Christmas 40K: Very Well-Wrapped

It's Christmas at Casa Del Calamari, so I've finally had the time to take some photos of miniatures I finished this year. Starting with these Ultramarine Terminators, which represent the completion of the Imperial half of "Assault On Black Reach".

I've also been busy painting up some Orks from that same box set, in the hopes that 2021 is the year in which I finally finish painting the GW box sets I bought before 2010. Will I make it? It seems desperately unlikely!

Gin And Bear It: 19th to 24th

  Dec 19th: Wilkins & Sons Rhubarb

Look. Just. C'mon, you know? C'mon.

0/10

Dec 20th: Sweet Potato Raspberry Gin Liqueur

Aha! More like it, Advent Calendar Of Booze! You have pleased me.

Not really sure if there's much to be said about this one. The raspberry works really well, balancing the sweet and tart you expect from the aforementioned cluster of juice-globes. Just a really tasty gin.

8/10

Dec 21st: Poetic License Fireside Gin

Eh, I don't think mulled gin really works. At least, it certainly doesn't work cold. You need some warmth to bring out the flavours of your chosen mulling agents - this is like drinking Gordons over a Sainsbury's spice-aisle spillage. 

I mean, you could heat it, I guess. That's not what the website recommends, though, and in any case, we already have mulled wine, and mulled cider, and hot chocolate with Baileys or Kahlua or Tia Maria. Or even egg-nog, apparently, though I've never actually come across it, and half-suspect it to be some kind of cross-Atlantic practical joke.

4/10

Dec 22nd: Malfy Gin Rosa Sicilian Pink Grapefruit

That took longer to type than to drink. Which is a good sign, I grant you. The grapefruit hits you before you even open your mouth, starting surprisingly sweet before reverting to type. Ah, grapefruit. Don't ever change.

8/10

Dec 23rd: Edinburgh Gin Plum And Vanilla

Piss OFF.

0/10

Dec 24th: Poetic License Fireside Gin

Well, merry FUCKING Chistmas. The gin advent calendar equivalent of a pair of ugly socks you already got for your birthday anyway.

Still, at least it means I can get this final post up before noon.

0/10

Gin And Bear It: 13th To 18th

Onward, to glory!

Dec 13th: 6 'o Clock Sloe Gin

Oh, that's weird. Inadvertently, we're immediately returning to the idea of how quickly I can get sick of a particular flavour of gin. Turns out, sloes don't bother me as much in consecutive slots as strawberries do with a week between them.

Is this an uncanny valley type thing? Like, give me a month between flavours and I'll have happily reset, and give me a day between flavours and I can determine the subtle distinctions between them. Stick 'em a week apart, and all I remember is my own review from the last time round.

Whatever the answer, this is sweeter than yesterday's sloe gin, and I appreciate the difference. After laughing maniacally at the deaths of doznes of berries, callously murdered so I could be faintly sarcastic about the aftertaste their broken, pulped bodies left in my mouth, I felt a tiny bit guilty. The sweetness of this gin lets me know the sloes got it. It's all good. It was a privilege for them to serve.

7/10

     

Dec 14th: Wilkin & Sons Rhubarb

This is a bit disappointing. I usually love rhubarb gin, but while you can definitely taste that flavour here, it's too far down in the mix. It's like you stirred a Gordons with a stick of rhubarb before tossing it away, mumbling about overdoses and poison and triangles. It's not bad, by any means, but it really should be better.

6/10

Dec 15th: The Lakes Sloe Gin Liqueur

Okay, this is maybe starting to feel a tiny bit lazy? Slow it down with all these sloes, I say, so very wittily.

I mean, it's not actually bad. I still can't tell the difference between a sloe gin and a sloe gin liqueur, but it tastes nice, and has a stronger mouthfeel than the last two sloe-related beverages.

I'm just starting to wonder whether it's been worth all the red juice on our hands.

7/10

Dec 16th: Edinburgh Gin Rhubarb And Ginger

I've had this before, I think? Not that it matters, because it's gorgeous. The rhubarb is just at the right height in the mix, slow-dancing with the juniper, rather than either cowering terrified in the corner of the disco or scaling the decks, demanding the DJ play a CD of their own mixes brought along from home. The ginger is more subtle, but lingers, warming you long after the initial burn of the alcohol has passed.

The perfect drink for winter, then. Or for people who don't hate pleasure. Either way. 

