NO MAN'S WORLD

I know I wasn't going to blog again until 2011 - but this has to be seen to be believed.
I bought a book called 'Black Hand Gang' by Pat Kelleher (you'll have to wait for the full review).
The premise is that the 13th Battalion of The Pennine Fusiliers disappeared from the Somme battlefield on 1st November 1916. The preface to the book sounds very convincing and, of course, a total fiction as it tries to show that the story is based on fact.
To cap it all is a splendid way to advertise the book and perpetuate the myth is the No Man's World blog (http://nomansworldblog.blogspot.com).
Mind you a quick search of the net does throw up someone who believes - well, like they say one born etc.
Personally, I just think that it is an excellent way to publicise a book and pave the way for a sequel.

NOT ONLY...BUT ALSO

It hasn't been a bad year but the last few months have thrown up some surprises with the result that much that I would have liked to have written about never happened.
Amongst the things that should have made an appearance are reviews of the latest Black Horse Westerns by Charles Whipple, I.J.Parnham, Terry James and Derek Rutherford - all excellent writers.
Beat To A Pulp: Round One, an excellent anthology editted by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash was something else that I missed, especially as it contained a fine selection of short stories by people that I have gotten to know.

Movie wise - try and catch the original Swedish movie 'Let The Right One In' before watching the Hollywood re-make 'Let Me In'. It is quite a beautiful film considering that this is a vampire movie based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist. The book is also excellent.

Discovered the complete tv series of Stephen King's 'The Stand'. I don't recall seeing this before but I watched it as a whole.

Still to watch - but then I was saving these for the Christmas holidays - 'Rawhide' Season 1 consisting 22 episodes of a series that would catapult Clint Eastwood onto the road to stardom.
And the complete tv series 'Colditz'.

Anyway, Broken Trails will take time out until 2011.
Allow time for the dust to settle and life to get back to some form of normality.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

TAKE THE WAR TO WASHINGTON

I wonder if anyone remembers a British author Peter Van Greenaway.
During the the sixties, seventies and eighties he was quite a popular author both as a novelist and short story writer.
In 1974 he wrote a novel called 'Take The War To Washington'. The novel concerned a group of Vietnam veterens who feeling sidelined and neglected by the country that sent them to war decide to take that very war to Washington.
Well they set the ball rolling by crashing a passenger plane into the Pentagon before setting out to attack the tallest buildings.
A surprising plotline in a forgotten book by a forgotten author about a forgotten army.

IT'S NOT WHAT YOU SAY........

So England won't be hosting the 2018 World Cup. In some ways I'm quite happy that World Cup is going to Russia - the games have never been held there.
But...FIFA's excuse for England not winning the bid is down to the British Media and the BBC Panorama programme for their allegations of corruption within FIFA.
Hmm?
Seems to me, now, that something might just be wrong when people say one thing and do another.

Unlike another guilty party, David Chaytor, the MP who said that he had done nothing wrong in the expenses scandal - at least he has now held his hands and pleaded guilty.

If you do wrong then it all catches up with you in the end.


AND to another topic.
Complaints abound about the lack of salt and grit on the roads. Shortages? There is always one way to get to the truth of the matter - put the Transport Minister on the TV to say that 'there are no shortages'. There is 150,000 tons of the stuff on it's way to us. Reassuring words? No, because whenever a Minister speaks the truth is very often the opposite of what he says.


Still with the snow.
Royal Mail has been unable to deliver our post for the past few days. Until last night this was quite acceptable - I mean we are knee deep in snow.
Then we sat down to watch the BBC's 'The One Show' (2/12/2010) and guess what - there was a BBC film crew and presenter up in my neck of the woods. Right there filming from the corner of my road.
So if the BBC can get here why can't the postman?
Health and Safety is the reply.

