midair since he was about three months. I concede that Wil’s rudimentary speech is more than the cat can manage, but when it comes to climbing stairs, it’s really no contest.

It was interesting seeing Dex’s reaction to Wil. He wasn’t regular human-sized, so his first thought was that he must be a toy of some sort. But then suddenly the toy started moving with autonomy, and Dex freaked out. This meant there had to be more careful study, and a much more cautious approach. On the stairs, Dexter quickly realised he had the advantage, first running away, but then soon getting bored of waiting for Wil to catch up. Wil won him over eventually when discovering Dexter’s treat box. It’s fair to say that Wil recognised it more as a rattle – a sound which Dexter associates with the impending arrival of a treat – leading to some investigative confusion. In the end, I’d call it a draw.

Also, to stop the endless, ghastly whining of Stuart “I Don’t Know How To Use Bookmarks” Campbell, there’s now a link to Dex pics on the right.

I would like to begin by saying that I’m in no way suggesting that Paula Abdul has a painkiller addiction. To do so would be a terrible accusation, and one I couldn’t even consider making.

Interestingly, she exhibits so many of the behaviours of someone with a painkiller addiction, despite definitely not having one at all. She has permanent pain in her spine, which is totally real and from dance injuries, and not the classic psychosomatic pain exhibited by those with a painkiller addiction. And all that strange behaviour we’ve seen, and the loss of sleep, and the crashing, and the freaking out, and the sudden moments of super-crazy hyper behaviour – you could totally put them down to being addicted to opiates. But that would be wrong, because the cause of the problem is that her adrenal gland has stopped working.

Fortunately there are doctors on hand to take vast amounts of her money (surely, “help her in all situations”? – Ed) for the fourteen operations that have been performed on her neck, despite the problem only getting worse. They’re not worried about her having a painkiller addiction, because they know it’s the glands, and then a quick MRI will confirm the neck’s still being naughty.

It’s a really good job that Paula Abdul doesn’t have a painkiller addiction, because if she did it would mean that her vast staff, and all the doctors and therapists she sees (“let’s work with the muscle energies”), were despicably irresponsible human beings who were ignoring the real problem in favour of continuing to receive money from her. Thank goodness that definitely isn’t the case.

Old, old, old (from Friday), but totally amazing.

He is made of rubber bands. I hope he gets credit for landing the 720.

I saw Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan in Cardiff last night. I strongly suspect Lanegan might have the best voice in the universe, pipping Nick Cave, Howe Gelb and M Ward at the post.

What he doesn’t have is stage presence. I’m not sure that I care all that much. He spoke not a word all night, barely nodding at the audience, and leaving with an embarrassed wave as he turned to walk off stage. He did, however, sing splendidly. Isobel Campbell was slightly more chatty, though no less bored looking, mostly talking to explain that she’d screwed something up, such as her stylophone solo. But this was as nothing to her giving up on a song halfway through after failing to hit half the notes. She has perhaps two years left before she smokes her voice away completely, which will be a sad loss.

Despite this, and perhaps testament to the quality of the songs, and especially Lanegan’s growling, bluesy voice, it was still an excellent gig. Almost destroying it completely at the start was the realisation that the strings were on tape, which seemed to cause everyone else on stage to play in a tired, mundane fashion. Once Campbell was on her cello, and the steel guitar was in force, things much improved, everyone seeming to wake up considerably.

By far the best thing was the strength of the new material. They’re recording a new album together, and the songs last night were a step forward from last year’s already excellent album. The new stuff has lost the last remnants of the Belle & Sebastian influences, and replaced them with a much deeper, instrumental maturity. Out with the fey, in with the growl.

At first glance, and perhaps second, third and fourth, it’s impossible to see Dungeon Runners as anything other than a derivative of World of Warcraft. The completely free (well, we’ll come to that in a bit) MMO seems to be going out of its way to ape the 9 million selling behemoth. Everything – from the fonts used to the colour-coding of the drops to the quest window design – appears to be designed to be familiar. However, with comparatively shoddy graphics, jagged controls, and an immediately obvious miniscule scale, this all seems to be shooting itself in the level 23 boot.

That’s until you play it for a bit. At the fifth glance, Dungeon Runners is, against all likelihood, a spoof of the MMO genre. NC Soft, one of the big players in the online world with City of Heroes, Lineage and the forthcoming Tabula Rasa, are taking a cheeky dig at the trend that’s brought them riches. And oddly, it works.

Hooray for free! I really rather like this game, and not despite, but because of how derivative it is. Also because it’s taking the piss.

Oh deary me – it’s not a good time for the hagged old sitcom. With Scrubs entering what must be its final season, soon there will only be How I Met Your Mother representing a genre that was once ruling the world. It turns out that churning out derivative copycat crapola year after year isn’t the perfect recipe for success, and this September’s batch of new shows will be doing nothing to help.

