John Walker's Electronic House

Despite all my anti-spam measures, they’re still pouring in. But in the weirdest way.

I use a plugin that closes comments down on posts after about 30 days or so. This is supposed to stop the other useless spam trick where they post eight million comments to something a year old because you won’t notice (and nor will anyone reading, surely?). But here’s the weird thing: the spam is now all arriving on those posts.

HOW?

How are these evil bumfaces able to post comments to entries with no comments field? And how can I stop this tyranny?

Help me vanquish this foe.

EDIT: On the offchance that I have any avidly commenting blind readers, I’m going to switch off the comment code thing, and see how Spam Karma does on its own.

Well, this is terribly immodest, but when recently watching a programme on close up magic, I suddenly realised how this trick could be done, and had a go.

Spam comments have been picking up again of late, so much so that even if anyone were to genuinely mean, “This post is on target, keep it up,” I’d delete it without pause.

But hopefully that will now be thwarted with the human checkeriser I’ve just installed. It should now ask for a code before it will let you post a comment. If anyone has any problems, give it a test. I’m even going to switch off the comment authorisation, so if you’re one of those people who seems to constantly change their IP or email details each time they post, it should let you through straight away.

Hey, give it a go.

I’ve realised what the problem has been with me and music this year. Everyone likes the rubbish. Totally ignored in all the lists (and I don’t want to hear about the ones that include them, as it will only spoil my rant) are some of the best albums of 2006. And because I thought of putting in YouTube links before I saw Kieron had done it, I’m doing it too, but totally not copying, so there.

1. Some By Sea

And absolutely beautiful album that finds a midpoint between the fictional genre of post-chamber music and the all too real one of pop. Cellos and violins swell through each track, underlining Chris Du Bray’s gorgeous voice, as he meanders through melancholy poems. The sad news is the band have broken up. The happy news is Du Bray has started a new one called Ghosts & Liars, featuring other SBS members, and a similar, if slightly poppier sound.

MySpace

2. Bishop Allen

The Christian Rudder-containing band did something excellent last year: they released an EP every month (August’s being a complete live show). Even better, each was wonderful, serving as an audio diary of the titular month. There’s little better than a favourite band offering brand new music once a month. Completely independent, they did this without losing money to a record label, selling the EPs through their own site, hand posting each one. And at $5 a go, it was a cheap way to get 44 new songs and a live show in one year. Highlights include February’s Queen of the Rummage Sale, January’s wonderful Corazon, and June’s incredibly happy The Light of the Lost, especially it’s ULTRO-FAST guitar solo. They’re all available at the band’s site, along with a few free mp3s.

Official Site

3. Howe Gelb – ‘Sno Angel Like You

The former Giant Sands singer is endlessly brilliant, and never discussed. With the exception of Tom, thank goodness, who let me know about the new album. On ‘Sno Angel his leathery voice is given a surprisingly complimentary boost by a gospel choir (Voices of Praise). But I Did Not (featured on the MySpace page) probably does the best job of combining what everyone already loved about Gelb with the Gospel sound, but it’s Howlin’ A Gale and Worried Spirits that give you brand new things to love about him. If churches sounded like, it would only be the Christians not turning up on Sunday mornings.

MySpace

4. Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Ballad of Broken Seas

Mark Lanegan is one of the few survivors of the 90s Seattle Sound, former lead singer of the Screaming Trees, and occasional member of Queens of the Stone Age. Isobel Campbell sings the even girlier bits on Belle & Sebastian records. So obviously they’re the ideal match! Except, of course, they are. Lanegan’s voice has found a surly depth that matches Gelb’s, and even Cave’s, while Campbell’s whimsical floating instrumental voice is as pure and perfect as ever. The two meet in the middle in a folky sound of broken ballads (a phrase I used entirely without remembering the name of the album – what a good choice of name), that reminds of Nick Cave’s most gentle outings (even sharing the lyric “We fucked up the Sun” with Cave’s A Boatman’s Call). Cellos ensure all remains sombre, creating images of barren desert towns and broken whiskey bottles. Oddly the single, Rambling Man (video below), is almost entirely unrepresentative of the album, and probably the weakest track. It sounds far too much like a missed attempt to be Tom Waits, and not nearly enough like the album they were otherwise recording. Far better would be the grown up lullaby of Deus Ibi Est, where Campbell’s accompaniment plays a game of chase with Lanegan’s defiant and bold invitation for her to “come walk with me”, occasionally catching up, and sometimes taking the lead.

