Cyberclogs

Last night's episode of the Apprentice was once again very entertaining and it always starts to really get going when it reaches the halfway mark (hard to believe we're already there eh??).

This time the two teams had to sell a lot of bric-a-brac on the streets of London at a profit (that means Ben, that you sell it for more than its valued at!). The two teams were lead by Ben lead Empire while Philip lead Ignite, now while this may sound like two of the most assertive and competent candidates were leading this time round, things still managed to go way off course. For starters Ben decided to unevenly split up the selling of the items, by given half his team 3 and his other half (that he would sell) 7! Surely as Debra pointed out a 50/50 divide would have been much better. To top things off Ben drastically kept underselling every item, he seemed to completely miss the point of the task, sell at a proift not a loss, Ben! On the Ignite team, Philip was no genius either mind, because of his previous clashes with Lorraine he once again completely chose to ignore her advice on valuing the Indiain carpet item (which turned out to be the most valued item on the list at over £200!) so they ended up wandering round trying to get it rid of it last without even valuing the carpet in the first place since Philip seemed to think it was nothing but old tat!

But at the end of the day (its a cliche I know) Philip's team managed to win the task because they at least took more of a profit than Ben's team did (albeit both teams still made a loss, Philip's team just made less of a loss). In the boardroom Ben after some hesitancy decided to bring back in Noorul and Debra for the failure of the task, and after a little show of fire and self defence from Noorul, and some rather lippy words from Debra to Nick (shame on her! She got a well deserved warning from Sir Alan) no to mention a flustered Ben trying to defend himself, Sir Alan made the decision we have all been waiting for, and fired Noorul. Let's face it Noorul was probably the weakest contestant in the show, Majid even showed more interest and passion than he did on the odd task but Noorul either through TV show editing or a pure simple lack of contribution, didn't show us anything, so it was time for him to go.

Anyways that's it for now, time for some work.... blueeghhh!!

Had my first Citizens Theatre class last night and it was actually good fun, albeit a throwback to the basics since it was Level 1 Beginners class, nonetheless it was far from an insulting reminder of the stepping stones toward performing. Our tutor Leann was very good, quite light hearted and had a nice way of putting across the material as well as providing plenty of fun games for us to work with. The class being of mixed ages (again mostly women with a few guys) made it fun to work with everyone and it was also nice to see how up for it most of the class members were, which is always encouraging to see there being no stick in the muds! (otherwise why bother acting?).

Anyways it was good fun, a nice little intro to the beginners classes, personally it would have been nice to get into the more advanced class, but due to it being oversubscribed with people I wasn't able to get in, but it doesn't really matter as these classes look like good fun and will be a good reminder of the basics and mechanics of the craft of acting.

Well tomorrow (well) I start my first night class at the Citizen Theatre, I missed the first one last week cos I was still feeling a bit bugsy and under the weather so this week I feel better so I'm going to give it a go tomorrow. The tutor will be a Leann O'Kasi, so it will nice to have the opportunity to work with someone different for a change, rather than the old tutorial crowd (Iain, "yeahhhh", Bill, "stand up straight, Kenny!"). Its only the level 1 beginners level, and although I've had extensive class experience (well not to sound big headed but I have!) I've heard that there will be people at different levels of experience in the class so it should be fun and interesting to see how it goes tomorrow.

Anyhow more on that tomorrow night, tonight I thought I'd blog up on the latest episode of The Apprentice which was very entertaining stuff. The task saw the two teams having to come up with the idea for a breakfast TV commercial, complete with breakfast cereal, packaging, and a filmed advert. Ignite lead by New Yorker contest Kimberley, came up with the naff (or pants) idea of a superhero called Pantsman who tells kids to pull up their pants in the morning and put them on the right way by eating their cereal "Wake up call". The other team Empire (lead by the lovely and efficient Kate) came up with the idea for a Teasure themed TV add, the cereal was called Treasure Flakes and featured the portly Ben in the pirate outfit! To be honest the packaging for the Treasure Flakes was far better but ironically their advert was poor, on the Wake up call side the advert itself was very good but the packaging for the cereal was rubbish as it seemed to leave out alot of the information. In the end Sir Alan being the client had to make the decision once the advertising experts had given their opinions.