Cavemen – ABC

Gathering itself a great deal of attention for being based on a series of commercials for US insurers, Geiko, this is the face of corporate arrogance. “These 30 second adverts are popular with the viewers – this means a 21 minute sitcom can only work.” Yup Mr Executive, turns out what’s funny for half a minute can somewhat lose its charm when made 42 times longer. Per episode. In fact, it can become downright offensive.

The schtick is such: cavemen still exist today, and are treated as second class citizens by a prejudiced public. The commercials were based on the stereotypes others had for cavemen, and the presumptions they would make about them. This new TV show is apparently based on the stereotypes others have for black people, and the presumptions they would make about them.

It’s quite foul from the very start. We’re first treated to a laugh free opener seeing the three starring cavemen (all white) complaining about their representation on television. Well, two of them are, the other one enjoying seeing the stereotyped wacky weatherman. He’s the stupid one, see. It’s established immediately that there’s literally nothing differentiating cavemen from the rest of white middle-class society, but for their buldged foreheads and hirsute bodies. Why? Because they’re white guys with some make-up on, in a show written by white guys, in what they appear to think is a cutting commentary on our still-segregated society. This episode, due to be shown about five episodes in when they’re broadcast (please, don’t let it last that long) tells of how one of the cavemen, engaged to a pretty white girl, is trying to seek the approval of her father. This involves the three of them attending an upper-class barbeque held by the girl’s family, with hilarious consequences.

They are not welcome, refused entry by the guard on the gate, ignored by most, talked to like scum, and seen as the object of a sexual thrill by a girl who has heard rumours about their sexual abilities. The bbq is at a golf club. DO YOU SEE? DO YOU? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Except, this heavy-handed attempt at a racial analogy is somehow too much for its caucasian writing team. One of the cavemen can dance really well, and credits this to his appearing on Soul Train. Another drinks too much and demonstrates his prowess at sports. The third, through a series of farcial accidents, finds himself stood in a fire, holding a burning stick, shirt torn, and roaring at the crowd. They all, unwittingly, live up to their stereotypes, as if it’s just impossible for them to avoid them. It is, in fact, about the most disgustingly racist concept imaginable. And impressively, at two extremes. It begins so desperately trying to show that ‘cavemen’ are so regular and just like, um, white middle-class people, that they live exactly as white middle-class people live. See – no prejudice here! And then it swoops wildly to the other end, announcing that despite everything, in the end they just can’t help but be the savages they truly are.

Oh, and the only black person who appears in the episode is working behind the bar at the golf club. Smooth.

That, and it’s miserably unfunny.

Aliens In America – the CW

Thank goodness the CW have Reaper, because this isn’t going to pull them out their scripted mire. I should probably say I only got about halfway into this, and couldn’t carry on. It begins explaining how the show’s central star sometimes feels a bit like an alien in school, outcast and getting in trouble, blah blah blah. If only all the outcast kids from American TV shows got together, they’d have a gang that could take on the jocks.

But, twist time! The family decide to take on a foreign exchange student, recommended it by a school counsellor as a means for straightening out their son. The mother fantasises of having a young, tall blonde Swede (presumably this is her desire to perform statuatory rapes), while the father likes the amount of money they’ll receive for this. And then they went to the airport to pick up their new family member, but SHOCK! He’s Pakistani! GASP! The family splutter in horror, and the Pakistani guy smiles and tips his head and then fixes some wires in Johnny 5.

And that was enough. Because this was going to go in two directions. Either it was going to be about the wacky differences between the two cultures, or it was going to be teaching us all valuable life lessons that not everyone from the Middle East is a terrorist. Or most likely, a sickening, patronising combination of the two. Not being someone predisposed to hate Pakistanis, the programme’s faux shock at such a human didn’t really click with me. I’ll finish it at some point. And I’ll be right.

The Bill Engvall Show – TBS

Another pilot I couldn’t complete (along with the Sarah Connor Chronicles, for a future post), I couldn’t work out what this was meant to be. Starting last week on TBS, I didn’t know what to expect. They are the channel that offers the completely adorable My Boys (due to start season 2 on Monday!), but also the hateful 10 Items Or Less (FEWER, YOU DIPSHITS, FEWER). This falls into neither category, but instead manages to be the distillation of every mediocre sitcom, refined into purest mediocrity. It was apparently about nothing. A family, with two parents, three kids, a sitcom house with a breakfast bar dividing the kitchen from the living room (what ever happened to two-way hinged swinging doors, sitcom designers?) and a story about the kids Just Being Kids! The older daughter wants her belly button pierced – uh-oh! This prompts Engvall to go off into some half-arsed stand up material about Kids These Days, awkwardly delivered sat at the dining table. And there I gave up. Maybe in the second half something interesting happened, like he slaughtered all his family with a lathe and then painted the stairs with their blood. Somehow, instead I think some life lessons we’re probably learned, and father and daughter got that little bit closer.