Campbell’s MySpace with two album tracks
Deeply odd YouTube video of Rambling Man

6. Mellowdrone – Box

Surely it’s not forgotten because it came out on the 22nd January 2006? Surely not forgotten because people missed its joyful brilliance? Imagine if OK Go! weren’t held back by accidentally becoming a novelty video band, then rock it up a bit. There’s a 90s feel about the vocals, but not so much you want to go and write a bloody comic about it or something. It’s modern enough to be relevant, and wry enough to be worth attention. The album bounces out of the gate with Oh My, which escalates as it progresses, and then suddenly becomes the Cure for about five seconds, before sniggering at itself and getting back on with bouncing. “Oh my what a wonderful day!” is exactly how albums should start but never do. Four Leaf Clover wins special attention for wonderful use of the word “behooves”. What I like best is that it’s the first album since Ani Difranco’s Little Plastic Castle where each song sounds like it should have been the first single, but no, this one, no wait, the next one, no, hang on, wait, all of them! Having beautifully abandoned their record label, the band are now making their money by touring. However, just before they did squeeze one video out.

YouTube
MySpace

7. Regina Spektor – Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories

The Most Mainstream Of Mainstream People started noticing Regina Spektor this year, and she even hit top 10 lists with her lovely new album, Begin To Hope. However, when compared with her previous Soviet Kitsch, (with the exception of three exceptional songs) it suddenly sounds like Tori Amos. ARRGGGHHH! Fortunately the very beginning of the year contained the splendidly named Mary Ann… a sort of Bits And Bobs Of, containing some tracks from Soviet Kitsch, and some other leftover pieces that retain minimalistic nature of her pre-Begin To Hope sound. Mary Ann replaces the lonely piano with an equally isolated double bass, but there’s nothing more wonderful than Consequence of Sound, even with its ear-hurting interrupting scales. One of my songs of the year.

MySpace

1. Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip

Studio 60 suffers in people’s critical minds thanks to expectations set so very, very high. Any mistake the programme makes pulls it down from the perfection demanded. It’s like dropping a few pieces of gravel in a tray of precious jewels. Easily spotted because they don’t sparkle, it’s all people can focus on, ignoring the riches all around.

I do the same. I hesitated to choose this for number one for no good reason. What else am I going to put here? Superheroes? Spaceships? In honest comparison, Studio 60 stands out from an excellent year of television, with the finest writing on screen, accompanied by equally strong acting. Yes, the sketches suck. (Oddly, they weren’t so bad when the tirade against them began, but troublingly they’ve become increasingly poor as the series progresses. When watching an episode in which a huge hook is the desperate race to write a replacement sketch for the end of the show, the expected brilliance is not the cast’s spitting water in each other’s faces). But this is the gravel. All around is a joyously intelligent production. I still have worries, and I still believe there’s something significant missing (but can’t put my finger on what), and most of all I want a reason to care about the love interests.

It’s too easy to forget how magnificent it is between episodes, until you see that a new one has been broadcast and run through walls to watch it.

2. Dexter

Never has there been a more gruesome opening title sequence. It’s only fitting for a programme about a sociopathic serial killer/blood spatter forensic officer, who is either working in repulsive crime scenes, or creating his own. Except the titles simply show Dexter having breakfast and getting ready for work. Close-ups of a grapefruit being squeezed have never been so stomach churning.

Perhaps the knife-point psychology of Dexter doesn’t survive too much scrutiny. For all his narrative exposition of his emotionless state, he’s remarkably emotionally driven. However, perhaps that’s simply more realistic. Just because the narrator says it, doesn’t make it true. The first twelve-episode series has concluded, superbly, but it’s unfair to discuss it as Channel 4 haven’t even noticed it yet, let alone started showing it on random days at random times in the wrong order. But who would ever have guessed that the Ice Truck Killer was an alien!?!

