Sure We'll Burn That Bridge When We Come To It

Spades Do Not Trump Time-Space Manipulation, You Asshole (And Other Adventures In Watching Heroes: Dying Of The Light)

2008-10-28T03:26:00.000-07:00

"And like the fat man eateth his own leg, so doth Heroes devourest itselfest most hastefully"

- Zsa Zsa Gabor, The Book Of Genesis

Well, previously on Heroes left a lot of questions on our mind: Has the world run out of first names for members of the Petrelli family? Why on God's green earth would Meredith track down a man whose power was puppeteering without some sort of back-up? What was the point of that whole "Hiro kill Ando" cliffhanger which just felt like that night your wife spent the whole day getting a beauty treatment and dressed up to the nines, or possibly tens? Yeah, sure, it looks nice, and it's a bit of a surprise, but you know it'll be about five minutes before you see that it doesn't mean anything and she's still the same sow-faced snackwagon you drunkenly married 14 years ago i.e. nothing changes.

But first, to address Zsa Zsa's chillingly appropriate quote above. You see, Heroes had a perfect first season. Well, almost perfect, bar the finale which just proved that if you make a living out of leaving clues for your audience over 22 episodes you'd better have a damn good snake in the mailbox on top of what they've already expected. Even if it is just your wife wearing a bra for once in the last GODDAM FOURTEEN YEARS AND BRENDA WOULD YOU PLEASE TURN DOWN THE TV?!!!

Sorry.

Anyway, Heroes prided itself on having shocking revelation after shocking revelation, which is fine, Coronation Street does that every other day (and twice on Mondays) and people still watch it. But Heroes set up an amazingly complex set of rules around powers and alliances and loyalties and all that malarky and then just plain failed to follow them.

Case in point:

Look at them there, back to back. Sure it'd only take one bullet. Hiro and Daphne (or TimeFucker and LeafBlower, as I like to call them) respectively represent the first and the latest in a long line of characters whose mere powers are enough to cause the Gabor-mentioned self-eating. Hiro is a man who can control time and space. TIME. And SPACE. That would be: Everything. Forever. Let's look at that more scientifically:

"Let's fuck with this shit."

Yes, that is a Hiro doll (or possibly Al Gore in casual-wear). Daphne, on the other hand, apart from having the power to knock office supplies into the air and cause waving lines, can run super-duper fast. In fact, she can run super-DEE-duper fast.

And here's the clincher: that's a really really ridiculously useful power. There is nobody on the show who can do anything to surprise her. Nobody, that is, except for Hiro. Remember him? Time in all caps? Space in all caps? Neat graph?

Well he still hasn't quite managed to figure out that if you can manipulate time, then nothing is unrectifiable. Such as the fact that you opened the safe and took out the note that got taken by Daphne that got you involved in the plot that you've seen to take over the world and destroy the planet with the tree in the hole and the hole in the bog and the bog down in the valley...

Oh. Or, as I like to call her, Dr. McSqueamy.

So he's chosen instead to bring back someone who would "never bother us again" about four episodes ago, Adam, only to lose him in a bar. And on top of not choosing to travel back to, say, BEFORE ADAM RAN OFF, he then chose to fake kill his best friend. Remember when Heroes actually killed off characters? Rather than just having them come back from the dead, or be in a different timeline? At least they killed that Jessiki girl to make way for that new, fresh Tracey woman:

Wait a minute...

So after two and a bit seasons of introducing the Hiros with their "nothing ever matters", Daphnes with their "nothing can surprise me", Matts with their "I can tell what anyone is going to do at any time", and of course the Peters with their "all of the above, but shirtless", what do we have?

We have writers spending 40-50% of each episode (and you can count) trying to figure out ways to dampen, nullify, steal, crazify or amnesiaspasm the powers off these characters so that it all makes sense (which it doesn't). That, ladies and gentleman, is how Heroes is going to eat itself. And, worse than that, it's going to choke on the corpse of Kristen Bell's career. I hope you're all happy.

And, in actual review of the Heroes episode news:

1. Those hot pants won't save you now, Maya.

2. Oh just wander down to New Orleans and bang the strangely unburnt Jessica's body, Nathan, and get the trifecta of Ali Larter out of the way.