The Big Bang Theory – CBS

James Burrows’ latest work is a difficult one to pin down. In some ways it’s very traditional, open sets, attrocious canned laughter (although this is hopefully because it’s the pilot), and lit by floodlights. In other ways it’s going to some new places, putting two uber-geeks in the lead roles, and opening with masturbation jokes. Not subtle ones like How I Met Your Mother would do now, or Seinfeld once did, but the two guys in a sperm clinic, discussing the cups they ejaculated into.

They come home to find a pretty girl has moved into the apartment across the hall, and wouldn’t you know it, they just don’t know how to talk to girls. So yes – geeks and girls. Not original. The material – more so. I laughed a few times, surprising myself. This is mostly thanks to the stregnths of the two main stars, sitcom stalwart Johnny Galecki (David from Roseanne) and some guy who’s not done much called Jim Parsons. They play off each other well (this is the second attempt filming this pilot, so presumably they’ve had some practise), and that chemistry works. It’s not helped by the peculiar decision to throw in two more scientist geeks halfway through for seemingly no reason, especially when one of them’s Simon Helberg – Studio 60’s weakest link, sporting the same infuriating haircut. I think what makes it work is the lack of fanfare over visual gags – something sitcom genius Burrows had forgotten how to do for the last few years, not least with last year’s awful The Class. Here, when the pair come back from visiting their new neighbour’s bully ex-boyfriend with no trousers on, rather than everyone shrieking in horror (please try not to remember Friends’ worst episode, when Ross can’t get his leather trousers back on in his date’s bathroom – one of the all-time least funny scenes in anything ever, including The Sorrow And The Pity) everyone immediately understands what happened – because it’s obvious – and carries on.

It’s the most hopeful, but that’s not the highest accolade from this collection. “Funnier than Cavemen!” – there’s a quote for the DVD release.

Shorter posts to stop scaring the timid of mind.

Pilot season is upon us. I’m able to see them because either I’m a professional TV critic who gets sent the preair discs, a psychic with extraordinary premonition, or a time traveller from the future coming back to tell you what I saw next September. Whichever convinces you most.

Chuck – ABC

It seems the flavour of the new season is the heroic geek. Could this possibly be a reaction to Hiro and Heroes? Well yes, clearly. Chuck is the improbable tale of Zachary Levi’s geek-if-you-squint Chuck, who is, by reasons too stupid to explain, filled with all the secrets of the US government. Every part of it. Such that he’s pursued by the CIA and the NSA, who are chasing each other, while Chuck tries to maintain his regular life working at Buy More – a fictional Walmart – specifically in the Nerd Herd computer tech support area. The two after him are relative unknown Yvonne Strzechowski as a pleasantly traditional gorgeous-chick-cum-ninja, and Adam “Jayne off-of Firefly” Baldwin as Mr Shoot First Agent Type.

It’s a daft premise, and it’s unclear exactly where it will go. He’s got all these secrets in his head, which will presumably be out of date within a few minutes. It’s also entirely unexplained how he knows where a bomb is going to be, but nice that he saves the day through some dubious geekery, beating the super-high-class governmental knowledge. But what next? They agents are now in his life, but how does knowing lots of stuff lead into a weekly series of adventures? A good cast and some fun writing gives it a chance, but I tip this one to suffer from the Adam Baldwin Curse of Cancellation, by episode six.

Reaper – CW

It’s impossible to discuss this pilot without spoiling an early reveal. Indeed, read anything about this show and it will tell you this, but it was still fun to watch it not knowing the full premise. So read ahead if you don’t mind reading what you’ll hear everywhere about this.

Sam (Bret Harrison, Grounded For Life) is a 21 year old who works at… guess where? A geeky fictional store, this time called The Work Bench. His life is in a rut, having dropped out of college because “it made [him] sleepy”. Things change slightly once he meets the Devil (super-smooth Ray Wise), and eventually finds out from his parents that before he was born they, well, sold his soul to Satan. Come his 21st birthday, he belongs to the Devil.

It is, again, a premise beyond reason. But joyfully, Reaper knows this. It revels in it. Sam’s new job is to act as a bounty hunter for Mr Beelzebub, rounding up Hell’s escapees with his newfound abilities. The pilot has him, and his workplace buddies (mostly Tyler Labine’s ‘Sock’) trying to capture an arsonist, burning buildings all over town.

