Monkee

5 hours ago, Loki said:

I was just about to post.... Max Verstappen fans.  The fandom of F1 has historically been quite collegiate (Tifosi excepted) with drivers moving around, teams changing, and people being fans of the sport more than any individual.

Boy, has that changed!

Max Verstappen fans? Rubbish. It’s not limited to one driver or team. It’s become completely divisive. It was never like this 20 years ago. Have you ever been on the F1 Fan Forum? Right now F1 is a double-headed beast when you have donkeys in charge (Liberty Media) wanting it to be an entertainment spectacle rather than a real sport and social media giving the moronic fans* a voice. It’s the definition of toxicity.

* Girls who’re only interested in Photoshopping themselves into photos with drivers or launching hate campaigns against any woman who might be a ‘threat’, and people who are racist, xenophobic, sexist, misogynistic and want the sport to go back to the 1960s.

F1 has become the worst fandom in the last couple of years. You either have the “I’m not a racist but…” / “I’m not against women in motorsport as long as they’re half naked grid girls” men or the batshit crazy girls who stalk the drivers and try to break into their homes. It’s absolutely ridiculous and I’ve left all the groups I used to be in because there’s no happy medium.

TIL the guy who does all the maintenance where I live used to play for Arsenal in the 80s/90s.

Just seen the line-up for Celebrity Mastermind and there are some cracking specialist subjects coming up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2022/celebrity-mastermind-lineup-revealed

Dave Rowntree, musician (Blur drummer) on Nikola Tesla

James Acaster, comedian on the history of ice cream

Jackie Weaver, council officer on The Chronicles of Riddick

Martin Offiah, former England rugby international on the Battle of Britain

I’m currently at a football game in New Orleans. Haven’t a clue what’s going on but it’s Baylor 7-7 Ole Miss in the 3rd quarter apparently 🤷🏻‍♀️
 

EDIT: 21-7 at full time. Still no idea what happened. The marching bands at half time were my favourite - a medley of The Beatles followed by Foo Fighters.

On 12/16/2021 at 9:07 PM, neil said:

"Rock Star" staring Mark Walberg is deffo a musical 🤘

YES! I love that film and the soundtrack is incredible. I had it on CD are played it to death. ‘Stand Up’ and ‘Wasted Generation’ are great songs.

I’m not hugely into musicals but I do have a soft spot for a few movie-based ones such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (that’s not aged well in the #metoo days), The Sound of Music (it’s WW2 so I’m obviously going to like it), and Grease 2 (if only ‘Reproduction’ and ‘Cool Rider’ were karaoke songs).

I loved Jersey Boys in the West End and Beautiful: The Carol King Musical was absolutely amazing. I also saw the BTTF musical a couple of months ago and wasn’t as appalled as I though I would be to be honest.

I think, though, the best musical I’ve seen live was actually Licensed To Ill - a Beastie Boys musical. It was a glorious work of art. I ended up seeing it twice and interviewed the guys behind it for a blog.

I got two videos for a friend’s birthday earlier this year. She’s a huge Neighbours fan (as are we both) so I got 2 Cameos. One was great - he gave a full tour of one of the filming lots where the garage and tram are, Kyle’s building yard and Grease Monkeys. He talked for ages, mentioned all the stuff I’d told him about my friend and it was great. The other one in comparison was a bit of a let down. She only did it for about 20 seconds and that was it.

I’m on the hunt for a new laptop for graphic design and video editing. My current one is 5 years old - it’s slow and Premiere Pro doesn’t support the graphics card any more.

I’m not particularly techie but I was told that this was really good for the price and that it’s 17” (I really need this screen size):

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing/laptops/laptops/asus-vivobook-x712ea-17-3-laptop-intel-core-i7-1-tb-ssd-silver-10226090-pdt.html
 

Typically it’s out of stock everywhere and I can’t really afford much more than this right now. I’ve been told that although it’s out of stock it will be back at some point but they have no idea when exactly. I love everything about this model plus the fact it comes with 0% interest for 24 months was a real selling point for me.

Can anyone recommend the same spec model where I might be able to get a similar deal?

I was very lucky when I was little and started going abroad when I was 4 years old and my brother was 10. We went to the south of France by coach and stayed on a campsite.

We went a couple of times and my parents got to know the owner of the travel company. They became friends so the owner would send us on test trips (being a family with a good age gap between me and my brother) where he’d only charge the absolute bare minimum for my parents. This meant we went to different parts of France and Spain trying out these campsites before he then opened them up to the wider market. We’d go 3 times a year until I was about 8.

Then when I was 8 (my brother was 14) we progressed to flying and we went to Florida for the first time. That was incredible. My parents said they wanted to wait until my brother and I were both old enough to properly appreciate and remember everything. I think that’s when my travel bug properly took hold.

After that we flew most places but still did a couple of the coach trips to Spain in between ‘main’ holidays. We did Tenerife, Egypt, Jamaica and Florida a couple more times by the time I was 16.