3. God, remember her in Final Destination?

4. So Africa is this season's feudal Japan. Goddamit that continent doesn't have the resources to fight off the anti-marketing campaign that is Heroes characters spending long, worn out hours on their own plotlines!

5. "Hi, I'm Daphne. I'm conflicted about what I'm doing. You can tell because I keep saying it."

6. You tell me that puppeteer didn't do all manner of crazy shit to Claire's real mom. We've all seen Nip/Tuck, we know how flexible Jessalyn Gilsig can get. I'm holding out for the DVD extras on that one.

7. Does anyone else expect Noah and Sylar to just stop the car and go: "Wait a minute, this plotline doesn't make any sense." And then start bitch-slapping each other.

8. Peter's getting the Future Peter gruff voice. Clear your throat, man! Suppose that's what you get for bangin' your on-screen niece.

9. You tell me that Parkman didn't do all manner of crazy shit to that turtle on the flight over.

10. Everytime I think of Hiro's encounter with the African Isaac my brain cries bloody tears.

11. Who's paying rent on Isaac's loft? Seems someone should be paying some kind of attention.

12. The mind shudders at the amount of Petrelli slash-fiction that must be populating the Internet by now.

13. Another day, another cliffhanger. At least this one wasn't faux, even if it was just another way to get Peter away from his powers.

Overall I'll give it 3 Zsa Zsa's out of a possible 5: certainly not great, but better than some of the shit we've seen before. It certainly sparked the "how long will the black character survive in THIS ensemble cast hit US TV show" betting pool I'll be running.

It's Like Britney's Shiny Boobs Are Pressing Into The Back Of My Eyeballs

2008-10-16T05:45:00.000-07:00

Ow.

So I'm mildly hungover. Which is fine and great and dandy and happy puppy nosebleeds all the livelong day because at least I've got my clothes. Unlike a certain recently be-balded young lady, who may or may not have lost more than we originally thought in the bitter custody battle:

It's Britney, bitch: Inset, my reaction to the video.

That's right, she's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaccck. And doesn't she look good? Hasn't she done well, our Britters? Isn't it really great that she's back on top, and doesn't she look great? And she lost the weight. And she appears to be almost lucid in the new video:

It's Britney, kitch: Britters avails of the new

"Dark, Sleek, Womanizer" range at IKEA.

Aw, look at her there, mistaking the sink for the oven. But again, doesn't she look fantastic? In her fancy black robe in her delightful slippery kitchen? And the hair. Simply. Divine.

Except wait a minute. I have one small question buried among all the "Doesn't she look great hasn't she done well isn't it so good to see her finally getting back on track" malarky I've been hearing all week. And that question is:

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!!

No, wait, that's not it. My actual question is much less redundant:

HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW?

How the hell do you know that her life's back on track? How the hell do you know that she's really got it together? What evidence do you have that her mental state is any better than it once was other than the fact that she now has a slammin' body? And once you get rid of the excessive boob-vag combo of it all, you may start to notice that things aren't quite right. For instance, what self-respecting person would fist herself on national television:

It's Britney, flinch: "Now that, that'll cost you extra."

That's right, this girl's got issues. And no amount of mildly Asian hair and "should have fisted yourself at Specsavers" glasses are going to change that. But the general public have still spent the past week sitting on benches (always on benches) saying how happy it makes them that Britney's pulled herself together. This when all the while she is literally (see above) ripping herself apart. Ugh. Now there's a play on words you don't see every day.

But what is Britney trying to tell us with her new video? What message is she trying to convey? What tortured cry for help is she trying to get across, apart from the fact that she's clearly addicted to Timoteijitsu, the ancient Chinese art of attacking people with your hair:

It's Britney, twitch: Or possibly, don't weave me this way. Whichever you want.

No, it seems that what Britney is trying to convey in her new video is the blatant case of split-personality disorder she's been carrying all these years. You know, the one that allowed her to be a virgin that also had sex with people? Handy.