MODS & ROCKERS by Gareth Brown

1964 was a year without much news. Well, there was the Alaskan earthquake; an American warship was attacked by three torpedo boats off the coast of North Vietnam; the price of beef had shot up; Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus was 'shopping' for arms and Kruschev was in the selling business of arms to Egypt.
Only one of these stories would, eventually, erupt into headline news - Vietnam.
But for most of 1964 all these stories would be squeezed aside for the home-grown war between the Mods and Rockers on the beaches of Clacton, Brighton, Margate and Hastings.
And therein lies a bit of irony.
Part of the reason that the Marlon Brando movie 'The Wild One' was banned in the U.K. was because it showed two gangs meeting up in a small American town for a fight.
Therefore, to discourage impressionable teenagers from copying this the powers that be thought it best that we did not see it.
Well, there you go.
'Mods & Rockers: The Origins and Era of a British Scene' by Gareth Brown does a pretty good job of back-tracking this very British phenomenon to the early days of Rock 'n' Roll and the Teds along with the emergence of the teenage culture.
Like the splitting of a single cell the Mods and the Rockers emerged from the Teddy Boy era.
On the whole Gareth Brown's book is an informative excursion into the background of two clashing cultures. However, the book falls into two mythological traps.
The first is the musicality of the era.
Here Gareth Brown cites R & B and the Tamla Motown sound as Mod music and pure Rock 'n' Roll to the Rockers. Music of the period was universal. Martha and The Vandella's 'Dancing In The Street' is one example that got air time in Rocker cafes.
And Rockers would stomp with gusto the The Honeycombs' 'Have I The Right'.
The Beatles, too, played Rock 'n' Roll music.
In 1963 two songwriters, John Lennon and Paul MacCartney, wrote a ballet score that was performed by the Darrell Western Theatre and Ballet Company. It was called 'Mods & Rockers - a take on Romeo and Juliet.
The other trap was that Mods and Rockers simply hated each other.
OK, so Rockers thought that Vespa's and Labretta's were a bit effeminate - hair dryers is the name that we gave them. Yet, the mods had to be admired for the work they put in on them. Mirrors, headlights and the chrome work - they personalised their scooters.
The 'hate' was engineered. Hindsight makes things clearer.
Before Clacton the press made a big deal out of the mods. Their dance moves; how clean they looked and how mods came from the middle-class and worked in offices etc. Whereas, the Rocker was dirty, greasy, lower class and all out villains - if the press were to be believed.
Of course, when everything kicked off, the press painted both sides with the same brush.
While the Rocker tradition lives on it has to be said that the Mod culture died within a year of the battles on the English beaches. Yet without them there would not have been a very British scenario and one that would change everything from attitudes and the very freedoms that we have today. Though there are times when I think that, maybe, we also got some things wrong.
For a good insight into the history of these two cultures then Gareth Brown does a pretty good job. Like The Beatles ballet this piece of English history is overlooked even by the media that created it - guilt perhaps?
The book is published by Independent Music Press at £12.99 - or at HMV for £6.

NEED FOR SPEED: HOT PURSUIT

Today saw the release of the latest 'Need For Speed' game from EA Sports who have joined forces with Criterion Games (creators of the 'Burnout' series).
At first glance this marriage has produced a game that could be called 'Need For Burnout Takedown'. My first impression.
If, as I did, read what the magazines had put across, you would have got the impression that the career mode was either as a racer or a cop. This is not the case as both careers run in tandem. Have to admit that there is more fun in taking out a cop car with spikes than vice versa.
As an added bonus there is a way of competing online with your friends. One problem there is that all my friends have elected to buy 'Call Of Duty: Black Ops' also released today and not on my 'to buy' list.
So, maybe, bad timing for this game's release.
Still this game can be described with a few 'f' words like fast, furious, fun and, at times, frustrating - but only when I don't come in first.

To me the true test of a game - and a player's skill - is taking the whole experience on-line. At last, a game with a level playing field where a 65 year old Brit can beat the younger generation at their own game. Four wins out of five - not a bad score.
This game is worth it just for the on-line experience alone.

The next game in this series - 'Need For Speed: Shift 2' will be coming out in 2011.

SMACKDOWN vs RAW 2011 - Update

Just an observation and not quite sure what happened.
Played a Road To Wrestlemania. On completion went back to Universe mode and found that my character was still involved in a storyline that appeared to connect back to the RTWM story.
OK, I thought, where can I take this.
With some manipulation and imagination the game's weaknesses can be used to give it strength - and the player's storylines can be acted out for real.
I don't think that the game was meant to be played that way but there you go.