Another twelve episodes are on the way, which is a great relief. Not only for the further opportunities to stare at Dexter’s sister’s excellent eyes. What a splendidly disturbing and emotionally conflicting series it was, asking you to not only cheer on the murderer, but fall in love with him completely. And it’s a rare example of something incredibly good receiving the attention it deserves. Showtime broke their ratings records once a week with each new episode.

3. Heroes

The little superheroes that could. I knew this was going to be great, in the face of all the stupid wrongheaded people I know. Especially Ste. I am best. NBC demolished the pilot, rendering the beginning of the second episode utter gibberish. This only made the deliberate lack of continuity within the second episode all the more confusing. However, once the idiotdust settled, everything slotted into place.

I’m surprised by the number of people who hate Peter. His character – deliberately weedy and underwhelming – is not nearly as garish as others have suggested, and the potential for his powers is exciting. (Conscious again that BBC2 haven’t started showing this yet, I’m avoiding spoiling anything). And anyone who didn’t like the Cheerleader is a buffoon, Graham. She is great. Fortunately everyone in the universe loves time-stopping Hiro, as well they should.

Now in the middle of its agonising two month hiatus, all the rumours that the first chunk of episodes would be a self-contained arc were LIES! LIES! There’s no programme that has me moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen to check how much time is left, hoping for ages and ages, quite like this one.

4. The Lost Room

There’s a key that can open any door. The doors it opens always lead into the same motel room. Then think of a door anywhere in the world, open the motel room door, and you’re there. Door-to-door travel. It’s a powerful object, and there’s a lot of people after it. The key falls into the hands of a cop, who through a string of events (after discovering the room “resets” each time the door is closed) loses his young daughter in the room. So there’s some motive to find a way to get her back.

There are, it turns out, about one hundred such Objects, each imbued with a unique power. Some are excellent, like a pair of glasses that resist all combustion. Some are rubbish, like the wristwatch that hard boils eggs. And there’s a number of hidden cabals, all fighting to recover or destroy the Objects for their own reasons.

Shown on the Sci-Fi Channel in the US in December (and infuriatingly advertised through every episode of Battlestar with stupid giant graphics – but dammit, it seems to have worked) The Lost Room was three one and a half hour episodes, forming a self-contained mini-series. While the first half hour of the first part is a garbled mess of exposition and rushed character establishment (sometimes so rushed they forget to provide motivation), it then slots into its groove and is away. There’s something especially potent about the most ordinary objects being dangerously powerful. The programme taps into the same brilliant vein that Stephen King found when he was great, taking the mundane, everyday objects in our lives, and making them sinister. There are certainly vibes of Needful Things, especially with the strange obsessive nature of those who’ve possessed an Object for some time. Certainly hokum, it’s great because rather than the oh-so fashionable trend of saying, “We’ve got these amazing powers – let’s never, ever use them so we appear sophisticated”, The Lost Room constantly uses everything, all the time, non-stop for four and a half hours. If it’s fun to teleport someone to a remote town in Mexico with a magic bus ticket, then it’s fun to do it twenty times for increasingly good reasons. Sure, you’ll get sick of the main character saying, “I’m looking for my daughter. She disappeared into that ROOM!”, and having every baddie touched by the tragedy, but meh, who cares? This is proper magical fun, unafraid to embrace nonsense, and constantly delivering on all the reasons you ever enjoyed an episode of The Outer Limits.

5. Battlestar Galactica

Whether the big red reset button was a good idea or not has become somewhat academic. But what a splendid collection of episodes kicked off series three. It’s a shame that the momentum was clearly never going to last, and while on-board machinations can be just as gripping as planet-based terrorism, the last couple before the break found themselves back in scrappy territory. But let’s not moan, as series three has been some of the greatest sci-fi ever made, and the Cylon stories are becoming increasingly fascinating. Especially each time Dean Stockwell appears.

6. Ugly Betty

That a programme as wonderful as Ugly Betty can come sixth shows what a brilliant year it’s been for square eyes. Every single episode has been a thing of utter joy, grabbing one handful of fairytale and the other handful of happy endings from 80s movies, and merrily combining them in an explosion of colour and pursed lips. The staff of the fashion magazine for which poor, plain Betty works, are obstensibly the baddies. But rather than be so tiresomely simple, instead it makes every one of them fantastically fun to encounter, and through Betty’s eyes, people to try and like. The stand-out character so far is Amanda, cruel and jealous (of everyone), she’s also adorable. I’ve never seen better facial expressions on a person. And what is it JimFromNeighbours is up to, eh? Oh good grief, I love this show so much.