So if we are to believe what is put before us, Britney is suffering from the burden of carrying not one, not two, but THREE extra personalities, each one a representation of the wildly varying facets of Ms. Spears' personality. For those of you who weren't paying attention, the personalities are, in ascending order of craziness:

It's Britney, hitch: Slutty Office Worker Britney.

It's Britney, quiche: Slutty Waitress Britney.

It's Britney, clutch: Slutty Limo Driver Britney (?).

That's right, in the Venn Diagram of lunacy that is Britney Spears' mind, all she really wants is to be a slut. Who attacks people with her hair. Possibly while being naked in a sauna of some description.

You go, girl!

There's Something Fishy About This Scantily Clad Mexican (And Other Adventures In Watching The New Series Of Heroes)

2008-10-14T13:17:00.001-07:00

We still don't have TV. Or telly. Or tellay if you're in Corrie. Ah'll put t'kettle on.

But we do have t'Internet. Hurrah! Huzzah! Wazhong! Just look at my fellow housemate and skydiving enthusiast Celina using it. LOOK:

Giant finger-pointing... at Murder House!

After a long conversation with the lovely people at Eircom (who have now sent me some kind of contract which must be "witnessed", presumably by a priest or nun, or at the very least a large black women composed almost entirely of sass) we've been provided with the basic tools of wireless technology. Again, three cheers for the dear old queen.

But, alas, we don't have telly. We have Sky Plus coming THIS FRIDAY to help us with our installation problems, presumably accompanied by delightful sexpot Kelly Brook and the irrepressible star of The Good Life and Rosemary and Thyme, Felicity Kendall. If their satellite dish installation skills are anything as good as their advertising skills, then we're in for a mildly upper class English actress treat:

"Sky Plus: It's simple, therefore you use it. Now pass me that lump hammer."

So in anticipation of this approaching Kendall-Brook install-athon, I've been using the Internet to catch up on the latest series of Heroes (yes, it's wrong, but it feels so right... like drowning in puppies). This is Series 3 now, so expectations are obviously high, or at least as high as they can be after the visual representation of the Writers' Strike that was the truncated Series 2, featuring a whole host of unnecessary storylines. Mexico? China? This is meant to be a cleverly structured comic-esque mindfuck, what the hell do you people think you're doing? For a time, I believed it was all a plot to advertise Uncle Ben's:

The unclebens.co.uk map featuring new and exciting flavours
from around the world (or at least the Equator)

Cross-reference with Heroes:

Coincidence? I think not.

But eventually, after some rational thought and a brief stay in a mental institution, I decided that this probably wasn't the case. So I put all thoughts of last year's foibles to the side as I sat down to watch Series 3:

Artist's rendering of what my excitement may have looked like.

And so I watched. Five episodes now. And what do I think? Well, let me sum it up in one sentence:

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

Not that I was shouting this at the computer screen. Oh no, it's just that the manatees that control the dialogue on Heroes decided that this particular sentence, this very particular sentence, required maximum exposure as they commenced the third season. For instance:

"What have you done?"

Thank you, Tracey. And Maya?

"What have you done?!!"

And just for good measure:

"No, seriously, what have you done? This is like the third time we've asked."

This is probably about the time I should explain how much I hate that phrase. What have you done? Well apparently not very much television and film watching before you sat down and wrote your little script there Mr. Fancy Pen Slash Typewriter Man because in case you hadn't noticed it's THE MOST OVERUSED PHRASE EVER. Seriously. And it's never for any good reason. For instance, look at those three pictures above. Left to right, the correct answer is a) "What? I just told you!" b) "What? You just saw me do it!" and c) "Celina? Did you just fart?".

No need for it.

No. Fucking. Needforit.

And yet, remember these?

That of course was, in order, Natalie Portman uttering the famous words in Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith, and Kaley Cuoco (of 10 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter fame) shaking it up a little by screaming "What have I done?!" in the televisual abortion that was the Charmed finale. Well done, Kaley. There's a dead puppy in the post.

All I'm saying is, if anyone out there's planning on writing a TV show, don't ever put those four words together in a sentence. Or there'll be grrraaaaaaaaaaaaavvvve consequences. You heard me.