9/10

Dec 17th: Sweet Potato Lavender Gin

DAMN. I know lavender gin isn't for everyone. I know some people feel like they're sucking on alcoholic Palma Violets. Those people are wrong and are to be pitied, obviously, but they don't have to worry in any case. This is far sweeter than you'd expect form a lavender gin, with the floral elements quite far down in the mix. You feel less like you've raided a lush's candy store, and more like a honey bee with a taste for cocktails.

And who could resist feeling like that?

9/10

Dec 18th: Mason's Dry Yorksihe Gin: Tea Edition

Gin and tea: not just a terrible pun. I should work in advertising. You know, except for having a soul.

ANYWAY. The taste of this gin. No idea why this works, but it does. The tea in this is ludicrously powerful - you can smell it in the shot before it's gotten anywhere near your lips. And I guess you need that cut through something as powerful as gin is. Whatever the alchemy involved, it tastes great, and further links the gin and tonic to its heritage in British India. 

Which arguably just means this is just an artefact of British Imperialism flavoured with cultural appropriation but, y'know. Still fucking tasty.

8/10

Gin And Bear It: 7th To 12th

It's Stage Two of my attempt to drink my wway through a gin advent calendar as still retain the werwithal to describe what's going into my gullet at each stage.

Dec 7th: 6 o' Clock Damson Gin

6 o' Clock behind door number 7. See what they did there? I'm tempted to knock a point off on general principle. Any shitty jokes around here better be mine,

That'd be unfair, though. 6 o' Clock isn't a gin to set the boozer's world on fire, but it's pretty nice. Could do with more damson, I think, but I guess it isn't the distiller's fault that I haven't the slightest interest in subtlety. 7/10

Dec 8th: English Drinks Company Cucumber Gin

Sweet Bacchus, no. No, I cannot sign off on this. A slice of cucumber in a glass of Hendricks and tonic, that works. That's lovely. That's subtle. This is like drinking Gordon's from a hollowed-out cucumber, that is then hammered into my face by a mallet made of frozen cucumber which is then also hammered into my face.

To reiterate: no. 4/10

Dec 9th: Edinburgh Gin Plum and Vanilla

This is more like it! Not sure I've ever combined plum and vanilla before, even before you get to the juniper and ethanol, but it works beautifully - the kind of fuck-it-let's-have-pudding-AND-another-drink concoction that makes cocktails so satisfying. Nice colour, too.

8/10

Dec 10th: Whitley Neill Quince Gin

Confession time: I don't even know what quince is. I mean, I realise Google exists. I just prefer the mystery,

Whatever it is - I want so say some kind of pureed rodent organ? - it's very tasty. It's somewhat hard to discuss, though, since I've had this gin before, and also it tastes like nothing else that exists. Um... It's good? Yeah, that will do. Accuracy in reviews is important. DRINK THIS GIN. THIS GIN IS GOOD. REVIEW CONCLUDED.

7/10

Dec 11th: Poetic License Picnic Gin

Apparently, this is supposed to taste like peaches and cream. I could only taste the strawberries, which as previously mentioned already mixes with juniper and alcohol to taste like an energy drink for high-functioning alcoholics.

And I've done that once this Christmas already. I guess I'm like those film reviewers who knock a star off every time they see a car chase. I've drunk so much gin that what's nice is starting to mean what's original. Which I guess is a little depressing, but ultimately I can't get too worked up about the idea that I'm starting to not appreciat drinks that taste like vodka and Red Bull at seven times the price.

6/10

Dec 12th: Bramley & Gage Organic Sloe Gin

On the other hand, sloe gins still seem to be going down quit nicely, so I'm not sure what's going on. I guess it helps that this one is a little more tart than usual, like the berries involved resent you murdering them for their pulp just that little bit more. That's it, delicious juice-stuffed globes. Resent me as I consume you!

7/10

Gin And Bear It: 1st To 6th

So we bought a gin advent calendar this year, to compensate for the crushing sense of isolation and fulity that accompanies this Christmas (more than usual, I mean).

And since I'm drinking a gin a night, I ifgured I might as well do some reviews.