7. House

Who knew this could last three seasons? And further, who amongst those people knew it would be consistently better with each new year? If it’s you, you win a prize! That prize is lupas.

The main concern was that they’d run out of medical mysteries for the team to explore. That, so far, doesn’t seem to be a problem, although this may be more to do with the patients having taken a backseat to the increasingly tormented life of Gregory House. The season three arc has been the most compelling so far, reaching a stunning high/low point with the amazingly depressing Christmas special.

The reason House is great is not because of sophisticated writing, or an especially stunning cast. (BillyFromNeighbours’ gurning has yet to evolve into anything resembling acting). It’s because it knows its limits, and has a hell of a lot of fun down there. Hugh Laurie is nonstop perfect as House, wry and hilarious, while impressively tortured, while all around the script, cast and patients provide walls for him to bounce his ball against. It’s nonsense, like awful programmes like CSI are nonsense, but the key difference is House knows it, and is brilliant at being nonsense.

8. Scrubs

Forgot this one! How Scrubs manages to keep the quality for so long is a mystery, but if the first three episodes of season six are an indication, it’s still being maintained. Season five was a complete joy from start to finish, seeing a lot of the characters mature with Carla’s pregnancy. And JD not mature in the slightest, which is how it should be. A lot more interesting stories for Cox was an excellent idea, and while there wasn’t an episode that matched the return of Cox’s brother in law, or the sitcom, it was still a magnificent season.

9. Bones

I enjoy Bones far more than I know I should. The ensemble cast are brilliant, and the stories so daft and entertaining. Every now and then there’s an episode of agonising dreadfulness (for example, the recent Blair Witch rip-off, that at no point acknowledged the film it was wholesale stealing in such a peculiarly blatent way, but instead made constant comparisons to other horror movies with which it had nothing in common), but most of the time this is perfect entertainment television. Undemanding, but very funny, and with all the fun of the murder mystery fair.

10. Drawn Together

The third series has so far been more shocking than I could have hoped for. Horrifically offensive, and consistently hilarious, the cartoon “reality show” is a series with infinite sources to mock. Only topped by Wonder Showzen for on-screen offense, it is, unlike the MTV show, possible to watch without putting your fingers over your eyes and feeling your childhood dying of cancer. (I’ve not seen the new season of Wonder Showzen, hence its not being included in this list).

11. South Park

I had completely dropped out of South Park, until, like so many, the Scientology episode. The following season 10, from the death of Chef to Cartman’s epic adventures after freezing himself to try and pass the time before the Wii was released, has been stunning. The World of Warcraft episode did what nothing else on television can do – understood a videogame and presented it mostly accurately – and even the season’s duffer, Satan’s birthday party, was pretty funny. The speed with which the show can respond to world events and have them appropriately satirised is a key strength, from Muhammad cartoons to 9/11 conspiracies. Then there’s the remarkable brutality of the paedophile teacher episode, or the aching cruelty of the sports movie parody that finished the series.

Also Rans

How I Met Your Mother has been mostly delightful, and certainly the only sitcom I can currently be bothered to watch. Help Me Help You lost its way after, well, episode one, and despite a couple of high points since (most significantly when Inger met her WoW guild friends in real life), has mostly wallowed in mediocrity. Family Guy has been funny, if nothing to immediately rush off and talk about as it has been in the past. Jericho has been the worst programme I’ve ever looked forward to watching every week. My Name Is Earl carries on with the same excellent writing and beautiful filming, but is in extreme danger of disappearing up its own bumhole with the increasingly patronising “messages” our moustachioed Scientologist friend seems to want to impart. And Scrubs has only just started, but is looking like it’s every bit as wonderful as ever before. A few more episodes in, and it would have definitely been on the above list.

1. Good Night, And Good Luck

Clooney is too good for people to feel comfortable recognising quite how good he is. Everyone seems to think that they should be careful not to make a mistake and credit someone so mainstream and popular. But he’s without doubt one of the finest actors to have lived, and rapidly becoming one of the best directors working today. Good Night, And Good Luck is astonishingly good, deeply subtle and exquisitely performed.

