Gay Sci-Fi Nerds (GSFN) Podcast Show

Drew and I like to go to the theatre on occasion, mostly for comedy rather than serious performances. We also like a good musical too like Chicago or Wicked, but most definitely not The Lord of the Rings. So after I had emailed Drew that Dionne Warwick was performing at the Princess Theatre in Torquay, he rushed down there to buy himself and his mother (he’s a good boy), tickets (not for me as it’s not really me). Also bought quite a few more including tickets for Frankie Boyle and Jo Brand as well as a pair for the One Man Star Wars show starring Charles “one man” Ross.

Now you see, Drew knew I would be excited by all of these. Some more than others, but most definitely by Frankie, Jo and the One Man Star Wars show. I like Frankie because of his sometimes disgustingly un-politically correct humour, Jo for her amble bosom and love of chocolate, and finally Charles Ross in the One Man Star Wars show, because HELLO, it’s STAR WARS.

Now having bought the tickets, Drew suddenly decided that he wanted to back out of going. Perhaps it was because I didn’t want to see the Sing-a-long Hairspray that he also bought tickets for. If it was the Rikki Lake version, I’d be there, but it wasn’t, so I won’t. I now had to find someone to go with me for last Friday night’s (25th July) performance. I was thinking of asking a fellow sci-fi nerd who is a big fan of Star Wars (see Generation Star Wars), but he was out of town, so I decided to ask my fag hag Miss Mina instead. She’s not your usual type of fag hag, she into performing burlesque, loves sci-fi and horror and is covered in tattoos. Lucky for Drew she agreed to a night out on the town that is Torquay.

Typically things were not going smoothly that evening. The cleaner kept me talking while I wanted to to get into the shower. Drew couldn’t decided whether he was going to join us for an evening supper or not. I’d left my wallet at work, so I had to go there before picking up Miss Mina. We were running late and didn’t think we’d be able to eat, but lucky for us, our waitress for the evening was a friend of Miss Mina and we were served drinks, food and bill in half an hour. So we had a nice stroll along the promenade up to the theatre, not entirely knowing what to expect.

We handed over our tickets, bought some munchies and took to our seats. I have to say that I was surprised by the lack of people in the auditorium. Now to put things into perspective, Torquay is a small seaside town, but still, there couldn’t have been more than fifty people in the theatre. This was not looking promising…

The warm up act was a comedian by the name of Graham Clark, who like Charles Ross was Canadian. Although Graham’s routine started without much response from the audience he soon got everybody laughing. The jokes were clean, something Graham may have been struggling with, but a lot of them were specifically about Torbay and since there was only one night’s performance, he did really good. He also said “awesome”, a lot. There was a short interval so I went and bought some drinks and we settled down with munchies and liquid refreshments and waited for Charles Ross to start the One Man Star Wars show.

What we were subjected to was one of the funniest scripts and mime acting to perfectly condense and describe the original Star Wars trilogy in one hour. From the way that Charles uses his body to portray the different space craft, his arms to visually describe the opening credits and a disco ball and some stage lights to dazzle the audience when both Death Stars are destroyed, we were pretty much laughing all the way though. Peppered throughout the performance are small jokes such as Obi Wan Kenobi’s nose doing a Pinocchio when he tells Luke that his father was betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader to Han Solo asking why Leia kept of kissing Luke in the manner that she did, seeing as he is her twin.

However, despite all of this people were walking out before the end of the show. This was really sad as Charles Ross’ performance was funny and engaging. The first couple left as he was about to kick start Return of the Jedi. In fact Charles stopped the show to make light of the situation, reminding people that he’d picked the most obvious title he could think of that best describes the show One Man Star Wars. The next lot of people left just before the end of episode VI. Really stupid as they missed his Mark Hamil realisation that his last words were “Father, I won’t leave you” and that he’d never work in something as successful again.

Why did these people leave? My guess would be that they were chav scum holiday makers who had no sense of imagination or actually what they’d bought tickets for. There were still plenty of people who enjoyed Charles Ross in the One Man Star Wars show, as evidenced by the laughing in the audience.