In the boardroom Sir Alan chose Empire as the winners (with James on the winning side for once! To be honest I'm starting to like this guy) and Ignite as the losers with Kim choosing to take Lorraine (who was highly critical throughout the task) and Philip (who was highly arrogant and cocky throughout, but made the biggest contribution) back into the boardroom. Now I don't much care for Philip, I think he's a cocky smug overbearing git, but he did raise a good point? Why do they keep letting the quiet, useless ones pass under the radar again and again? Mainly I mean Noorul, who did absolutely nothing once again! (Except wear the Pantsman outfit which required him to do nothing but move about a bit!). But clearly I think Sir Alan did choose correctly in firing Kimberley, she was a bit hypocritical and her marketing expertise could have won her the task but in the end it made her lose it. Lorraine on the other hand was very bitchy but I think she had good enough reason because no one would listen to her!

Anyways that's enough Apprenticing, we'll see what happens next week....

Well I've been feeling a bit bugsy over the weekend so I'm off work today, hopefully might go back tomorrow as its not that bad a bug as my previous one last year, however still feel a bit achesy in my limbs and my tongue is a red with a rash or something, that's the 3rd time in over the last year or so I've had that bug so not sure what its about. But they seem to be doing their rounds anyways, but I might return to work ramorrow, so we'll see how it goes.

Anyway on a different note I watched The Apprentice Episode 4 the other day and really enjoyed it as the task this week was to create a beauty bath product that could be sold to retailers. The two teams Ignite (lead by Noorul, or maybe lead isn't the right word!) and Empire (lead by Paula) set about the tasks, Ignite came up with a honeycomb soap bar while Empire came up with soap bar made from Seawood, Cedarwood and sandalwood oil. Despite a rather poor product Ignite came up as the winners in the end as they made the largest profit and Empire made a loss of £68. In a way it seems incredible that Ignite actually won they had virtually no direction from their leader Noorul, who just stood around looking confused (yet he said "I'm a natural born leader!").

In the boardroom on the losing team Paula brought back in Ben and Yasmina and both of them seemed to gang up on Paula especially Ben who had a real go at her (probably due to his small penis!). In the end though Sir Alan chose to fire Paula as she was overall in charge of the task and didn't get the costing right. It seems a shame that they did fire Paula as she was one of the nicer contestants (and nice) on the programme rather than leaving in the snakes simply cos they make for good TV. No doubt Ben will get his later on in the show. In the meantime I look forward to this week's episode.

Welly well, that's another Patter Merchants stint over, haven't had much chance to write up about it until now so thought I'd post something up. Well I'm glad to say the 3rd PM stint was a very enjoyable experience, this time round we had longer scenes so there were fewer of them this time, only 6 as opposed to the ambitious 12 that we had done last time. Also we had some music from our very own director and maestro Bill Wright who provided some fine musical interludes between the scenes, as he did covers of Lou Reed and Johnny Cash (nice guitar by the way Bill!).

The scenes themselves were all fairly comedic although quite dramatic in places too, Scott and Gill opened the night with an excellent performance of the opening scene in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Judith and Susan did a scene from the Killing of Sister George which was fun to watch as Judith was so crazed in it! ("Ohh shut up, silly bitch!"). Gordon and newcomer to the group Amy, were both really good in their scene from The Lovers, which they both put on fine Irish accents, I liked Amy's acting out pregnancy pains too! After the break we had two other newcomers to our group, Jamie and Rania do a scene from the play some Some Girls, which I liked and thought they both did really good accents, in fact I think most of the scenes had accents! Scott and Gill were up again next who did a scene from The Birthday Party, which was quite a short scene and "succulent!" to quote Scott's character. And last but not least was my scene with Alison who is also new to the group, Some Voices, which was frankly the best thing of the night! (I joke of course, really!). For my scene I did an London accent, so it was fun to work with accents again, as I haven't really done too much of that in the Patter Merchants (although I have done plenty with RTG). But I enjoyed the scene and thought Alison did really well with her part too, as she had to play ambivalent emotions, playing an abused pregnant girl in a bar who basically wants to be left alone but I come over and try to chat her up for some company as my part Ray is a young guy suffering from schizophrenia (but I didn't really play the illness). So we got some laughs out the scene which is always good.

Anywayssss that's pretty much it for now, another one down, we'll wait and see what happens next but for now its nice to have a wee break and chill out before stepping into anymore draaama.