Dec 1st: Wilkin & Sons Raspberry Gin

Man, with the mouth-feel and everything? Also, raspberries, which are a fruit. Already a contender for best gin of the festive seaon. 8/10

      Dec 2nd: Malfey's Blood Orange Gn

This is less of a drink than a magic trick. It starts off tasting like citrus and victory, but halfway through you glance at what you're drinking, and it turns into dentist's mouthwash. Senses are weird, right? I am not a fan. 7/10

       Dec 3rd: Lavender Gin

I mean, OK? I can believe it tastes like lavender. I definitely needed to be hold, though. F, meanwhile, hates the taste of lavender, and says this tastes OK to her. Which I guess is a kind of a success. When the best you can say about a flavoured gin is that it isn't even flavoured enough to piss off people who explicitly dislike that particular taste, though, I'd argue there's something of an issue. 5/10

Dec 4th: Wilkin & Sons English Strawberry Gin

Whereas with this one, even the label is no help in trying to figure out what it actually tastes like. I *think* it most resembles an energy drink diluted with soda water. Which it turns out to not be an unpleasant experience, but still one that disappoints. 6/10

Dec 5th: Sweet Potato Orange Gin Liqueur

Fortunately, only the last 60% of the name actually describes what you're drinking. Sweet potato makes for miserable fries and mash that's essentially a hate crime. Imagining the blasphemous un-drink one could squeeze from rotting yams in defiance of all laws of God and Nature makes me feel physially sick.

So does the fact I really like this actually speak to its quality? Or am I just so relieved that this doesn't taste like some unholy mixture of cheap vodka and gone-off carrot juice that it couldn't help but clear the bar I've set for it? 7/10

Dec 6th: Wilkin & Sons English Strawberry Gin

Um, fuck you? 0/10

No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.10 - "Nuclear" (Ryan Adams)

Fuck Ryan Adams.

The problem with the things that shape your past is that the past can't be reforged. It can only be burned away out from under you.

"Nuclear" is almost certainly the first Adams song I ever heard, one of the tracks of a "Best Of 2002" CD that came free with the NME. It was, and remains, special to me. The lyrics about the burned, radioactive remains of a once glorious relationship that exploded with blinding force chimed perfectly with the kind of callow youth who saw nothing inappropriate about comparing the atrocity of nuclear weapons with how much is sucks to get dumped.

(If indeed that's what's happening here. Maybe Adams is singing about the arrival of a new love laying waste to his current relationship. Of lying awake at night, trying to tell himself to be content with what he has rather than go rushing after something new and thrilling, all the while knowing that all that really matters is whether she'll say "yes".)

If the lyrics have faded in importance, though, the music still stands up - a glorious waltz of slide guitar over crunching rock chords, the epitome of "alt-country" that the hot new things were hyping as The Hot New Thing for all of seven minutes back in the day. The restrained, steely bassline. The gradual collapse into near-howls of anguish. A "Dear John" letter, either read or written in hell.

I loved the track so much that, off the back of it and NME's review of "Love Is Hell", I bought both CDs of the latter, and - up until recently - never looked back. Things changed as time drifted onward. NME soured on alt-country as it looked for something new to sink its pre-hate prep into, and I soured on the NME, as I recognised what I’d mistaken for a music magazine was a oblique series of lonely hearts ads, penned by men convinced rock would get them fucked if they could just have enough OPINIONS about it.

Adams, though, stayed. The returns diminished, yes, though on a trajectory more akin to a fairground buzzer game than a ski slope. But that call-back to my youth – one not so much wasted as chronically under-appreciated – never completely lost its energy. The flare of fission had flattened into the background radiation of my life.  My Geiger counter still twitches, from time to time, as my eye passes across his albums in my collection.

I think it's easier to separate the art from the artist when it only becomes an issue late in the game. But it's never been the ease at issue, has it? It's the morality. Just because you can find your way to enjoy good art from terrible people, it doesn't follow that you should.

These songs wind like arteries through my history, personal, romantic, and musical; though the whole point of NAFTIR is that those are distinctions without a difference in any case. As Craig Finn put it, certain songs get scratched into your soul. You can't fill those grooves back in, even if you never sing - or speak of - those songs again. 

And why should I? Haven't Adams' own actions burned away enough fo what I've built myself on? Do I have to knock out the struts that remain, blackened and warped, but still standing? There's nothing to replace them with - the lumber from which I built myself upwards out of my youth is a resource long since lost to me.

Does any of that justify me reminding you all that Adams exists, though? That these tales of heartbreak and longing only take the forms they do because he was savy enough to realise setting lists of the women whose careers he tried derailing to music probably wouldn't shift quite so many discs?

I don't know. I hope so? I hope I can talk about the music who made me the person I am without endorsing or lingering on the flaws of the people who made the music who made me the person I am. For better or worse, "Nuclear"'s fire burns within me still.

All that said? Fuck Ryan Adams.

(Adams-free B-side)

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 3.1.20

 Fuck you, Reagan.

Booze Me Baby: Cherry Beer Edition

So I bought some cherry beer and drank it. Then I wrote down THOUGHTS and FEELINGS.