After Charles Ross finished the final act, he sat on the stage and explained how he started with a small comedy sketch which snowballed into performing the show to four thousand people at a convention, invited to do so by Lucas Films. How he thought that Lucas would shut him down, but was embraced and allowed to continue the One Man Star Wars show (25% of the takings going to Lucas Film). And also how he started and One Man Lord of the Rings show, which Ian McKellen saw and stamped his seal of approval, only for someone (I forget who) to slap him with a cease and desist order. Charles Ross remarked that it was probably something to do with the timing and The Lord of the Rings musical about to start its run, and looked what happened to that…

I hope Charles Ross wasn’t too despondent with how he perceived the show went. Torquay is a small seaside town that is beset each summer by the worse hive of scum and villainy.

Those of us who live here all year round and are true sci-fi nerds knew what we were letting ourselves in for, and we had a fantastic time.

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In one of my previous blog posts, I described (probably at great length), my dislike of bugs. Especially the ones with a sting in the tail. It all stems from being attacked by a swarm of bees or wasps (blacked out at the time so I can’t remember) when I was seven years old while on holiday in Cyprus. This encounter, even now, has me running every time I see one near me. I can’t help myself, but this instinct has kept me stung-free for 27 years.

Last night, that all changed.

We’ve been having some glorious weather here in Torbay and as such, I’ve been lounging around in a pair of shorts and t-shirt. Last night was a particularly humid evening as I was sat in front of my lap top while watching Top Gear (was that ending the best ever?). I was wearing fairly skimpy shorts and I felt something brush against a bit of leg hair, so I looked down to MY WORSE FUCKING NIGHTMARE!!!

Crawling around on my leg was a wasp, so I did what any one with a near hysteric fear of wasps did, I leapt off the sofa yelling while trying to flick the evil chitinous insect of my person. Unfortunately, as I stood up, my shorts which where slightly hitched by from sitting, fell over the wasp. The evil little fucker, who by the way wasn’t invited to sit on me, decided to sting me, on the back of the leg… Below my arse cheek…

As it was mid sting, I ripped my shorts off in complete panic, scaring Drew with my cries as he probably thought I was going to sexually attack him (I was now naked from below the waist). As the shorts hit the carpet, so too did the wasp, dead. I must’ve knocked it hard in my panic and killed it.

After some loving care and attention from Drew, who applied some antiseptic cream, I picked the wasp up and put in the bin. Can’t have my dog chewing on it after all. Even then it stung like a bitch and it still does this morning.

Finally, even though I detest wasps and bees, I always try to guide them outside through a window or door and took no pleasure from the death of the little stinger. Evil fucking thing!

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You can find the strangest things while surfing the internet and this brings together the two food groups that I like the most, sweet junk food and savoury junk food. What the hell am I talking about and what’s it got to do with Google? Well, let me explain… To celebrate the birthday of the head of the cafe staff at Google NYC’s cafeteria they served Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburgers, a.k.a Luther Burgers.

Now I’ve developed a thing for Krispy Kreme donuts after attending a training course in London near Liverpool Street Station and also discovering a store at Paddington Station. I just love the choice you can get, with various fillings and toppings and all that sugar. Lush.

I also love burgers, especially when topped with a slice or two of cheese. Also the plainer the better, it should have fried onions (optional), the meat patty, cheese, tomato ketchup and the bun. That’s it! Lettuce and sliced tomato is just wrong as it’s adding healthy ingredients. That’s why I have to get two cheeseburgers instead of a quarter pounder with cheese, Big Mac or Whopper. Bacon is okay as it’s meat and so are onion rings (in the bun with everything else not just the side).

Now I’ve been inspired to try out a Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburger. Pictured below are the burgers from the Google NYC cafeteria. See why I want to work there, even if only in cafeteria. Now all I have to do is consider if I should combine it with my ultimate favourite snack and get a chocolate topped Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburger.

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Drew and I had a bit of a busy time last week, what with seeing The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Hancock and also Bill Bailey at the Eden Project on Friday night. I’ve had a long weekend, taking Friday off so I could get me one of those fancy new iPhone 3G that everyone wanted.

So Friday morning involved me getting up at the crack of Drew, showering and debating which of the two nearest O2 stores I should try. I decided on the one in Newton Abbot as it’s out of the bay and a smaller town. I remarked to Drew that one of two things would happen.

1. I would be the only person there sad enough to turn up early
2. I wouldn’t be there early enough to get my hands on one to take with me.

So I jumped into the car and made my way through the back lanes (of which I am an expert) to the town that is Newton Abbot, or as Drew fondly refers to as “Newton Armpit”. Having parked my car at the free parking place that is the local hospital (everybody does it), I was amazed at how quiet it was whilst walking through the town centre. Perhaps I was sad enough to turn up that early. The two O2 stores closest to me were due to open at 9am, not the 8:02am time of most of the other stores. I walked past a Car Phone Warehouse, no queue, so I was optimistic that I’d be at least in the first 5.