I am very grateful to my parents and know this was a very privileged childhood. I love to travel and have been to a lot of different countries, even took a gap year after university and went around the world. My travel buddy and I try to go to different countries as much as possible and usually do 3 trips a year under normal circumstances (sometimes for a Grand Prix). My favourite places have been Fiji and Brazil, and one of my bucket list trips was Chernobyl.

Dave. 

I couldn’t find a general films thread so I’m posting this here instead. I started a “World Cup of War Movies” on Twitter if anyone fancies chipping in (trying to get more followers). It’s based on the top 100 war films on Rotten Tomatoes and I’ve cut it down to 32 contenders.

Escape To Victory wasn’t on the list, sorry.

I was guest in Byker Grove.

Paul Draper from Mansun has always had ‘issues’ anyway so I wouldn’t be surprised.

I unfriended Alan from Shed Seven a couple of months back when he became more vocal about his views. He’s against venues insisting on vax checking / testing so he left the band.

If anyone’s interested in a bit of 90s reminiscing, there’s now a Renford Rejects podcast. It’s something I’m helping out with so would appreciate some listens. Available on a few channels:

https://linktr.ee/RenfordPodcast

Thanks guys!

This is Dave. He’s the newly adopted brother of Frank.

He’s settling in well… I spent 45 mins earlier cleaning up after he flung shit-covered litter everywhere.

I got these recently. The design is based on the Dakota C-47 named “That’s All, Brother” that led the D-Day airborne assault on Normandy. I love them.

On 5/9/2021 at 4:04 PM, Version1.0 said:

Watching Sunderland 'Til I Die and one of the players is Homer Simpson's alter ego Max Power 

"I got it from a hairdryer."

 

That just reminded me of two motorsport drivers named Will Power and Scott Speed.

I’m booked to go to New Orleans in September and I’m praying it’s going to happen. There’s a Band of Brothers Anniversary Symposium and accompanying conference at the WWII Museum and I’ve got an all expenses paid trip booked. I’ve been working with the actors over the last few months on virtual events (looking to make them physical soon) so I’m flying over as part of the team. I have everything crossed that travel corridor thing is open by then.

7 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

@Monkee got a similar letter from him, I think?

I did indeed. I sent a Bottom DVD to both Rik and Ade to be signed for @PowerButchi’s UKFF Secret Santa present. This is what came with it when I got it back...

Over the last 6 months I’ve had my eyes opened to LGBTQ+ issues around death and end of life care - just things that never crossed my mind.

I work for Hospice UK (at least for one more week!) and we just published a report on ‘Equality in End of Life Care’. Some of the stats are staggering. In a survey of 108,000 people, 16% of survey respondents who accessed or tried to access public health services had a negative experience because of their sexual orientation, and at least
38% had a negative experience because of their gender identity.

Hospices (and the NHS) are focussing more on this stuff now but what really threw me was something as simple, I thought, as arranging a funeral. I read reports of someone who was trans and was estranged from their family. But, when they died they hadn’t shared their wishes with anyone or had anything in writing and so their next of kin was the family members. This meant that the service was in their dead name, they were dressed according to a gender they didn’t identify as, the death certificate was in their dead name, and none of those whom were closest to the deceased were allowed to the funeral. I was floored by this. It just never crossed my mind.

The report covers a lot of topics which I - as a cis white female with no major medical problems - just didn’t think about. How race affects access to health and end of life care, people who are homeless or with learning disabilities, people in remote and rural areas, and even people in prison. If you’re interested, I’d recommend having a look at the report - http://bit.ly/hukequalityreport

Also, thanks to @patiirc for some advice around making my job more LGBTQ+ aware. Really appreciated it and something that I’ll continue to work on.

I was busy working the other day and suddenly thought, “I can smell pee?” Looked around and saw my cat, sitting like a frog, pissing in my flip flop. It’s a good job it had indentations of my feet because he filled it to the brim. No idea why he decided he didn’t feel like going outside (it was sunny, the patio door was open) but he seemed to be enjoying himself.

5 hours ago, neil said:

...there was this tall (now remember I'm 6'7") blonde girl

...I mean she was tall yes, but like 5'10", not exactly freak status.

At first I thought this girl was well over 6ft’ tall - closer to your height - the way you described her but then you say she’s 5’10. That’s not that tall. I’m 5’11 and a lot of my friends are around the same height.

She still sounds weird though.

This basically happened to me on a date. I was Jude Law.

That’s awesome all round, @John Matrix! Really chuffed for you.

I’ve had a similar thing over the last couple of months in relation to Band of Brothers. I’m currently involved in a project called We Happy Few 506 where we put on Zoom interviews with the cast and crew as it’s the 20th anniversary of it first airing.

It’s hosted by Matthew Leitch (who played Talbert) with me and 2 others in the background. It’s amazing and very surreal to be talking to all the actors, sharing emails and even WhatsApping with Scott Grimes.

We’ve also had Dexter Fletcher and Marc Warren on which was brilliant. This Saturday we’ve got Michael Cudlitz on which is going to be fantastic and I might even be going to the set of Masters of the Air at some point soon to catch up with one of the writers. It’s very surreal.