OK so the final part of the new Red Dwarf Back to Earth was on last night and I have to say it left me with a big decisive feeling of "mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!". It was basically not any better than the first and second parts, the third part did at least complete the story but it wasn't really much of a story to begin with. The gags again were very lame, again there were some very feeble references to Blade Runner and again I felt there was a feeling of "Why did they bother?". The story sees the ending being something very similar to the plot of Back to Reality with and PLOT SPOILER: the whole Red Dwarf crew being stuck on the real Earth as fictional characters as just being the effects of the big tentacled beasts hallucinatory ink, just like the despair squid, except this was a joy ink. Its ironic that the new Red Dwarf's comeback tried to emulate one of its own best remembered and loved episodes with some of its absolute worst.

I'm really disappointed in Doug Naylor's attempts to bring the much loved and once very enjoyable show back to the small screen as it could have been much funnier and more entertaining than it actually was. Red Dwarf Series 8 was for me hilarious and really enjoyable, its just a shame they couldn't lash the same level of attention on it this time. But I guess being on a cable channel we can't really expect too much I guess, if only the BBC got their hands on it they could have lavished a bit more attention on it. Achh well, ho-hum. So who knows what lies next for Red Dwarf but I think the words "an urgent reboot" will be required should they ever bring it back again.

Its been a busy weekend on the TV front this Easter with the return of Red Dwarf and the Doctor Who Easter Special. Having just watched Red Dwarf Back to Earth Part 2 I wasn't much more impressed by the second installment than the first, I would say it was only slightly better than the first one, but that isn't saying much. In the second episode the Red Dwarf crew got back to Earth through some kind of wormhole created by Claudia Winkleman's character only to find they are considered as fictional characters on Earth as they see DVDs and posters of themselves everywhere. So they try to track down their creator see if they will carry on as it sounds like they might be killed off. Judging by the poor quality of this episode it wouldn't really matter if they were. To be entirely kind, there were a couple more laughs in this episodes (so that's 4 laughs in total from me so far!) one where Lister spots the Red Dwarf DVDs and Kryten explains that DVDs used to be used in the 21 Century before they went back to using videos! And Rimmer provided probably the best laugh so far when he was reading about his character being neurotic "I was never neurotic! Even as a child, I was too busy washing my hands!". Other than that it was "a naff effort" it also had some really lazy and pointless references to Blade Runner throughout it too (complete with folded pieces of origami courtesy of the Cat). So the 3rd episode is on tonight, but I won't expect too much from that either.

Which brings me to the Doctor Who Easter special, this thankfully was a fair bit more entertaining than Red Dwarf was. This time the Doctor meets up with Jewel thief Christina or Lady Christina (nicely played by the rather nice Michelle Ryan of Eastenders and Bionic Woman fame) on a bus which takes an interdimensional trip through a wormhole (yes another Easter TV trend wormholes!) onto an alien desert planet which is filled with rather nasty hostile creatures. The hour long specials for Doctor Who can be a bit hit and miss and this one was not too bad but overall nothing special. There are some nice touches in it though and David Tennant and Michelle Ryan both seem to enjoy their onscreen chemistry, but why on Earth does Russell T Davies always have to write in the companion kissing the Doctor! I wonder if Steven Moffat will cure the series of that trend when he takes over. I felt the CGI in this episode was a bit naff the desert was fine but the CGI for the nasty bugs was a bit crap. Lee Evans was ok in his part as the scientist despite his somewhat silly gushing hugging the Doctor and saying "I love you!" over and over near the end. But anyway it stood head and shoulders over Red Dwarf at any rate and the next Dr Who special The Waters of Mars looks fairly promising (and creepy!).

So brings me to the last note of this entry, as I went to see my brother's band Soul-Fi last night once again and they were really good (once again) I haven't really blogged about them much before so thought I'd give them some credit. Soul-Fi do cover versions of soul songs, from quite a wide ranging selection of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Amy Winehouse, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, Jamiriquai, and so on. It was on in the Basura Blanca Club on Brunswick St which is a nice little venue, so it was quite busy and they played for a good 2 and a half hours at least (I wish I could act as long as that! OK maybe not). Its also nice to see a band with a brass section too (Claire in the band plays sax and Sarah plays trumpet), as it offers something different from your average trendy indie bands or guitar driven bands, so seeing that is always a welcome change. They will be playing again the same venue next month so should be good.