No. Including the parents I came in at at number 13, not a good sign. It soon transpired that everyone in the queue though the store was due to open at 8:02am. So I had at least an hour and twenty minute wait before I would even be let into the store. Now lucky for me, the guy in two places in front of me had had enough and decided that he had to get to work. He decided this 10 minutes before opening time. Stupid, but hey, I moved one place closer to my dream of having the latest shiny shiny from Apple. Now I could turn this into an incredibly detailed blog as to what happened next, but I won’t. Instead I’ll present them it as a short bulleted list.

1. Store opened at 9am
2. First couple of people ID’d and let into store
3. Lady with clipboard starts to inform people wanting to upgrade that the system is down, so taking reservations on a come first, served first basis.
4. Eventually I’m let into store to play with new iPhone and wait my turn to be processed.
5. My turn.
6. Told that manual activation is occurring so alt hough I’ll get an iPhone (HOORAH), I won’t be able to use it as a phone until following day.
7. Seems O2 can’t set up a debit on a charge card, had to give Drew’s bank details… WTF!
8. Heard my customer service guy tell lady with clipboard that he’s just sold the last 16GB model… To me (HOORAH)
9. Details taken, payment taken and I’m taking my iPhone home.
10. Start playing with new iPhone (WOO HOO)!

Of course, I have been experiencing the same problems plagued by other O2 customers, namely as of writing this post I’m still waiting for the phone to be activated. However, with a trip to London it served me well on the iPod and Safari (using WI-FI) side of things. I’m now waiting on O2 to call me back, but it’s not the best of starts with a new phone operator.

Should I have taken up 3’s offer of a Nokia N95 8GB? Not bloody likely!

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I needed to use the word “Frak” in a post I was putting together on here and I wanted to double check the accepted spelling. No point is calling myself a nerd if I can’t get my facts straight. While I was searching, I came across this rather interesting article on Wikipedia’s website.

Frack or frak is a bowdlerised version of fuck first used in the original Battlestar Galactica series. In the “re-imagined” version it appears with greater frequency and with the revised spelling “frak”, as the producers wanted to make it a four-letter word. In that framework it seems to function as a substitute for “fuck” in several different forms, as an interjection (”Frak!”), inquisitive idiom (”What the frak?”), verb (”You’re not still frakking Dualla are you?”), adjective (”Get your motherfrakking hands off me!”), a noun (”You miserable frak”) or in words (”What a clusterfrak”).

Gosh, I don’t remember it being used in the original series, but then I haven’t seen an episode for many years. I do love the way the new series of Battlestar Galactica is using it to convey the emotional need to vent using expletives. I think it was in the penultimate episode of mid-season 4 when Colonel Saul Tigh “Motherfraker” with such venom, that I finally came to like the use of “frak” as TV friendly alternative to “fuck”. Farscape’s “Frell”, though intended to be used instead of “fuck”, never had the same intensity as the word it was replacing even if you knew what the characters were trying to express.

Frak has its uses elsewhere too, including it seems within a certain Swedish furniture manufacturers catalogue of products.

Fräck (spelled with the umlaut ä) is also the product name of a shaving mirror produced by IKEA, a multinational home products retailer. Since most IKEA product names are in Swedish, fräck is the Swedish word for audacious, shameless or bold (while frack, without ä, would translate to tailcoat). In the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, a mirror of this type is installed in the cabin of William Adama.

Which came first though, the mirror or Battlestar Galactica? It’s not the first time IKEA have given their furniture an amusing name. Drew and I had a number of ‘Jerker’ office desks, which we fondlingly referred to as our “Jerk-Off” desks. Of course, seeing how we’re Gay Sci-Fi Nerds who spend a lot of time in front of the Internet, this might not have a wise thing to converse to others over a dinner party.

Frak has seemed to find its place in modern culture now as evidenced by its use in the below mediums.

The word has recently been referenced numerous times in popular culture including in Dilbert, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, Robot Chicken, Scrubs, the English dub of Crayon Shin Chan, The OC and in Marvel Comics’ World War Hulk: Prologue. Star Wars uses this word, but not often. It also appears once in the television series Batman Beyond, in an episode entitled Final Cut.

Surprisingly Star Wars and Batman Beyond have both used Frak, in what I thought we more geared towards a younger audience. Now that La Georgina has offended the old fans with the new trilogy, does he intend to corrupt the young with subliminal swearing too?

