Here’s one for you;

What do you get if you cross a load of incredible characters, with a production house that wants to please its target audience instead of rinse them for every last cent?

You get the Avengers movie. A movie that Marvel should have every damn right to be proud of. A movie that Joss Whedon should be proud of directing. And a movie that the cast should be proud of starring in.

It’s at this point that I should offer a précis of the story, to give you some feel for the arc contained within, but to be honest there’s no point. There’s a bunch of heroes, there’s a common enemy, there are hardships on the way, culminating in an epic battle that causes much of a city to become structurally unsound, and so uninhabitable for possibly years after.

To be honest, that’s the least you expect from the a movie like the Avengers (or Avengers Assemble, to give it its correct, yet silly, name). We seen all of the preceding films that have led here, we know how they go, we just want the characters to be faithful. And we want that Stan Lee cameo.

And by the hammer of Thor, they are. And yep, he’s there (I’ll leave it for you to spot him though).

The point of the Avengers films has been to make movies that the fans would be proud of, and that’s been their unmitigated success to this point. Yes, they’ve been over the top, but in the way only a bright, moralistic Marvel story can be. The good guy will always win at the end of the final reel, but it’s how you get there that’s important.

In the case of Avengers Assemble, we have a film that has its constituent parts in the right places, but with a razor-sharp script pushing it along; dialogue zinging at you like arrows from Hawkeye’s bow. Most of that dialogue belongs- obviously- to Robert Downey Jr. effectively playing himself in the role of Tony Stark, but the other guys get their fair share of good one-liners. The Hulk gets one of the best lines in the whole damn movie.

And speaking of the Hulk…

As I said, the point of this film was to please the fans. I’m a 31 year old man. I should know better, but I swear I’ve never been as excited as when Banner hulks up in the heat of battle, finally kicking off the final reel.

Mostly, I’ve heard only praise for Avengers, but I have heard a little dissent towards it, based on the dull middle act, which I’d like to address. Yes, the middle section is quiet, and yes, you do wonder whether they could have cut a huge swathe of it, in favour of more action, but I put this to you; did Michael Bay include similar light and shade in his Transformers movies? No. And were those movies, with their endless action sequences, utterly draining, leaving you numb to the action by the end, and the poorer for it? Yes. Believe it or not, the Avengers brings subtlety. It’s paced well enough to give you a sense of empathy towards even the smallest of the characters, leaving you utterly enthralled in the final act.

The only real disappoint for me was in the choice of display format. I’m of the firm belief that damn near everything should be played on an IMAX screen, because where cinema’s concerned, bigger is almost certainly better. However, I have to take issue with the 3D. As far as Avengers is concerned, I genuinely took no gain from it. It was utterly pointless, adding no physical depth, and not making me feel more immersed at all. In fact, I felt quite the opposite, being away that the action was blurring, because I was moving my head so much, this mis-aligning the glasses. More knowledgable people than I have argued this point more eloquently than I could ever do, but 3D is nothing more than a gimmick to force people to watch movies in the cinema. That they charge extra for the privilege is nothing short of a scam. If this was standard IMAX, it would have been so much nicer to watch.

I laughed like a lunatic, I squealed like a child, I was genuinely scared when the Hulk first appeared; a ball of uncontrollable rage in an enclosed environment. As far as I’m concerned, these are all the touchstones of a brilliant summer blockbuster, and fair play to Joss Whedon for nailing it so well.

It’s on days like today that the curtain is drawn back on Twitter, and you begin to see it for what it is. You begin to notice patterns and themes; the way the same things happen the same way every time.

Today it emerged that Tory MP Louise Mensch had been receiving frankly misogynist abuse from a handful of intellectually stunted men. She favourited some of it, Grace Dent was alerted to it, tweeted the offending link, causing Twitter to go into a meltdown of feminist rage. This wouldn’t have been so bad, but then the Independent picked up the story and ran with it.

Now, if all of the abuse was abuse, then it would have been fair enough. Hating someone for what they are, be it man, woman, black, white, straight or gay, is a reprehensible way to live your life. But in amongst the threats of sexual violence was this;

“If @LouiseMensch supports @rupertmurdoch and News International, will she be doing Page 3?”

That’s Jared Earle, a chap who I’ve followed for a good two years now. In all the time I’ve followed him, I’ve never once seen him post anything inflammatory, or above all, not a reasonable point. We don’t agree on everything, but by and large, I’ve considered him to be an excellent follow, and I’d recommend him to everyone.