It is just brilliant. “Sam, I’m not a carjacker,” says Wise from the back seat of Sam’s car. He pats him reassuringly on the shoulder. “I’m the Devil.” All the way through the dialogue is spot on, and everyone plays it perfectly. There’s a very Whedon-esque feel to the banter, and in a show about sending back various creatures to Hell, this could obviously be problematic. But it steers clear of too much comparison, clearly aiming for the laugh-out-loud gags over the emotional sensitivity and relationship drama that made up so much of Buffy. And it hits those gags. I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud so many times in a 42 minute drama. ‘Sock’ could have been a hateful character, overplayed and “wacky”. But Labine nails it. He could so easily have been pegged as the sci-fi nerd, or the computer geek, or the overweight anti-jock, but instead it’s hard to categorise him, sitting in the position of that one guy who’s funny, over-loud, rude and liked. Alongside Harrison’s bemused straight man, seeing him come charging down the aisles of The Work Bench, chasing after a pack of dogs, armed with a leaf blower that he’s revving menacingly, is very, very funny.

There’s no fear of where this will go – only that it won’t get a chance to go there in the random mid-season cullings. Each week Sam will get a new hellspawn to round up, and a new device with which to do it (the pilot sees him armed with a Dirt Devil handheld vacuum cleaner). There’s a love interest, a goofy gang, and the fun of hiding it all from his parents. Plus, none of them are in school, none of them should be living with their parents, and best of all, when Sam hurts Sock’s feelings, this is solved with a quick apology and immediate fun, rather than the ten minutes of teenage whining that early Buffy would have offered. It’s not as clever or precise as Whedon’s work, but it’s a damned fine lite version.

Hey Paula – Bravo

Following celebrities with cameras is hit and miss. You can get great hits like Kathy Griffin’s My Life on the D List. And you can get
unwatchable horror. And sometimes you get great horror.

Having seen a clip from the show on YouTube, I knew it had to be watched. With fingers interlaced over my eyes. I don’t care about her at all, neither her career or her private life. But I do find watching someone go insane on camera to be hugely entertaining. The mentally ill are sometimes funny. Paula Abdul certainly is.

Bravo are especially cruel with this, getting Paula to narrate the show herself on tape. So we get to watch her, clearly off her face, barely able to speak or stand up, and then have her calmly narrate that she was very tired and hadn’t eaten. When she spazzes out because her assistants brought the wrong colour shoes to wear on the plane, we get to see her explaining how important it is for her equipment to be correct. Her complete lack of shame or awareness of her appalling behaviour doubles up the horror.

When she accepts her award at a VH1 fashion show, she can barely speak, rambling insanely, while her publicist tells us how incredibly strong she is. The next day, due to do interviews for Fox affiliates, she’s apparently “not slept”. By the time she’s halfway through the interviews, she’s gone completely mad, babbling about dancing and shouting at random. When asked where she is, she replies on air, with no air of confusion, “I don’t know.” Her team frantically explain to the camera how she is missing sleep, while she can barely sit on a chair.

By episode 3 the team finally realises that perhaps their little diva isn’t just overly sleepy, what with the entire American media pointing it out to them. Then we get to see her production team trying to fix it. Meanwhile Paula continues to narrate with no sense of reality. She’s due to receive the woman of the year award from somewhere, but she can’t enjoy it because the “accusation of me being drunk and drugged up on television has made me seriously sad and maddened.”

It should be so horrifying it’s unenjoyable. However, I’m a sick enough puppy to find plenty to enjoy here. Not least of all her declaration that,

“I’m tired of people not treating me like the gift that I am.”

Deeply peculiar news story, following on from the debacle I mentioned would get bigger and stupider back in March. Channel 4 are being forced to investigate claims that Bear Grylls’ Man Vs Wild is faked. Something I mentioned a couple of days back.

I had no idea it was also shown on Channel 4 – normally Discovery crossovers go to the Beeb. Apparently called “Born Survivor” in this isle, the list of complaints an alleged crew member took to the Sunday Times are nothing more than the information that’s been in the public domain for a long time, and listed on the Wikipedia page about the show.

Channel 4 are responding by saying they’ll investigate, but also making the rather silly claim: “The programme explicitly does not claim that presenter Bear Grylls’ experience is one of unaided solo survival.” Except of course, it explicitly does, with each episode beginning with Grylls’ announcement that, “I won’t have much with me. Just a knife, a water bottle, and a flint to make fire. A camera crew will follow me every step of the way.” In a couple of later episodes he points out that the crew will not become involved unless he’s in danger of death.

The point remains, it doesn’t matter. Of course it’s not real – it cannot be. It’s simply impossible, unless all his remarkable feats are also possible while carrying expensive and heavy camera equipment, along with all the necessary spare tapes and dozens of replacement batteries. And of course, if that were the case, they should flipping well be filming the camera guy, and not pussy Grylls and his empty pockets.

What’s most frustrating is the lack of effort by anyone in this “news” story. That no one at either the Sunday Times or the BBC bothered to read the Wiki entry before pontificating is humiliating. What’s even more annoying is that they never will, and the story will only ever have begun here.

Hey though – you got the exclusive here, newshounds.