Liefman’s Fruitesse

The standard Belgian fruit beer against which all others are measured. Or they are for me, anyway, given they sell this both on campus and one of my most regular haunts in Birmingham. A nice balance of sweet and sour, and not too strong to make ordering it pints particularly inadvisable.

Mort Subite: Kriek Lambic

As sour as the word “lambic” suggests. But this is cherrytown, Jack. Sour is the currency we’re trading in here. It works well, is what I’m saying. Plus the wee cork makes me feel like a giant at a wedding each time I open up another bottle. Pop pop!

Timmerman’s Kriek

Delighted to learn that “Lambicus” is a thing that somehow exists. As fun as that name is, though, there's not much there. Well, OK, that's not fair. The "problen", emphasis on the """", is that I don't think I'd have any chance of distinguishing this from Leifmans if I were blindfolded, or distracted by a squirrel, or whatever.

But that's fine. Leifmans is good. But its also slightly stronger, so, you know. Doesn't feel like I need two of you, Lambicus.

Grisette Bio Fruits Des Bois

This is borderline undrinkable. Tastes like Ribena and backwash, diluted to an extent you could fairly call homeopathic. Serve only to your worst enemies, who are at your house for some reason.

 

 

Cherry Chouffe 

A bit darker and richer than the other offerings here. Also ludicrously strong, so be advised. It’s a good job the bottles have such a low centre of gravity, because I was gesticulating wildly within minutes. Best paired with a sense of creeping shame the next morning.

 

 

Sam Smith's Organic Cherry

I was semi-secretly hoping I'd hate this, given Sam Smiths pubs have gotten themselves a reputation recently for being hotbeds of bullshit ableism.

You can imagine my disappointment at how absolutely gorgeous this beer is, then. Like the ideal blind date for the worst man you've ever met, the sweet:tart ratio is almost perfect. It's light enough to go down easy, and not *quite* strong enough for that fact to be a danger to public health.

Thank Cthulhu that the name is total shit, then. BOO, Sam Smiths. BOO! You're an embarrassment! BOOOOOO!

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 1.1.20

 Finally back once again with the classic run Star Trek.

Contract Fulfilment

Eeek! Not even an hour to go until November and I've not put up a single post for the month mankind knows as "Pre-Halloween"!

This is partially my fault, for not having finished an IDFC post this month until about seven minutes ago. Plus, also, it's entirely my fault because this is my blog. IF YOU WANT TO GET PICKY.

I had planned to show you the Ultramarine Terminators I'd finished painting recently, AKA the best miniatures I've ever done that aren't from a standalone box. But I can't even do that, because I'm trapped for Halloween night in a 14th century mansion, that the owner insisted wasn't haunted even though I'd only asked for a second pot of coffee with my breakfast.

So, join me in an embarassingly obvious exercise in filler with DUN DUN DUUN: One sentence reviews of this year's Halloweenapalooza films. Usually I'm too busy making cocktails and enjoying having friends to really concentrate on the movies I'm playing for the Halloween season. This year though the universe was kind enough to leave me no distraction beyond the cascading tears of loneliness. SO:

Sputnik (2020): This film's biggest weakness is also its greatest strength, in that it manages to be fun and interesting and moderately clever and occasionally unnerving without ever truly engaging with the politics of its USSR setting.

Les Diaboliques (1955): The sort of film that everyone copies afterwards because it's so smart, which means we've seen it all before; though that only matters if you prioritise being surprised over literally every single fucking thing that cinema has to offer.

Vampires Vs The Bronx (2020): Starts from the astonishingly smart conceit of linking vampirism to gentrification, and never lets up on delivering social commentary that's also hilarious.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 4.1

 Let's talk about 1993, and the best sci-fi show to debut that year.

Friday 40K: Old Friends, Only Pointier

Some nice simple paint jobs this time, as I stick doggedly to the aesthetic and (as far as possible) shades of my painting attempts a quarter of a century ago. This time the 'stealers have longer pointy bits, though, because PROGRESS. Theres a couple of inplant weapons as well, becuase who doesn't like the idea of armour-piercing murder-tongues?

Not reall much more to say about these chitinous stablads, other than to note that they increase my battle-ready genestealters to a total of twenty-three, not including by Broodlord. That's a lot of close-combat dice, and I look forward to the end of our COVID nightmare, so I can reduce a few Space Wolves to steaming piles of mead-marinaded chum.