What Jared posted was clearly irony. He wasn’t actually suggesting that Mensch do a Page 3 shoot, more pointing out that Mensch toadying up to Murdoch, and News Corp. and their continued use of (in his words) “that misogyny masked as tradition”, is at best misguided, at worst, hypocrisy.

But that didn’t matter to the select band of influential liberals who effectively run Twitter in the UK. The likes of Caitlin Moran and the aforementioned Dent, who have hundreds of thousands of followers, who won’t bother looking into context before retweeting and getting up in arms about today’s issue.

And so the Indy ran the story, which was then picked up by the Telegraph, both of which quoted Jared’s post (although the Telegraph at least refrained from including his name). So Jared, taken out of context, goes from being a sardonic wit, to being a misogynist in the national press. For the record, Jared doesn’t appear to be particularly annoyed about it, which makes him a better man than me, because I’d be fuming.

It’s precisely this kind of thing that’s really beginning to irritate me about Twitter. We jeer at Facebook users for being disconnected from important matters, but there are days when FB, with it’s endless banal updates, is far preferable to the continuous reactionary bluster that you see on Twitter. The likes of the Kony 2012 campaign turned out to be misguided nonsense, but before anyone bothered to look, millions of people had watched the video and retweeted it. Twitter appears on the face of it, to be liberal leaning, and indeed, it is. But the fervour with which people fail to spot fault in the logic of the influential few, causing yet another outrage, has truly become tiring.

It’s of no interest to them, and they won’t miss me, but I’m going to stop following Moran and Dent. They’re entertaining, downright funny women, but it’s just not working anymore. It’s not their fault, mind. They’re just normal people, like you and I, but if I make an error in judgement, only 500 people will see it, and most will ignore it. They make an error, and 250k people mirror that error multiplies, until good people like Jared become labelled a misogynist because his point is taken out of context.

And Twitter should be more fun than that.

American Pie, right.

You know the drill by now. Four friends and that lad with learning difficulties and the slutty mother meet up for some plausible reason, they have a few drinks, something awkward happens, they have a few more drinks, fail to have sex, have a few more drinks, sober up, realise a life lesson, have a few drinks, then get laid.

Sorry if there were spoilers there.

Here’s the thing, Reunion doesn’t break any boundaries. It doesn’t offer a hitherto unnoticed angle of social commentary. It makes a slight reference to what could only be described as the intended rape of a drunk girl, WHICH DOESN’T HAPPEN, BECAUSE THAT’S BAD, MMKAY? It laughs at breasts, and jokes involving shit, and let’s be honest, pretty much replays Porky’s, or Animal House, but without the bonus of John Belushi.

And you know what? That’s fine by me.

I liked the first three AP movies. I laughed, because they were supposedly the same age as me, and while I never once stuck my dick in a pie (pasties aren’t pies, right?), I could empathise with those guys. I was terrible with women, worse when I was drunk, and swore all the time. So those movies were for me. And they grew up with me.

Then the producers got it into their heads to make the series shit, and around 47 straight-to-Netflix movies were pumped out, occasionally featuring the almighty Eugene Levy’s eyebrows. We forget about these films, because they were a stinking pile of rat shit. A lot of rats went into the making of that pile of rat shit, that’s how big the pile was.

But I digress. Point is, Jim, Kevin, Chris, Finch, and their friend with learning difficulties are fun and relatable, and more importantly, more bankable to the studio. So here they are, back in East Great Falls for their school reunion. Jim is still married to that one from Buffy, and they have a kid, who’ll no doubt end up fucking pastry, Kevin is still a whiney dick, but now he’s a whiney dick with a piss-weak beard (causing an excellent vagina joke from Stifler), Chris is still entirely forgettable, and Finch is still the coolest one there, and still gently lusting after Stifler’s mum’s magnificent breasts. Oh yeah, and Stifler seems to have received more blows to the head than ever before.

It’s a great format, playing on both your empathy for the characters, and your rose-tinted nostalgia for when you saw the first one in the cinema, or what you can remember, because you were too busy being knuckles deep in your date/fending off the amorous advances of your date (delete as applicable). It’s a familiar film, with certain scenes, and even dialogue being lifted almost wholesale from the original. But something about that is smart. If you laughed at it the first time, then you’ll smile with fond remembrance this time.

Special mention must be made of Eugene Levy. That man is a genius, and plays by far the best character in the series. His eyebrows have a SAG card of their own. Jim’s Dad is awkward, lovable, realistic, and just trying to be himself, against all odds. He steals every single scene he’s in, sells it in Cash Converters, then steals it back again. If you’ve never seen Levy in any of Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries, then I’m sorry, but your movie viewing is all the poorer for it, and to be frank, you’re a dullard.

