I just found a Creme Egg in my pocket! (Link for anyone who may not know of them. Just in case.)
“Over reacting a little aren’t you, J Bov?”
Let me tell you something;
When you glance at the night sky on occasion, you see the beautiful points of light, shimmering in the firmament, and you pause.
You are staring up into the light from a billion other suns. There are stars so large if you replaced our star with them they would reach the furthest point of the orbit of Jupiter. We can see whole other galaxies, hundreds of billions of suns spiralling in space, with the naked eye.
Our planet is a tiny rock, spinning in the dark. We’ve discovered a little over five hundred others through the years, none of them Earth-like. I will almost definately never set foot on Mars, or even our own moon, I’ll probably never leave this one insignificant mote of dust.
Small comforts are rarely afforded in this dark, lonesome universe.
But I exist. You exist. A ridiculously long, twisted line of history has led to chance meetings, from which sprung one of almost infinite possible new lives, who met someone else and did it again. This decreases the odds of my or your ancestors even meeting to incredibly low. More chance meetings and eventually, one of millions of sperm meets one of millions of eggs and from a huge range of possible expressions of that meeting it’s you. Wonderful, miraculous you and me.
Every molecule in your body can be traced to cosmic phenomena; you and I are swirling masses of space stuff that coalesces for an instant as us, then moves along. The odds of these things are so small as to be essentially zero, but here we are.
All this means that, against astronomical odds, you were born from the heart of a star. I was too. So too was the person, who I will never meet, who thought up Creme Eggs.
I could have been anywhere, at any time and it could have been anything that I’d forgotten I had, but it wasn’t.
So from all this mad, swirling, chaotic mess we can condence down to a single, shining moment wherein I find something in my pocket and tell you about it.
This very moment when I found a Creme Egg and it made me smile
I will now list my favourite media, because I am bored.
These are subject to change on a regular basis, particularly the music related entry (-ies), but I’ll tell you how I’ve started my year and attempt to justify my choices, so first up;
Favourite TV Show: Mystery Science Theatre 3000
MST3K is a wonderful show that I never caught on tv. I’m not sure if it was ever on in the UK anyway. Thankfully a lot of it is now online (if you’ve never seen it I suggest you seek it on YouTube) and it’s great.
I will come out and say it right now; I talk over movies. I’m one of those people that likes to amuse myself when a movie (or TV show) is failing to do so. If it’s good, I’ll clam up, if not then watch out. MST3K is terrible old movies over which three guys make jokes. It speaks to me on a personal level and it’s arse-clenchingly funny. Seek it out.
Favourite Live-Action Film
I’d love to do this one by genre, but I’ve got two more film categories and I’d rather not inundate the post with movies, so: Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb
Yes, that’s one movie, it follows the old tradition of naming a film twice.
This film is far and away the best comedy I have ever seen. It’s equal parts pantomime and understatement with a perfect ratio of comedy to seriousness. It’s not the constant laugh riot that Airplane is (Airplane being my second pick, consequently) but it never fails to make me laugh.
Parodied to this day, it’s filled with moments that you will have seen but never realised where they came from, most notably the nuke riding scene, which happens right at the end.
Every actor is fantastic, every joke is crisp and perfectly played and Peter Sellers can do no wrong by me.
Plus any film that ends with this; Is doing it right.
Superb. Watch it.
“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!”
Favourite Animated Film:
I would consider it sacrilege to say anything other than Spirited Away
This movie is just amazing. The story is great, the art is beautiful and it just hits every mark available. It’s funny, it’s tense, it’s heart warming, it’s scary and it delights in being very very odd.
There’s no surprise then that it’s critically acclaimed and has a plethora of awards to it’s name including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
It also makes a good screensaver film. You can have it on while other stuff occupies your attention and it’s still enjoyable.
One thing I will say, however, is that if you watch it you should endeavour to watch the subtitled Japanese version, for the real experience and to avoid the main character’s incessant shrieking in the dub. Not too bad, but the Japanese voice acting is better in that case.
Anyway, It’s Japanese Alice in Wonderland and I love it so.
Plus, he was a river the entire time.
Favourite Computer Animated Film: Wall-E
If you know me at all or you’ve read the rest of this blog you’ll know that I have a soft spot for robots and that this choice was inevitable.
What can possibly be better than a robot love story?
This film is utterly masterful in it’s scope and in terms of it’s emotional impact on an audience. I know people who like robots less than I and some who are blithely indifferent towards them who think this movie is great.
A great mix of a post-human scorched earth macrocosm, with all the desolate beauty that entails, and the curiosity and consequential emotional growth of a (ridiculously endearing) robot in the microcosm.
Mix that with a genuinely heart-warming love story and you’ve got success. The majority of this movie is free of dialogue beyond the occasional chirping of the autonomic protagonist(s) and that’s a choice I can heartily get behind.
Does it ruin the film when they introduce humans? Not at all, but I would have prefered if they hadn’t.
Favourite Comic:
Transmetropolitan
This choice will probably never change. Warren Ellis crafted a perfect vision with this masterpiece. The… ‘hero’… of the piece is Spider Jerusalem; a Hunter S. Thompson analogue channelled through an idealised version of Ellis himself, and while this may seem lazy and egotistical to some, it works so well that eventually you forget all about it as he takes on a life of his own. A righteously angry, offensive and abrasive life.
The awful world that Spider inhabits is brought to life, also, by artist Darick Robertson. With a style that looks sketchy but fully fleshed he really lends a layer of grime to The City that the writing alone couldn’t.
If you like comics, read it. If you like angry cynics, read it. It’s fun cover to cover and who knows, maybe you’ll learn something.
Favourite Album:
Knee-Deep in the North Sea by Portico Quartet
I had some trouble recently picking my nine favourite albums for a thread on a forum. My taste in music is subject to my whims and to-ing and fro-ings, but I settled on this choice for now for one simple reason:
Unlike most albums I own, there is not one track on this album that I would skip. Not. One. They are all great. Easy to listen to, fun and exciting by turns, modern jazz could have done a lot worse than these four gentlemen. I haven’t heard the second album yet but chances are it’s as good as this one and if that’s the case I will be one happy faux-beatnik.
Favourite Book:
Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny
This section is as liable to change as the one above, but as of right now Lord of Light is at the very least in my top five recommended reads. Zelazny manages to spin a sci-fi world out of ancient Eastern religion in a way that’s both interesting and entertaining. I don’t want to give too much away but it covers the ideas of ‘religion as control’ as well as questioning our right as humans to suppress knowledge or repress each other on any basis. All through the lense onto the world of the (sort of) Buddha Mahasamatma, or Sam for short.
It’s a stunning book, you should read it.
So there it is, laid out before you for your judgement; a list of my favourite media as of January 2011 with some brief justification. It would bring me great joy to think that someone might go away from this list to seek out and subsequently enjoy my suggestions and I urge you to do so. Do it. Now.
J Bov Explodes Rhetorically 