Also, in other "what I was actually meant to write about" blogginess: HEROES!

1. Stop introducing new characters.

2. STOP INTRODUCING NEW CHARACTERS. Corollary: Kill some characters.

3. "Hello, I'm Mohinder, I act exactly the opposite to how I should behave when the storyline requires. Would you like to peel my back?"

4. Really pushing Latina women's rights in those hotpants, Maya. You go, melty eye girl.

5. FACT: There are now seventeen Petrellis per square inch in the United States.

6. "Oh, I think I'd better not use my powers. Because I don't want to. Even though it's time travel and would be really really helpful."

7. Did Claire and her mother have a lesbian spank inferno in that tanker or was that just me?

8. I do like the running fast, though.

9. And the graphics have been cool.

10. PUT THE AFRICA DOWN, WRITERS. Just put it down, and walk away.

11. If the world explodes one more time I'm turning this car around and we're all going home.

12. So Tracey and Nathan slept together. Blue balls anyone?

13. Oooo, let's mess with some couple names. Tracey and Nathan, Trathan? Nacey? Jessikitrathan? Nah. Mohinder and Maya, Mayinder? Moha? Kind of sounds like a coffee. Claire and her mom? Clom? Maire? Clincest? I like it. Clincest it is.

14. That's all I can think of for now.

Well have a nice Wednesday, everyone, and I'm sure I'll talk to you very very soon. But for now, let's hear from Kelly Brook:

"With Sky Plus you can just pause live television

and go off and make a cup of tea. I love it."

You said it, Kelly!

Just Having One Of Those Days...

2008-10-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

....where you realise one of your friends bears a striking resemblance to the US Secretary of State.

Condoleeza Rice, most powerful woman in the world.

Dallan McCormick, can't grow facial hair.

Top 5 Ways You Know You Haven't Got Any TV Or Internet

2008-10-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

"Rarr rar rrraarrr... boredom."

So here I am. A month into life at Murder House and still no Internet, no TV, no DVD player that doesn't skip so much that Breakfast at Tiffany's starts to look like the portrait of a schizophrenic woman who won't stop changing her clothes.

"Can't you see it was all for YOU?"

Like the thousands of proud workaholic fathers that make up our nation's industries, I've started leaving for work earlier and coming home later. Because work has internet, and internet has videos, and videos have sexy young teens embroiled in a hotbed of bed-hopping hot, hot bodies. And isn't that all anyone really wants at 8.00am on a Tuesday morning?

In honour of the lack of technology that's probably going to drive me into the arms of an ad hoc workplace romance ("So, you going to use ALL those staples?" *wink* !THROWDOWN!) I've decided to compile the first of what is sure to be a long list of lists to grace the pages of noparticularbridge.blogspot.com:

Top 5 Ways You Know You Haven't Got Any TV Or Internet

1. You Start Making Lists.

Seemed like a logical place to start. Lists are fine. Lists are great. Who doesn't love lists?

"Honey, if it ain't got a list attached, I don't wanna know about it."

Exactly. It's when you cross the huge gaping line between "there are lists in my life" to "my life IS a list" when you need to start worrying. Note that this should not be confused with "my life's ON a list", in which case I'd start looking into moving to a small island and investing in some heavy duty cosmetic surgery. I'm talkin' holding up a picture of Elisha Cuthbert and saying "I want that one".

If you're wondering if you've fallen into this trap, just ask yourself the following: has anything I've done today suddenly appeared on a list for no apparent reason?

For instance, did someone suggest off-handedly that they might meet you for a coffee, and later that day did you find yourself staring at the following sentence: "Meet Trish at 2 for chit-chat :-)"? First of all, that sentence should never exist, but second of all, it proves the biggest fault underlying the whole list principle: if it really mattered, you wouldn't have forgotten about it in the first place. Nobody cares about Trish. You don't. She's the kind of person who brings her cat to work because she thinks it's "darling".

Twinkles will eventually eat Trish.

Making lists is just a time-filler. Trish makes lists. Don't be Trish.

2. You Clean.

"What's that smell?"
"What smell?"
"Exactly."
*gasp* !thud!

