Another Rant and Rave

Rave: LivingTV, for The L Word and Joan of Arcadia - especially the latter, and especially since they had the good sense to repeat it once a week in primetime after stripping it weekdays at 6pm. This series deserves more attention in the UK, and if we're lucky it'll get its second run at the time it's on now. And I have to admit I'm even more eager for it now that Hilary Duff's guesting on one episode - although it looks very much as if she's the Jeff Bridges to Haylie's Beau (Haylie is on it for several episodes). Which will be disappointing for some male fans (Hilary Duff and Amber Tamblyn, you know?).

Another Rant and Rave

Rant: Dom Robinson. He is a clueless dickhead on uk.media.tv.misc who is so stupid and so self-opinionated he could be a professional critic. One of those people I would dearly love to strap down, force his head forward so he has to look in a mirror, and then jump and down on his head so he has to watch his head be bashed in... I hate the fucker so much that I simply refuse to post on any thread that he's on, because his mere presence lowers the intelligence of a thread by about 60 IQ points. Beneath contempt, even by Usenet standards.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

So I finally find a cinema showing Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow way over in Romford, look up instructions on how to get there... and I go off in the wrong damn direction and don't realise it until too late. Come on, Prince Charles - show it one more time (on the weekend, preferably) or I'll have to get it out on video. And I really wanted to see this one in a cinema...

On top of that, I lost my notebook, complete with outlines. Most of them I already transferred to other copies, but the Lucy Pinder one (in addition to not being remotely finished) was still in there. So now I'm going to have to set that one down all over again. F.U.C.K.

Yep, Another Damn List Of Women The Compiler'll Never Get To Sleep With... Just Deal.

For a few years now, MuffinMan and myself have been putting together an FHM-type rundown of what Esquire calls "Women We Love" (they used to go up on my website before it became hard to maintain - it was that or stories, and the latter won). These things are kind of hard for me to do, to be honest; just ranking three women from top to bottom is rough, but ranking 50 or whatever... the solution is to put them in alphabetical order. The full 100 comes up later, but in the meantime, here's our 50 so far (so you can figure out who likes who, my choices are in bold).

Jessica Alba
Sophie Anderton
Rosanna Arquette
Drew Barrymore
Mischa Barton
Kim Basinger
Halle Berry
Monica Bellucci
Brooke Burke
Mariah Carey
Laetitia Casta
Holly Marie Combs
Cindy Crawford
Cameron Diaz
Kirsten Dunst
Jennifer Garner
Lauren Graham
Salma Hayek
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Elizabeth Hurley
Jamelia
Scarlett Johansson
Angelina Jolie
Nicole Kidman
Heidi Klum
Keira Knightley
Beyonce Knowles
Lindsay Lohan
Elle Macpherson
Josie Maran
Maria Menounos
Julianne Moore
Petra Nemcova
Gwyneth Paltrow
Lucy Pinder
Natalie Portman
Raven-Symone
Louise Redknapp
Rebecca Romijn
Nicollette Sheridan
Jessica Simpson
Britney Spears
Gwen Stefani
Charlize Theron
Uma Thurman
Liv Tyler
Gabrielle Union
Estella Warren
Naomi Watts
Serena Williams

See also http://www.thebabeindex.com/Cindylover1969/ for a purely me-centric view...

First In, Not Exactly Last Out... Crank Up "Timeline"!

One of the reasons I get to work so damn early is so I can listen to stuff I want to listen to.

Basically, I'm a soundtrack geek(ish). You don't hear much about them because it's the kind of thing that society doesn't indulge much, not the way they indulge sports freaks (no offence - some of my best friends...). Soundtrack fans are pretty much down there with fans of "cult" series, except that you're unlikely to find anyone determined to adopt a Goldsmithian ponytail or grow a Christopher Young-type beard.

Not that I don't enjoy listening to stuff the rest of the world likes, but I'd really much rather download the theme from The Iron Horse (and I have) than listen to The Streets or whatever; the trouble is, pretty much no one at work goes along with this, so every day I take a different CD to work and play it before anyone else comes in. Oh, I did try to play them with others around, but the tossers never got it (Marco Beltrami's Scream didn't go down well)... and why do they always assume you have Titanic? For the record, no I don't - I loved the movie, but James Horner's music has been done before by him. If you want good Titanic-linked music, check out Raise the Titanic! (And no, you can't buy the OST because John Barry's music was never released, although there's a re-recording available.) Even when I brought in the programme from Jerry Goldsmith's 75th birthday concert earlier this year, it didn't escape my notice that they commented more on his being Jewish. (I was off work on holiday the week he passed away - one of a shocking number of composers to leave us this year [Fred Karlin, David Raksin, Piero Picconi, Elmer Bernstein, Gil Melle, Michel Colombier, Carlo Rustichelli...] - and I doubt they commented when it was on the news. In fact, I doubt they even heard the news - probably too busy talking about bloody EastEnders and fucking Coronation Street...)