During the Battlestar Galactica panel at the 2008 New York Comic Con, SCI FI Channel programming executive Mark Stern had this to say about the word: “The thing is, they’ve done SO much with that word, it’s almost like, beyond. I just was reading a script the other day that had ‘gagglefrak’ in it. Gagglefrak. Okay, I think you’re done, if you’re at gagglefrak.”

“Gagglefrak”! Who the FRAK came up with “Gagglefrak”! Methinks the scriptwriter who came up with that needs to be motherfraking fired!

Wikipedia

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I have an aversion to bugs. Six, eight and of multiple legged variety and it all stems from a holiday on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus when I was 7 years old. There I was, enjoying a summer holiday for more than a week or two, six to be precise and on a day out with family at a war museum. One of the things that caught my eye was an anti aircraft gun. Well I say gun, what I mean is a huge fuck off cannon, certainly to me at that age. So I did what any normal child with an over active imagination would do, I stood behind that cannon and started shooting down the enemy. Whether this was the other half of the island’s inhabitants, I can’t remember. It was more likely to be Imperial TIE Fighters.

Well, imagine my surprise to be suddenly no where near the cannon and in the arms of my aunt, crying. Once they ascertained that I hadn’t been bitten by a snake, my uncle discovered that there was wasps’ nest in the barrel of the cannon. To this day, I can remember NOT remembering what happened to me, I simply blacked it all out. Suffice to say that I had been attacked by a number of the little winged bastards, all over the face and one hand. It wasn’t a pretty sight and I must have looked a bit like Joseph Merrick with all the stares I was getting. Of course I got over my injuries by the end of the end, but my scars run deep…

So you can understand why I’m glad I wasn’t in Exeter enjoying a bite to eat at Bella Italia…

Bees cause a buzz in city centre

Police had to cordon off a Devon street after a swarm of bees landed on a chair outside a restaurant.

It happened outside Bella Italia on Exeter High Street to the amazement of people enjoying a bite to eat in the open air.

The city council has called in a local beekeeper to move the swarm to a safer location.

Swarming is mainly a spring phenomenon but can happen at other times, depending on the location.

Local beekeeper John Easton was called in to gather the swarm and take them away.

“My personal view is that the queen runs out of energy and she stops,” he said.

“And when the queen stops the rest of the bees stop with her.”

BBC News

A few days earlier and I could have been in a lot of trouble as I was meeting fellow Twitter users and shopping at the Apple Store. And while the queen bee was stopping for a rest, this queen would have been running for the hills!

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Well I thought I’d be the one to start blogging, though seeing as I haven’t shown Drew how to use WordPress, it’s no big surprise.

So my first entry is about a former Torquay chap who did done well in the USA many years ago.

Former Torquay resident and DJ has had years of work recognised with a lifetime achievement award by one of America’s biggest music bodies. Richard Blade, formerly of Chelston who was known as Richard Shepherd in his South Devon days, was surprised to be given the prestigious award at an American DJ Association gathering.

Richard explained: “I was asked to be the featured speaker at the annual meeting of ADJA and at the end of my speech they surprised me by presenting me with their first ever Lifetime Achievement award.

“I was blown away by this, as ADJA is one of the biggest trade music associations in the States, and to give a person from Torquay this award was phenomenal.”

Richard moved to America in the late 1970s to become a DJ and television presenter.

Over the following decades he worked extensively in radio, television and film, being the morning drive DJ on Los Angeles’ KROQ, hosting a daily TV show called MV3, and starring in a number of films including Girls Just Want To Have Fun with Helen Hunt and Sarah Jessica Parker, Spellcaster with Adam Ant and 101 with Depeche Mode.

In 2003 he joined with Sirius Satellite Radio doing their nationwide morning show on First Wave Ch 22, and in 2006 wrote and co-starred in the film Long Lost Son with Gabrielle Anwar and Chace Crawford.

His high profile role has also recently brought him into contact with the likes of singers James Blunt and Natasha Bedingfield.

Richard added: “The award was a surprise and it was very touching.

“To be called an inspiration and positive role model is something my mum and dad would have been proud to hear.”

When I read this story it brought back memories on my younger days when I used to watch ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’ on video, over and over again. Having a bit of a local connection to it just made me smile and that you can come from a small place and end up doing so well. I’ve got the film on DVD, does that make me a camp cliche?

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