All of the main characters are back, some in far smaller roles than others, but they’re all there, so you mentally make the role call, and are satisfied by the time the credits roll. So yeah, this is a movie designed to wring as much cynical emotion from you as possible, but it’s fine, because it’s fun.

The soundtrack isn’t as good as before, but that’s probably more indicative of the state of pop music today than anything. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Stooshe covering Ini Kamoze’s Here Comes The Hotstepper?! Who, in the name of Christ and Herod on tandem, are Stooshe? Are why use this abomination? Surely it would have been cheaper to get Kamoze’s original on, BECAUSE IT’S DAMN NEAR PERFECT POP MUSIC.

Anyway.

All of this is based on my having loved the originals, and having watched them over and over. If you’re new to the franchise because you’re too young, or whatever, then that’s hardly my fault. You should have been born sooner, you lazy bastard.

In short, American Reunion made me laugh hard enough and often enough for people to assume that I’m not firing on all cylinders. Regardless of the cynical, cash reaping undertones, the way I see it, that’s a successful movie.

Go and see it if the idea of an 18 year old man putting his hand in the freshly laid shit of a 31 year old man makes you laugh. But not if it makes you horny. Seriously dude, you shouldn’t really be going out in public.

It certainly made me laugh. But not horny.

Never horny.

I was in Southampton the other day, visiting friends who were in for the day with Queen Mary 2. As such, I was wandering up and down the high street for several hours. There was a time when I could have done this with very little provocation; indeed, it was just shopping. But nowadays there’s a furtive since of impending doom. The cause?

Chuggers.

You know the bastards; Over familiar, hippy-looking student types, trying desperately to get you to sign up to a direct debit promising £5 a month to yet another charity you’ve never heard of. These people have no idea that I’m wearing headphones in order to isolate myself from reality, with the added bonus of having a legitimate excuse to ignore them. Oh no, not for them the social niceties of not talking to people who are clearly trying to avoid you, they’re in there like bloody vultures, asking you whether you CARE ABOUT CHILDREN BEING HURT. Well yes, I care, and if you shake a tin under my nose, I’ll do my best to drop a little spare change in. If you try to blackmail me into signing up to a direct debit that I simply can’t afford, then I’m sorry, but I’m going to tell you to fuck off.

Be assured, I’m not telling you to fuck off because I’m an unpleasant person, I’m telling you, because you’re one of 9 chuggers on the high street today, and I’ve had to furtively scoot around every one of you. I’ve had to pretend to be sending a tweet, I’ve had to look intently at a shop display I have absolutely no interest in, I’ve had to act unconvincingly as if I’ve seen a friend a short distance away, all because I *really* want to avoid telling you to fuck off. Alas, you’ve read none of these cues, and have jumped on me with an over friendly “Alright chap, you look friendly”. And yes, I am friendly, but not when I have to embarrassingly avoid your question as to why I don’t care about children being harmed, or why I don’t care about climate change.

I do care, but to be honest, I’m not going to stand there and debate it with you, when I’ve got other things to do. I’m sorry, but I’m going to tell you to fuck off. I’m going to tell you that so you remember who I am, and don’t attempt to invade my personal space again today.

Now, let us compare this with the Royal British Legion. The RBL are my preferred charity for armed services veterans. For various reasons I shan’t get into here, I can’t stand the Help For Heroes charity, and refuse to give them any money. Churlish, maybe, but it’s my money, and I don’t have a lot of it.

The RBL, however, do an upstanding job without ever making a song and dance.

I had cause to visit my local Tesco a few days ago, and stood there in the vestibule between the two sets of doors, were two representatives, smartly turned out in their navy blue uniforms, serenely holding a collection pot each, politely thanking those who paused to donate their change; myself included.

And here’s the difference, here’s why no one signs up to a chugger’s charity; the RBL don’t push you. They’re respectful, they know that you’re under no obligation to donate.

Now, I’m a slack blogger. Not for me, the world of fact checking, and number crunching, so I’m going to assume that the RBL makes more than which charity have a high street presence this week. I’m going to assume this, because I don’t know one person who’s actually signed up to a direct debit, but I’m willing to bet that every one of you reading this has dropped some money in a pot at some point in the last few months.

Take note of that, chuggers, and please, fuck off.

I was bullied at school.

Well, bullied is probably too strong a word for the endless, degrading shit I went through, at the hands of people who didn’t know better.

I was the butt of a lot of bullshit at school.

Over the years, I’ve probably amplified it in my head to be far more than it was. Thinking logically, it was no more than the occasional piss-take from a few people, but it came at a time when I was learning who I was; as it does for everyone who has a hard time at school.