Now I've just got the Kill-Team box a friend bought me a year or two ago, and I'll have painted every Genestealer I own. Except the Space Hulk ones, obviously. I am but one man.

90s Undying

So this is happening, which is rather exciting. 

It was nice of them to create bespoke banners for each writer, so I can briefly fool people into thinking my involvement was any kind of draw. 

Still, I got some ludicrously positive feedback from the editor and proofreader about my essay, so if you've recently come into ludicrous wealth (it's $25 for the book and just as much for shipping to the UK), you might want to check it out.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 6.1.19

 An early, and terribly sad, farewell to Rene Auberjonois.

A Load Of Balls 2020

Time once again for my yearly failure to accurately predict the final score for the Crucible World Final. This year I'll go for O'Sullivan 18 - 13 Wilson. 

(Edit: Have now put my yearly tenner on my prediction. Turns out Betfred thinks this is the most likely result as well, so at least I'm in good company. Well, company of some kind, anyway.)

(Edit edit: GodDAMN it, Kyren.)

Friday 40K: To Guard A Tyrant

These sphere-esque leadbois have been finished for a while, but it took a while for me to get around to photographing them. I've had one Tyrant Guard for over a decade, but a rules change a few years back demanded chitinous cannon-fodder come in at least threes.

I think the eldest of the trio is on the far left as we look at them (the far left being the best place to be, of course), but I couldn't swear to it in court.

 

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 4.1.19

 Deep Space Nine reaches the end of its first stretch of road.

Friday Talisman: Eyes Like Crystal Balls

I've been appallingly quiet on the painting front recently, and after going to the trouble of photographing everything that still needed painting at the start of the year.

Progress is still being mae, though. I've got a painting line going for some genestealers, some venomthropes, and some Ultramarines terminators. In between those, I'm putting together some Dreadfleet auxilaries, and playing around with the fleet officer from Battle For Macragge, which alongside with the genestealers is the only miniature from that set I haven't finished painting. Once they're done, I think I'll have painted everything in my collection that dates back to before 2005. PROGRESS.

Or, you know, it would be, if I hadn't been bequeathed boxfull of 3rd Edition Warhammer Orcs and Goblins, and more than one box full of Epic miniatures - with more on the way. Sigh. The trials and tribulations of the congenital project starter, I guess.

Anyway, here's something that's actually done: the Talisman prophetess, the latest in my ongoing efforts to get to grips with non-white skin tone. I was going for a South Asian look here, and I'm especially pleased with the hair - doubtless that's why I completely forgot to take any pictures from the back.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 3.1.19

The Klingons are back.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 1.1.19

A race around the sun which, appropriately enough, predicts the coming of Apollo.

Quarantine Quiz Rounds Four To Seven

So I put together a whole quiz this week, if anyone would like to flex their trivia muscles. Leave answers in comments.


Round 1: Connections

1. Which UK crisp brand began advertising itself as "Man crisps" in 2009?

2 Which Royal Navy officer and explorer led the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition, which lasted from 1910 to 1913?

3 Where is New York City's main jail complex found?

4 Which subatomic particles were proposed to exist in the 1960s, and come in six flavours?

5 Released in 1969 and based on a Barry Hines novel set in Yorkshire, what was Ken Loach's second feature film?

6 What alternative name is given to Sagittarius, relating to its astrological symbol?

7 The only living genus in the family Esocidae, the genus Esox comprises of pickerel and which other freshwater fish?

8 The Battle of the Somme took place in which former administrative region of France?

9 Which Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem relates the story of a man who curses his ship by needlessly shooting an albatross?

10 What connects the first nine answers?

Round 2: Film Sequels

Below are the names (though not necessarily the *full* names) of ten films. Each of the are either sequels, or form part of a film series. In each case, I just want you to give the name either of the film its a sequel to, or the film that comes immediately before it in the the series. I've also given you the year in which the film I'm looking for came out.

1. Revenge Of The Sith - 2002

2. Jewel Of The Nile - 1984

3. City Of Men - 2002

4. Magnum Force - 1971

5. The Return of Jafar - 1992

6. Diamonds Are Forever - 1969

7. Once Upon A Time In Mexico - 1995

8. Be Cool - 1995

9. Day Of The Dead - 1978

10. Batman Forever - 1992

Round 3: Red Flags

1. Which two Asian countries have flags that comprise of a red circle on a uniform field?

2. The Albanian flag features what specific animal in black on a red field?

3. Which US state, with its capital in Nashville, has a flag comprising of three white stars in a blue circle, all on a red field?