1. Pan’s Labyrinth
2. The Fountain
3. Idiocracy
4. Thank You For Smoking
5. Half Nelson
6. Little Miss Sunshine
7. Casino Royale

As I started to think about my top 10 albums of this year it occurred to me that 2006 hasn’t been a music year at all. 2006 has been a TV year. I haven’t had a TV year in a while, and as ever I’m not even sure if the television in our front room is plugged into an aerial. Yet, despite this, via (entirely legal, obviously) magic, lots of television has reached me, and it’s been awfully good.

Music’s still played a big part, but then when I try to think further about why I’ve consumed so little, I realise it’s radio. Again, I don’t even own a radio with a dial on it any more (that’s not strictly true – I own about five, but I couldn’t tell you exactly where any of them are right now). Radio is made of internet juice now, each station kindly parceling up anything I might wish to hear and letting me tune in when it’s appropriate. There’s the radio in our magic kitchen of course, only capable of producing the Archers or Any Answers (I went into the kitchen yesterday at what I’d have sworn oaths was about 8.30pm, and heard the stinking farming nonsense, and emerged to find it was now 7.12pm), and if Radio 4 were to ever make a decent comedy programme again, I’d listen to it. But it’s archives that have consumed my year. Perhaps I’m slightly demented in my obsession, but when discovering something I like, I voraciously consume it. When that something I like has years’ worth of archives containing thousands of episodes, I’m in trouble. So 2006 has been a Loveline year. (It’s good to know I’m taking a healthy break at the moment, having discovered limited archives of Nick Abbot from the late 90s, and that he’s back on the radio after a four year break and doing a weekly show).

I don’t feel in a position to make a top 10/12/453 albums list this year. It turns out the majority of what I’ve been listening to most is from The Past (from last year’s Separation Sunday by The Hold Steady to the 1960’s Best of Blood Sweat & Tears). However, there’s plenty to say about TV, a little bit to say about film (I’m not sure if I’ve been to the cinema five times in the last year), and every now and then I’ve played the odd computer game.

Everyone in the entire world, with the single exception of me, is STUPID. And I’ve had enough. If you all don’t stop it right away, I’m going to start killing you.

First of all, this has really pissed me off. Originally announced in May, and included in the year’s round-up of things the BBC website staff didn’t know (I’m still looking forward to the appearance of the correct use of “its” and “it’s”), it’s SOMETHING I FIGURED OUT WHEN I WAS A CHILD. All these pathetic questions that people ask rhetorically when trying to announce the unanswerable nature of life’s mysteries make me so damn cross. There’s not a single one in common use for which the answer isn’t perfectly obvious and easily discovered. “Why is grass green?!” Because chlorophyll doesn’t absorb the green region of sunlight, you vacuous cretin. And included amongst these moronic platitudes is, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” As a child, I stopped when asked this, and replied, “Well, it will be the egg, cos whatever evolved into a chicken would have laid an egg that was the first chicken.” And now I read that this May, twenty years later, this is some sort of bloody scientific revelation, announced to the world by leading experts? And worse, the BBC responded to these gits trying to garner limelight for themselves by stating the achingly obvious with coverage, surprise, and even an inclusion in the end-of-year compilation? DO BETTER. Everyone, for crying out loud, take a look at yourselves and DO BETTER.

More frequently driving me to crazed distraction (and blimey is it hard to maintain a head of fury while listening to The Album Leaf) are people who WILL NOT THINK WHEN TALKING. Nothing makes me shout more loudly than Radio 4’s Any Answers. Following the generally dreadful Any Questions (Question Time on the radio, television plebs), it’s an opportunity for listeners to phone in and offer their own unique perspectives on the issues discussed. Oh wait, sorry, typo. Offer the same idiotic drivel they read in the editorial of the Daily Fuckwit last week, before having it confirmed by a squawking chav interviewed on Sky Bloody News. Never, EVER do they listen to bumbling twit Jonathan “I’m Not As Useless As My Brother” Dimbleby, as he attempts to ask them to provide some thinking behind their trumpeted bile, but instead they press a giant red reset button on their forehead and repeat what they’ve already said, only adding in some fresh new racism. These ghastly insults to oxygen are the lowest form of human life. I’d rather sit down to eat with a member of the Taleban than any single caller to that programme. Why do I listen, you ask? Because somehow, no matter what time I go into the kitchen to make food on a Saturday, it’s always 2.05pm by the time I’m in there. This same mystical blackhole chooses 2pm and 7pm on weekdays to make sure I catch the sodding Archers at least once a day. If I go too early in the morning for it to get away with warping ahead to after two, then it will make sure it’s 10.20am so I get the most awful part of Women’s Hour.