I was (still am) overweight, I wore (and still wear) glasses, read a lot, and had crap hair, so I was a magnet for it from some of the cool lads who were on the school football team. I’d get called Penfold, and frequently put down because of how I appeared. I tried not to let it get to me, because there were bigger things to worry about, but shit like that hangs around. Confidence was never something I was overly blessed with, but I made a good show of pretending otherwise, and have done ever since.

Thing is, when I say that shit like that hangs around, I mean to the extent that here I am- at the ripe old age of 31- and I still worry about it. I still almost completely lack confidence in myself, and suffer from incredibly low self-esteem. I’m convinced that it’s what led to me gaining more and more weight- simply because I don’t care enough about myself to bother. As a result, I lack drive and ambition, choosing the path of least resistance where possible.

I’m also incredibly needy, constantly craving attention, and reassurance that I’m doing ok. Twitter is a blessing and a curse here. On the one hand, it’s gives a constant stream of interaction that I can dip into while remaining solitary. On the other, if someone unfollows me, it hits me hard, and I end up getting getting depressed, wondering what I did wrong.

All because two or three fetid shitpipes made themselves feel better about their empty, meaningless lives by targeting me.

It’s not all bad though, I suppose; The upshot is that I have an abnormally developed sense of empathy for others. I’m continually putting everyone else before me, doing favours left, right and centre, and treating people the way I’d like to be treated.

I suppose there’s no real point to this, I was just hoping that it would be cathartic. There’s no point telling your kids not to bully, because the chances are you wouldn’t notice even if they did. Why would you, they’re a beautiful cherub in your eyes. Besides, kids are evil to other kids; that’s how it is, and always will be. There’s nothing any of us can do to change that.

But there’s one thing you can do; tell your kids you love them. That means the world when you think you’re fat, ugly and useless.

This is a story about regret. Boring people say that there’s no point in having regrets, but without them, how would we ever learn? We’d end up blindly stumbling from one mistake to another, never learning anything, and wondering why we keep missing out.

My regret isn’t massive, but it’s big enough for me to want to ruminate on now.

I was on the Oasis side of the great Britpop divide. I saw Blur as nothing more than a boyband with guitars, whereas Oasis brought the rock n’ roll swagger to the party, hoovering up the coke like it was going out of fashion, getting into fights, and generally acting the way a rock star ought to. With that in mind, isn’t it any wonder that I was an Oasis fan?

And so, come the summer of ‘95, there I was with my copy of Roll With It, jeering at the Blur fans and their inferior Country House. Of course, they were to prove victorious, but that wasn’t the point.

Thing is, I was being a dick. Blur were- and still are- the superior band. Well, it’s subjective but the point is that Blur were by far the most experimental, well-rounded, better educated in the art form, and generally of a better class than Oasis. Yes, the latter rocked, but once the initial fire had died out, they didn’t have much left in the tank. Blur, however, kept going strong, until that inevitable point when Graham had had enough and buggered off to do his own thing.

My sense of regret stems from the fact that I was the perfect age to fully appreciate Blur for what they were. I could have grown up with them being my guiding force for good, and had the warm feelings I have for (What’s The Story) Morning Glory- the feelings that can only come with an album you fall in love with in your teens- for The Great Escape instead; an infinitely more appropriate album. Instead, I was seduced by the rock and roll futility of Oasis.

I suppose if I’ve learned anything from it, it’s that every band should be taken as it’s own identity, and to ignore whatever the NME tells us about fabricated rivalries.

Well, I’ve been doing the latter ever since anyway, so hey ho.

Morning all, just a quick note, this one.

So last week I posted a long, breathless piece about how well I was doing on my diet, and how pleased I was with myself. Fact is, I’ve been seriously coasting for these last few weeks; since Christmas basically.

I’ve been making lame excuses for minimal weight loss, and justifying any small gain, when the fact is, I don’t need minimal loss and small gains, I need good, healthy losses. I’m capable of losing 3.5lb a week, and so that’s what I intend to do.

Last night at Slimming World I set a target weight of 16 stone, with a target time of 12 weeks. That’s not unlikely, because I’ve just done that since September, and that’s not my final target weight, because obviously 16 stone is still considerably overweight. However a target loss of 6 stone from now feels so horribly unattainable, that it would be destructive to do so.

This may not seem like a big deal, but I’ve never set a target before; I’ve just cruised through aiming to lose weight, simply because I’ve had so much to lose. By rights, from my starting point in September, I had to lose 10 stone in order to be what a doctor would consider healthy; that’s a huge amount by anyone’s standards. So here I am, with a target of 3 stone to lose in the next 12 weeks. I don’t have to do it by then, but I want to, and it gives me a time scale to focus on.