4. A red flag on the beach means "Do not go into the water", but what does a red and yellow flag mean? Is it:

a Lifeguards patrolling

b No swimming; designated surfboard area

c Safe to swim only when tide is coming in

d Safe to swim only when tide is going out

5. Which Game of Thrones house features a golden lion on a red background as its banner?

6. The Soviet Flag, featuring a gold star and a hammer and sickle on a red field, was introduced five years after the October Revolution which saw the Bolsheviks take power in Russia. In what year did that revolution take place?

7. Which country from the Marvel comics had a flag with a red stripe before Dr Doom took control of it?

8. "Red flag laws" are an American term for any legislation which limits access to what?

9. The Mexican General Santa Anna used a red flag as notification he intended to spare none of the defenders of which location, which he took in 1836 and made good on his threat?

10. Which girl group, who released their fourth studio album "Red Flag" in 2016, comprises of Shaznay Lewis, Mel Blatt, and Nicole and Natalie Appleton?

Round 4: General Knowledge

1. Which US general was given command of the Third Army at the start of the Western Allied invasion of France?

2. Which TV show ends each episode with a round entitled "General Ignorance"?

3. Which multinational corporation which distributes vehicles and vehicle parts, and sells financial services, has its global headquarters in Detroit's Renaissance Center?

4. "General Hospital" was the fifth episode of the fourth season of which sitcom?

5. What was the name of the rabbit who ruled the warren of Efrafa, and fills the role of primary antagonist in "Watership Down"?

6. Which Star Wars villain made his debut in "Revenge Of The Sith", and wielded four lightsabers simultaneously?

7. In which country's Navy did the General Belgrano serve, until she was sunk in 1982?

8. Who was the last UK Prime Minister to serve two non-contiguous terms, winning general elections in 1964, 1966 and twice in 1974, but losing to Edward Heath in 1970?

9. Although he has fought many superheroes over the decades, General Zod is counted as one of which comic book hero's nemesisi- nemesee - nemeses?

10. Which TV show, and later film, featured two cousins racing around a fictional county in Georgia in their car, The General Lee?

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 6.1.18

Surprise! It's only the bleedin' Ferengi, an' all!

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 4.1.18

Now we're talking.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 3.1.18

Poor "Coming Of Age". Not only is it chock-full of Wesley Crusher, not only does it kick off an ongoing plot that is unceremoniously abandoned just six episodes later, it now has the distinct misfortune to be the episode that I had to get through before writing about "Duet".

Lockdown Quiz Rounds 3

A rather gauche round, this time.

1) What alternative name is there for the exclamation mark in American English?
2) Which is the only British place name to include an exclamation mark?
3) Which UK band released a triple album entitled "Sandinista!" in December 1980, just twelve months after their previous album, "London Calling"?
4) Which American film has the alternative title of "Flying High!", with both titles including an exclamation mark?
5) In 1754 the Royal Academy of which country added an inverted exclamation mark to the list of punctuation for their written language?
6) The show Oklahoma!, first performed on Broadway in 1943, was written by which highly successful musical duo?
7) What is 3!+1!?
8) The video to which 2003 single features composer and lyricist Andre 3000 playing all eight members of his "band", The Love Below?
9) In which Canadian province is the city of St Louis du Ha! Ha!? 
10) What is the first name of George W Bush's younger brother, who used that name followed by an exclamation mark as his campaign slogan in 2016 when running to be the Republican candidate for president?

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 1.1.18

I hope you weren't too attached to IDFC having an episode count that's only in double digits.

Because THOSE DAYS ARE GONE.

Episode 100.

Lockdown Quiz Rounds 2

Answers in comments!

1. Which soul singer covered "Yesterday" on a 1970 release, fourteen years before being shot by his own father in their Los Angeles home?

2. Which former Beatle covered "Yesterday" in 1970, alongside his fellow member of the Travelling Wilburys, Bob Dylan?

3. Which American superstar covered "Yesterday" on his 1970 album On The Stage, recorded seven months into his residency at the International Hotel in Las Vegas?

4. Shirley Bassey covered "Yesterday" in 1991, twelve years after providing her third Bond title song. Which of the Roger Moore Bond films was that song for?

5. Who covered "Yesterday" on their 1969 album "My Way"?

6. Which all-female R&B group release a cover of "Yesterday" on their 1992 album "Funky Divas", which also included the hits "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)", "Free Your Mind", and "Give Him Something He Can Feel"?