And on that note I'll leave it there.

The title to this blog could almost be applied to the first new episode of Red Dwarf which was on the Dave Channel last night. Frankly I was a bit disappointed in it, for starters being on a satelitte channel it was a bit too much to hope that they could show it without adverts, but given the episodes short lengths (only 22 minutes! For the sake of cable channel viewing of course!) there was no doubt there would be.

Unfortunately the episode itself was to quote Larry David "meh", it was way too short, didn't really have that many funny gags in it either, Rimmer looked a bit weird (perhaps Chris Barrie is just getting old), and the Cat's witticisms seem to go back to the sub standard quality of Series 7. Not even Kryten managed to contribute any laughs here, the only new interesting (and rather nice) addition of Claudia Winkleman (Sophie's half sister) gave things a change of direction. To be entirely fair there were a couple of laughs, the bit where Lister and the crew are in the diving bell fighting a big tentacled underwater monster while Rimmer dances away on Red Dwarf at the camera station oblivious was amusing, and the sight of Lister using the wing mirror on his motorbike as a beer coaster was funny too. However that's about it, the episode ended on a real "Is that it?!" kind of note which left me less than enthused for more. I'll keep watching to see how the other 2 episodes will go, but I don't expect too much from them given the "quality" of what I've just witnessed.

Oh and the Easter special of Doctor Who is on tonight, let's hope that's halfway better than Red Dwarf!

So the next Patter Merchant show isn't far away now at all as next Tuesday and Wednesday night we'll be ready to do another show up at Gramofon (on King Street). This time round the scenes will be lengthier and fewer in number so there's still a challenge for the group there. I'm only doing one scene this time, which is fine for me as last time it felt like we had to juggle quite a bit doing the two (although I did enjoy it of course!). So we'll see how it goes next week, I won't say too much about it just now but I'll post up an entry once the shows are over.

And a different note the new series of the Apprentice has been on 3 weeks now and I've really enjoyed it so far. Thankfully this year even though they still have recruited some plonkers the overall group aren't the nasty assortment we had last year (bar a few of course) and this week's task was quite enjoyable. This week Sir Alan wanted the two teams (cheesily named Ignite and Empire) to create a piece of home exercise equipment that can be sold to retailers. The two teams both struggled at first to come up with ideas, and James who lead his team (or did he?) left it up to the young and cocky Ben to come up with their idea of a box you could use to work your lower muscles and triceps (I think!). The other group lead by Deborah (who's shaping up to be a real domineering pain!) came up with an idea for something that resembled a toilet seat which could be used to exercise your overall "core" so to speak. Nevertheless SHOW RUINER: Ignite won the task as they managed to secure the biggest amount of sales while Empire secure the least amount of sales in the entire show!

When it came to the boardroom bash James the team leader brought in Ben (who came up with the idea for the failed product) and Majid (who apparently stood around doing nothing throughout the task). After much boardroom debate, Sir Alan chose to fire Majid on the grounds of not contributing enough to the task. I felt even though on this task Majid didn't do as much, it wasn't really his fault, surely this boiled down to poor delegation from James, who didn't clearly give him enough to do, leaving the guy out feeling like a spare part, as I clearly saw Majid contribute quite alot in the previous task. James on this task also failed to assert himself by expressing his doubts and reservations about the product Ben which hilariously praised as the best thing he's ever done! In fact I'm amazed that James wasn't fired for this task the responsibility of its failure rested largely on his shoulders, it was only Margaret's observation that he was not bad at management that kept him from getting the black hack taxi, personally though I don't mind him so much, despite being a plonker he is fairly likeable. Ben on the other hand has been quite irritating so far as he clearly has far too big an ego and an inflated opinion of himself, and yes he did contribute alot to this task, but he made the biggest contribution to a failed task. Did he really deserve a second chance? Maybe not. But he got one anyway.

Anyways that's enough of the Apprentice. More blog entries will follow this weekend in fact as the Doctor Who Easter Special, Planet of the Dead is on ramorra and Red Dwarf is back on our screens tonight in the first of a new 3 parter, Back to Earth, wohoo!! Let's hope its good!