So yeah, current weight; 19st 2lb, by Wednesday the 4th of April, I intend to be a (more) svelte 16.

Wish me luck…

So yeah, not done one of these in a while, have I? In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s how all of my posts start these days. Ah well, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Since I last posted (which was all the way back in April), I’ve been half way around the world, and gone up and down- weight wise- like a yoyo. I nearly didn’t get a valid medical certificate to embark on my second contract at sea because of my weight, and so, before I went away in May, I had managed to slim down to a record low (for me) of 20 stone. Well, a few pounds under.

Then I went away, where the food is plentiful, and certainly not cooked with health in mind. In being able to avail myself of the 24 hour buffet after work, over the course of the last two months away, I managed to put on two stone, so that neither of my suits fitted me properly, and it was actually difficult to put on my shoes.

Yeah, I felt pretty wretched when I came home in September, so I jumped straight back on the Slimming World bandwagon, and promised myself that I’d stick to it.

Well, here I am, 3 1/2 months later, and how am I doing? My first weigh-in when I got back clocked me at a record 22 stone, dead on. To say I was dismayed at that was an understatement, but at least I’d bitten the bullet and got on the scales, that was half of the battle. Since then, I’ve gone from 22st, to 18st 12lb, which is the lightest I’ve been in probably 5 years, and you know what? I feel bloody great for it.

This morning I had to pop down to Tesco to get some bananas. As you know, I’m driving now, so I’ve not been on my bike all that much (which is something I swore I’d never do, but hey ho), however, I’m driving Dad’s car, and he needed it today, so I jumped on the trusty Kona, and off I went. For anyone who’s local to me, you’ll know Applemore hill, and what an utter bastard it is. For anyone who’s not local, Applemore hill is on the journey, and it’s an utter bastard. So much so, that I’ve never managed to cycle up it without feeling like I was going to die.

Today, however, I managed it in spades, despite not having ridden my bike up a hill in a month. I can only assume that it’s the fact that I’m the lightest I’ve been in years, which has given me a massive boost towards actually sticking with it and getting to my eventual target of 13 stone.

So yeah, I have another 6 stone to lose before I’ll be truly happy with my weight, which is a massive task, but I reckon I’m up to it. Just have to stick to the plan, and keep riding that bike.

Anyway, I think I’ve typed enough, so, thank you for reading all of this nonsense.

I want to talk about broadband internet.

My first experience of broadband was when my old neighbour Iain got a 256kb line put in. I was absolutely blown away by how it worked; if the page hadn’t loaded within a few seconds, then it wasn’t going to. That was at least ten years ago, and obviously things have sped on in leaps and bounds since then. Only a couple of years ago broadband was being offered at “up to 8mbps”, and now it’s routine to see providers boasting “up to 24mbps!”

Problem is, it’s a whole crock of bullshit, isn’t it?

Take my provider, TalkTalk. According to their website, we could be getting up to 24meg, but a speed test last night showed that we were only getting 3mbps, meaning a real world download speed of around 400kbps. That’s just 1/8th of the speed we’re promised that we ‘could’ reach. In what world is that reasonable or fair? If you buy a car, you expect to get the whole damn thing, not just a steering wheel, gear stick and four wheels. If you got 1/8 of a brand new Honda Civic, you’d soon have something to say, but because broadband isn’t a tangible product, and because the average user doesn’t have a clue about bit rates, every single one of these providers gets away with it.

Now, I’m a realist, I get that it’s not always that easy to provide bandwidth, but here’s my real problem with all this; while the top speed *boasts* are increasing, the *actual* speed isn’t.

Ten years ago, a usable download speed of 400k would have been incredible. Websites would have flown along, and Limewire would have been fantastic, but ten years ago we didn’t have (as much) online gaming, or the iPlayer. We didn’t have YouTube, or the iTunes store. So we’re routinely being left with speeds that simply don’t match the demand being put on them, and I’m sick of it.

Of course, the ISPs will grumble and complain, and say that they’re doing their best, but quite frankly, their best just isn’t good enough anymore. Collectively, we spend a fortune on a service that we’re simply not getting value from, unless we live smack in the centre of a big city. What the hell are we spending our money on if we’re only getting 1/8th of what we were promised? It feels to me like they’re taking the money and running, or in Talk Talk’s case, spending it on advertising all over The X Factor, while simultaneously being the country’s most complained about ISP.

How long would I stay online for if I told Talk Talk that I was only going to pay them 1/8th of the monthly bill?

Yeah, exactly.