I’m sure my neighbours have considered calling the police, thinking that I’m horribly abusing a spouse or something, as I scream in rage, “YOU DISGUSTING COW, DIE OF RABIES RIGHT NOW,” or similar, at some broken glass-voiced old Daily Mail-reading bitch proclaiming the “coloured people” are stealing our jobs.

Anyway, the point of all this was to despair at the comments that have appeared beneath my obit to Mike Dicken. I thought, seeing that he was dead and all, it would be a good and decent thing to write something honest about him, as his relatively low profile would mean little media coverage. But obituraries make me furious, as they’re simply cowardly lying. Dicken was an arsehole in many respects, and I think such things should be remembered. But despite this, and despite there being an appropriate place for whiny sentimental tributes on the station’s website, somehow my comments section is filled with barely readable nonsense about how he – nrrgghhhhh – “spoke for us all”.

NO HE BLOODY WELL DIDN’T.

He spoke for stupid people who think that their majority stupid opinions are being oppressed, because their six million selling newspaper tells them that no one’s being allowed to say the thing they’re saying to six million people (along with five other six million selling newspapers) because of the oppressive liberals and their politically correct agendas. These gutwanks read this and are aghast. “No one’s allowed to say this thing that I’ve just read in this national newspaper, and indeed any number of other newspapers?! What can be done about this?!” And then later that night when their hoary old radio presenter lazily reads out the story from the Shithead On Sunday, they think, “God be praised! This single man was brave enough to stand up to the legions of LEFTY PINKO NAZIS who are preventing everyone else in the whole world from daring to utter such secret and radical truths.” And from this the champion is born, the Chosen One risking his life to state the opinions of The Oppressed Man On The Street. I’ve said what I have to say about Dicken, and I did secretly like him, but I cannot cope with the sanctimonious drivel being posted beneath it. Why are you people reading this? Did someone link to it or something? Please, go, run away.

So I went shopping today. And yes, I realise this was a bit bloody stupid of me. But it really confirmed the excellent reasons why I should never be allowed to carry a weapon. Ipswich would be forgotten after the trail of dead I would have left in my wake this afternoon. Look, I know I’ve gone on about this before, but for THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND PURE, am I really the only person in the world who makes an effort to be conscious of who is in front, to the sides, and behind me at all times? Answer: Yes. Yes I am. The only one. I now have no hesitation before growling loudly at people who stop dead in the middle of the street for NO GODDAMN REASON. And I mean growling. There’s no better release for the circumstance, and no better reaction from the selfish bastards who do it. But blimey, did I snarl a lot today.

Every now and then you catch someone who at least understands. Stood behind a group of four who were blocking the entire pavement and standing dead still, I raised my bags of shopping and brandished them as a weapon at their hateful heads. Across the street a dad with kids saw and laughed understandingly. He might live.

Sales appear to bring out the very worst of human kind. It was as if all the inmates of Britain’s prison hospitals were having a day out in your Beautiful Bath, released from their shackles for one afternoon only. Everyone shuffled painfully slowly, like bad extras from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, no one trying to do anything or get anywhere. I wouldn’t have been even vaguely surprised if they were just slowly stepping backwards on escalators, ensuring their mindless trudging was as purposeless as could be. I despaired for humanity while shopping for jumpers today. Please, everyone, go back to work. I want my town back.

The Eurogamer Top 50 is up-n-running, featuring sniping comments from all the regulars. As always it’s excellent fun, and doing a splendid job of winding up the ghastly Comment Trolls as they explode in frothing anger that it’s not in their prefered order. It’s not really in any order, compiled by the erratic democracy of writer voting. Listen to those angry heads a-poppin’.