7. Cuban-born singer La Lupe covered "Yesterday" in 1967's "El Rey y Yo". What are the English translations of "La Lupe" and "El Rey y Yo"? (1/2 each)

8. Opera singer Placido Domingo covered "Yesterday" in 1981, nine years before becoming part of which musical group?

9. Which piano player covered "Yesterday" in 1967, twenty years before his death and forty-six years before Michael Douglas played him in the biopic "Behind The Candelabra"?

10. Which teenage pop singer performed "Yesterday" at the 92nd Academy Awards this February?

D CDs #473: Petty Hate Machine

The Smiths

Coming back to the debut album of one of the most beloved - and yes, legitimately best - bands of the '80s might seem like a mug's game. There are the general issues as regards the weight of expectations and the solidified layers of How It Was one needs to chip through- musical opinion fossilising rather quickly than did dinosaur bones. Then you've got the specific issues around The Smiths, by which - and let's not be coy, since the man himself only ever approved of that when writing lyrics, and not always even then- that absolute fuckwit Morrissey.

For all that "Still Ill" (which I focused on here) now reads less like satire and more like the rough draft of a manifesto, though, I can't deny that it remains a gorgeous song, filled with anger and sadness and a sense that things aren't actually going to get better in the way we were always told they would be, just so we'd stop complaining about how awful things are now.

This sense of discomfort with both the awful past and the surely awful future suffuses The Smiths. The fact that it's clearly Morrissey's personal discomfort is never less than obvious; as with literally the entirety of his career, you're never more than a few bars from him referencing some unknown figure he wants to lay into, or be laid by, or both.

But neither this laser-focus on his own problems, nor his later quixotic crusade to demonstrate one doesn't need a taste for a full English to be a lager-bellied shirt-shirking racist shit-heel, stops the album from working. Indeed, what's remarkable here is, not just that it works so well, but that it works so well as a Smiths album. To deny him the charity he so clearly doesn't deserve, it's not surprising that Morrissey was already so Olympically self-involved he could nail his "Woe is me, woeful is you" schtick at the first try. More positively, Marr's gorgeous, multi-layered guitar impossibilities explode from the ether fully formed. Opener "Reel Around The Fountain" doesn't so much set up his stall as burn down everything else in the market.

Has there ever been a debut album that so perfectly encapsulated what a band was, that so effortlessly staked out the territory it would explore throughout its existence? Not just in the sense of being rough sketches of what was to come, either. The one-two punch of "This Charming Man" and "Still Ill" is as fine a pairing as the band ever achieved.

I'm not saying the band never developed from this first platter. There's a looseness here, a fuzziness, a sense of playfulness that is rather less arch than what comes after. Still, while "...Fountain" or "Suffer Little Children" might not sound quite right if you stuck them somewhere on The Queen Is Dead, I'd be hard-pressed to explain quite why.

More than any other band I can think of, The Smiths arrived so fully-formed, and imploded so near the top of their game, that it sometimes feels as though time stood still for them - that every song arrived simultaneously from some other place, with Morrissey and Marr simply choosing which songs to dole out with every subsequent release.

Their choices here are tough to find fault with. There's a reason the musical landscape found itself transformed after The Smiths and The Smiths revealed themselves. The most glorious space-time anomaly opened up in 1982 Lancashire, only to close five years later. The kings may be dead, or at least their magic drained from the world, but this lush, louche remnant is a reminder of the time when the world was briefly theirs.

Eight and a half tentacles.

No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.2.9 - "Fred Jones Part 2" (Ben Folds)

I'm not sure why this song resonated with me so much when Folds' first - and best - solo album came out. I got hold of it in the dying days of Autumn, 2001, which meant that a) I was barely past the halfway stage of my degree, and b) despite being crammed with half a billion arseholes, the Western World had lost every single stinking piece of its collective shit.

An odd time both personally and generally to fall in love with a song about a guy getting coldly fired twenty-five years into his career, then. I couldn't point to twenty-five years I had of anything, including existence. Something in the horrible, banal unfairness of it all still chimed with me, though. I already had a copy of Whatever And Ever, Amen, so I knew, per "Cigarette", that Fred was struggling as primary carer to his chronically ill and stupified wife. And now he's here having his professional life torpedoed because - well, why? Nobody seems to have thought it was worth letting him know. The implication is just someone higher up has decided that younger must necessarily be better.

I wonder why Folds decided to give his shitcanned newspaper man the same name as his struggling care giver. I suspect I do know why its a paper specifically that's the place he's being fired from - a reference surely to the lyrics of "Cigarette" having been ripped from a run-on headline Folds had read. But why make the link at all?