I guess I like the stuff because it's right between stuff everyone's heard of and stuff no one's heard; it's not exactly mainstream, but neither is it truly out-of-the-way. And also, a lot of it's damned good... of course a lot of it stinks, but what else is new? I regret taking my big sister's advice and taping a lot of other stuff in the 1990s - now I've got a lot of tapes with stuff I have to fast-forward. People just don't get it. Ah well, you can keep your Embraces and your Coldplays and your Christina Aguileras; I've got my scores and themes, and we're all happy.

Oh yeah, and the Timeline in question is Goldsmith's unused score, not the Brian Tyler replacement (which is good in its own ways).

Random Rants And Raves

Rant: December will mark 10 years I've been in my current job, and I've seen a lot of people come and go. But one particular person who I would love to see go is Esther Ampofo - or as I privately call her, Esther A Mofo. (Rimshot!) Loud, annoying, thinks she's God's gift... as opposed to Karen Vinton, a girl I liked so much I even wrote her into a Cindy Inc. ("Last Woman Standing," as the maid with the hots for Angelina Jolie... which Karen expressed in real life, even unto the two of us going to see Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle Of Life. Not a pleasant experience apart from getting to spend two hours in close proximity to her - and the music, but that's another post). Sadly, it's Karen who quit this year and not Esther... irritating on a level of my sister's boyfriend.

Rave: Michael Giacchino. For three years, he's been providing sterling musical accompaniment to Jennifer Garner kicking butt one moments and wiggling it the next on Alias (and bless J.J. Abrams for pushing to have the inevitable albums be all score - much as I adore Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I wish Joss Whedon could have been similarly insistent regarding Christophe Beck); now he's got his first movie assignment, and with The Incredibles he scored in both senses of the term - swinging and exciting by turns. For a series that's never been more than a true cult show, its participants sure seem to be going places. (And no songs, another rarity for a Western animated feature.)

Open Message To Jennifer O.

Victoria was too hard on you. If she wants to ban people, can't she ban them for being egotistical and/or crap writers? The Fan, Melswo, Andrew Troy Keller, Jib... now those are the types who deserve Moron Strength Ban.

I'm An Attention-Seeking Cunt... Get Me On TV!

It's very much to the credit of the American TV audience that I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! never caught on there the way it has in the UK. I mean, what exactly is the point of this or almost any reality show?

These things are almost on a level with the Ricki/Jerry/Sally Jessy/Dr. Phil/Trisha type of show; I admit that the aspect of such shows that most annoys me (you have all these people bringing out their problems to a studio audience and all the viewers at home, and at the end of the hour they still have the same damn problems - they aren't any closer to solving them, and all they have to show for it is the audience figures for better or worse - worse in Trisha's case, since she's leaving ITV... or maybe not, since she's transferring to Five) isn't here, but there's nothing there except the same reason people buy those celebrity magazines, especially the ones that sneer at celebrities for having flaws just like the rest of us (ha ha ha, Britney's got zits). The viewers might tell off the people taking part for doing anything to be on TV, but if they're so much better why don't they just watch something else? For heaven's sake, ITV2 even has ROLLING COVERAGE OF THE FUCKING THING!!! About the only good reason I can think of for anyone sad enough to tune in to the thing (and which a number of newspaper editors are hoping for) would be in the hope that one of the ladies'll obligingly strip off. Damn them for bringing Sophie Anderton on board - not because she's ugly, but because she isn't. But will the lure of the willing-to-undress Sophie persuade me to take a look?

Probably not - even with Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton, Newlyweds and The Simple Life are hardly essential viewing. So I'll continue to hide my head whenever mention of it comes up, and hope for it to go away eventually.

And people wonder why many Brits prefer to watch American, but that's another rant...

Movies and Delusion

Memo to the UK Film Council - no matter what you say, Troy and the Harry Potter movies are not British films. Five Children and It and Fat Slags are British films. Accept it.

Update...

In spite of being a powerfully-voiced good-looking blonde with an absolutely amazing body, Anastacia is actually being replaced in the above story by Sheryl Crow. But she'll be back...

Diaries

I used to keep diaries... couldn't focus long enough to write anything down in them. So much easier now... so much faster to vent at the damn Evening Standard for not shutting up about the Olympics! Sport is of no interest to me except for the following reasons: the music John Williams wrote for NBC's coverage of the Olympiad years ago, and ladies involved (good-looking ones, mind). Basically, unless it involves the Williams sisters, Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova playing while naked for instance (or maybe Steffi Graf - yes, I know she's retired...), I'm not interested.

The Stories So Far...

These are the pieces of celebrity erotica that I'm working on at the time of typing... the newest instalment of Cindy Inc. ("Kaia's, Alexa's, Flynn's and Chloe's Moms Have Got It Going On" - that would be Cindy Crawford, Christie Brinkley, Elle Macpherson and Kathy Ireland respectively), The Passion of the Bellucci (starring Monica Bellucci, duh), Eternal Slumber of the Spotless Babe (starring Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff and Jewel, and inspired by some postings on CSSA), The Adventures of Juicy Lucy (about glamour model Lucy Pinder), and two collaborations, one with Souche Tranin about Laetitia Casta and Virginie Ledoyen and one with Hater about Jamelia and Anastacia.... phew!

Cindy Inc. and other works in my life

Created when I tried to respond to another writer's blog, this is where I share my thoughts on my favourite things...