When you see how close the other Metrolink stations are around Salford Quays, this will just make a farcical journey even worse. Are people really that afraid of walking these days? Even in lazy London, people will routinely *walk* between stations, so why can’t we expect Mancunians and transplanted office workers to do the same thing?

While I was around there for the weekend (before my car was rudely broken into and the PIN-locked satnav device stolen by two teenagers), I filmed a quick video to show the commute…

So freedom of speech? Human rights? Naaa, who needs it when companies use Communist-era government controls to stifle people’s thoughts?

But to hear people twittering and muttering about it, apparently everyone was simply getting on down t’acid house in the second summer of lurve (1988). Except unsurprisingly, I was trapped in my parents’ bedroom probably not doing much except watching TV and imagining that simply every cool kid was getting on down t’Acid House in the big cities. And they probably were.

Personally, out of D-Mob’s ouevre, I preferred D-Mob & Cathy Dennis - C’mon get my love. And to think she went on to write some of Kylie’s greatest hits. Ahhh, the 1980s…

- merrily miming along to a superlative Pet Shop Boys track called I’m In Love With A Married Man.
- shrieking like a girl when I played a video that unexpectedly turned into one of those scary jumpy videos.

But fortunately, I’ve not yet been caught looking at things I shouldn’t have, quite like this:

Video placement paid for by ChannelBee

Anyway, skip to the end and while Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright (director) went off to do many funny things (and Pegg is the new Scotty for Star Trek), Jessica Stevenson’s career seemed to take an interesting turn.

She could have continued to mill her geek comedienne persona into all sorts of interesting things - but after a BBC-helmed comedic misfire, she seemed to turn her back on all things comedy, getting married, having three children and, of course, falling in love with David Tennant in Doctor Who: Human Nature.

Fortunately, to commemorate the American release of Spaced: The Complete Series on DVD (Americans! buy it now! It’s got commentaries and praise from the likes of Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino & Matt Stone!), the triumvirate have hit the publicity trail, complete with this video interview with Empire at Comic-Con. and I’m pleased to report that Jessica is as funny, geeky and - damn it, rude - as ever.

To recap, the Spanish basketball team pose for a pre-Olympic-Games advert making slit-eyed gestures in one of Spain’s major newspapers. Freelance Madrid-based journalist Sid Lowe points this out in the Guardian, spreading the story everywhere else with predictable outrage in English-speaking media.

To which the Spanish wonder what the fuss is about. The Spanish-language paper El Mundo debates whether the advert was racist, and accuses the British press of trying to smear Spain’s good name. One Spanish basketballer apologises, saying “It’s wrong to interpret it as racist.”, while the head coach says “I don’t think it was offensive”.

Now, brilliantly, the original journalist who filed the report has filed a piece defending himself against accusations that he had a hidden agenda, pointing out that he never said it was racist. Of course, if you see someone carrying an umbrella, you don’t wonder if it’s raining or not.

Oh, and here’s the Spanish tennis team making a similar gesture. Interestingly, a random sampling of Chinese people in Beijing suggests they aren’t that bothered - but then they don’t have the history of racial harassment.

I was - and am - a huge fan of the LJ Hook Firefox extension. It basically allows me to add HTML code to a Firefox text entry window via a simple right-click - but it doesn’t work out-of-the-box in Firefox 3.

Tonight, since I couldn’t sleep and am still coughing/spluttering/snorting/having difficulty breathing, I ended up fiddling with the extension, having vaguely remembered reading a blogpost about tricking Firefox into installing old extensions.

And somehow, I’ve managed to get LJ Hook to work - and even slightly improved it by letting it work on all websites. Now, I’m wondering about the ethicacy of uploading an improvement to someone else’s extension when it’s not Creative-Commons licensed but the original author seems to have disappeared…

However, the paper was evidently of some value to the woman behind me, who sat down with an audible harumph and tut. I offered her the paper, to which she snootily replied “Oh no, I have a much better paper!”, and proceeded to loudly take out some copy of The Literary Economist (not a literal title, but something of that ilk) and concentrate on that. Even though I’d put the paper back down on the bus seat so she could read it.

The bus proceeded to where I had to get off, and as I was waiting for the bus to stop, I noticed her putting down her better paper, and grabbing the Metro as if her life depended on it. I never knew something that’s available for free would be so valuable…

- blimey, 70mm is gorgeous
- I can’t follow everything that’s going on, but I can follow enough to get by
- how many phrases from the English language were plucked from this ?!
- If Ophelia isn’t the archetypal Doctor Who companion, I don’t know who is…
- Kate Winslet. She’d make a great companion (she wasn’t the all-conquering Titantic heroine she is now)

Fast-forward to this weekend, and we three (times two, making six) ended up voyaging from various corners of the UK (and one eBayer from Bermuda) to the twee country town of Stratford-upon-Avon to see a RSC production of Hamlet, with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart leading the cast.

After all the hassles of buying the tickets and getting there, getting into the play was one huge anti-climax. It was a relatively small venue in a quiet part of Stratford’s riverside, and we just showed the usher our tickets and entered a stunningly stark place, with mirrors acting as a theatre backdrop. No props, no set dressing, it was a real courtyard, with the actors entering and exiting the stage through corridors amongst the audience, and I loved the idea.

Unfortuanately, as the play progressed, they brought in a prop here, a set dressing there, until by the end the small space was festooned with props and things, which somewhat spoilt it. The ananachronism of it all - helicopters, guns, notepads, condoms - didn’t help either. Why use a gun to shoot someone when at the end you end up with a fencing fight?

I’m not too sure what I was expecting - probably epic acting histronics, but I didn’t really get the whole experience. It’s a production I think I admired more than I liked or loved - I certainly didn’t come out of it gabbling or loving it. One of my party left after thirty minutes, saying it was the worst production she’d seen. The rest of my party seemed to love it, although one of them was more star-struck than anything else.

Not being a Shakespearian acolyte, it was to be fair a little hard for me to seperate the actors from the production. For the Tennant fans, there was a fair amount of TimeLord/Tennant-esque dashing around the stage like an epileptic gazelle. Oh, and he wore alternatively a tuxedo, and then a student-esque T-shirt. He’s certainly a very very skinny fellow - I need his thyroids. He strangely lacked stage presence - there was one speech where I totally lost interest and had no idea what he was talking about, and he pretty much mumbled his way through To Be or Not To Be (oh baby can’t you see, we’re gonna make it to the toooooppppp) For the Stewart fans, despite looking a lot like Professor X, he seemed far more convincing and Shakespearian actorly than Tennant. Of course, afterwards there was a mad rush for autographs, although I elected to have a pint instead until other members of my party came back.

Since I haven’t been to the theatre in eons, I also forgot that theatre tends to bring out the maudlin and confused in me, mostly because there’s no filter between me and the actors, like you have in cinema and television. Then again, I love stand-up comedy, where there’s no filter at all. I’m still trying to process that particular thought, but then again: “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

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