Maybe Folds was just thinking in terms of the thematic link between thankless jobs that were never going to end well. Whatever his intent, by putting Jones' stories into two different songs and separating them by four years, Folds highlights how completely irrelevant the guy's personal circumstances are to the asshole boss who's kicking him to the curb. Not personal; just business. As though the two are ever separate. Jones can't even relax with his hobbies any more. The hurt is just too deep.

This second chapter in the life of the luckless Jones is more subtle and measured. The melancholy of the piano chords is less overwrought, the lyrics of light and shadow and resignation and anger a more effective delivery system than simply singing a headline, no matter how oddly structured it was. It's maybe unfair to compare the two, really, given "Cigarette" is supposed to hit you sideways and then get out before the second count reaches three digits. The longer run-time of "Fred Jones Part 2" actually allows time for the sadness to permeate, though. No doubt this is helped by the cello - I've always been a sucker for a cello - though the backing vocals from Cake's John McCrea are a welcome addition too.

But it's those last two lines before the final refrain that linger longest.

And all of these bastards have taken his place
He's forgotten but not yet gone

All the anger the paper and his bosses and the restraints of the song's structure itself are finally cast aside while Fred howls at the canvas in his basement.

Maybe that's what it is, the reason for this song landing so hard with me. The fury spat at the injustice engrained into a system that steals your labour from you every week until it eventually decides it can steal someone else's labour more effectively, and pretends you never really existef all.  Perhaps even then, I knew on some level where all this was going.

It'd be nice to think so. Really, though, the chief suspect has to remain that cello.

B-side:

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 6.1.17

Damn, I should have called this one "What We Do in The Shadows".

Lockdown Quiz Rounds I

With most of us trapped at home for the foreseeable, I've started once more dabbling in the dark arts of trivia. Put your answers in comments, SHOULD YOU DARE.

Maths in film

1. With twenty-eight films in its home country and three American adaptations, which is the only other film franchise with as many installments as the Carry On series? Godzilla

2. Which was the highest number: Sean Penn's grams, Katherine Heigl's dresses, or Josh Hartnett's days of night? Days Of Night (30, rather than 21 and 27)

3. The Search For Spock, Season Of The Witch, and Mockingjay Part I are all which number in their respective film franchises? Third

4. What is the name of the Star Wars episode which corresponds to the highest prime number in the nine-film series? The Force Awakens

5. What total do you get if you add the numbers in all films whose main characters are either Danny or Debbie Ocean? 55

6. Which 1999 film starred George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze as American soldiers trying to steal Iraqi gold at the end of the first Gulf War? Three Kings

7. What number Bond film (excluding the original Casino Royale) was the last to feature Sean Connery before his sort-of return in Never Say Never Again? Diamonds Are Forever

8. Which is the odd one out, and why: Apollo, Days, Ghosts, Years A Slave? Years A Slave - the number is 12, rather than 13

9. Complete the sequence: 16 Candles and Molly Ringwald, The Whole Nine Yards and Bruce Willis, Four Lions and Riz Ahmed, ? and ?. I was looking for any film that contains the number one, and a star of that film - I went with The One and Jet Li

10. What is the highest finite number in the title of any film which adapts characters from the Marvel comics? 6, as in Big Hero 6

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 4.1.17

Dramatic personnel.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 3.1.17

Running ever further behind in telling you about the projects I'm working ever further behind on, but IDFC continues to roll onward.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 1.1.17

Kirk vs the martial bullshit.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 2.1

At long last, we reach the end of another chapter.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 6.1.16

More Enterprise, more moral horror.

Saturday 40K: Comparative Scales

Given at present I have over a dozen box games to continue - or in many cases, start - painting, I've made the obvious choice, and returned to adding to my already swollen 'Nid force.

Here is the Maleceptor I painted last year, and a Tyrant Guard I finished a few days ago.

The Tyrant Guard has yet to see combat, partially because of its newness, but also because of the frustrating decision to increase the minimum size of their unit from one to three. This is my second, but until I finish the third (sometime in spring at this rate), there's not much to be done with them except use them for paperweights.

The Maleceptor, on other hand, has already racked up a few kills. You'll notice the butchered Space Wolf Terminator on its base. That's a reference to my mate Dave's army, who I usually finding myself facing. In its debut the Maleceptor wandered forward for a bit before being torn apart by wolves, but in its second game it fared much better, exploding the brains of all and sundry as part of a psyker-spam army.

Dave has sworn revenge...

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations 4.1.16

Dammit, but Rene Auberjonois was good.