Man wasn't meant to live a life of cleanliness. Neither was woman, she just got lumped with the job for a couple of thousand years. But now times have changed, bras have burned, suffragettes have sufragetted, and we've all realised that it would just be better if we lived in a mess of our own filth.

Look this guy in the eye and tell him he's wrong.

But when you're sitting in your living room at half past seven on a Wednesday evening, surrounded by the detritus of two weeks of takeaway dinners and a brewery worth of Skittlebrau, you start to think: maybe I should clean.

Well just pick up a half-empty Skittlebrau and get yourself drunker there, little missy, because if there's anything sadder than the scene I just described it's the sight of you standing in a spotless kitchen, covered in grime, so off your tits on cleaning products you couldn't recognise your own reflection, and smiling like a developmentally challenged ostrich about the fact that you cleaned your own apartment.

If I wanted to live like this my entire crockery collection
would be made of fucking formica. Wouldn't it, Trish?

You'll then pick up the phone (which is now no longer covered in cigarette butts) and invite someone over to see how good a job you've done. Which leads us nicely to the next item on our list.

3. You Invite EVERYONE over.

"Hi, Tim, yeah, I know it's been ages...really, since college finished?...well I was just hanging out at my new pad and thought 'hey, why not give Tim a call?'...yeah...oh, you are...oh, ok....*beep* *beep* *beep*"

So you're sitting in your nice clean apartment, surrounded by thousands and thousands of lists. But what's thousands and thousands of lists if you've got nobody to cross-reference them with? Those folders aren't going to label themselves, you know!

By all means feel free to go insane in the comfort of your own home (see number four) but please, please, please, DO NOT invite random people from your past to hop on the Good Ship Lala with you. As I said above, there's a reason you forgot about these people. Tim smells like rubber. Alison can't laugh without sneezing. Chris has a wooden leg which is all fine by me and frankly I couldn't care less about that sort of thing but would you just stop showing us your stump?!

Not pictured: Chris.

Getting these people together is the makings of a good-sized bonfire, not a fun evening in. Don't fool yourself that you're actually interested in what they've done with their lives, because you're not. Tim and Alison still smell and sneeze just like they did in college, and Chris isn't going to whip out a new limb any time soon, so before you find yourself drunkenly singing the self-written "Ode to the Legless Men and Women of the U.S. Military", stop and think:

What if THEY reject ME?

4. Random Things Happen.

This is the closest the ENTIRE INTERNET could find to the type of randomness that could happen if you are left to your own devices in a technologically retarded apartment. Or "retartment".

If you or your nearest and dearest are forced to stare day after day at a blank television, your ever-growing reflections taunting you with their shadowy presence, then the following may happen:

Scratching
Improper clothing etiquette
End-table related bruising
Silences so loaded with awkwardness you accidentally confess to the assassination of President Kennedy
Dinner parties
Impromptu fake awards ceremonies
Impromptu fake awards made from cereal boxes and tit tape
Live recreations of your favourite TV shows
Bursting into tears
Not realising how bad you smell
Forgetting how to talk
Becoming hyper-aware of the presence of your eyelids
Dryness of mouth

But by far the most dangerous random effect of extended isolation from the wonders of technology is the following:

5. You Start Having Ill-Advised Sex.

Remember Trish? She wasn't so bad, was she, really? I mean, sure she's not really your age but you're getting to a time in your life when you can really appreciate an older woman. Hell, she might have a thing or two to teach you. And when she said that sometimes she samples the cat food in case it's too salty for Twinkles she was just joking around. You know there's nothing sexier than a good sense of humour, right?

If you're thinking the above, you're probably too far gone, but in the hopes that you might be able to claw yourself back from the precipice at the edge of boner-shrinking insanity, look at this:

"Fiscal fortitude is the backbone of a sound nation. Now touch me."

You used to reserve exactly the same amount of your libido for this woman as you did for Trish. Only you have changed. Filling your time with mindless sex is perfectly fine, it's what we all aspire to, but when you're so bored that you start inviting over anything with at least one orifice and a pulse you've got to stop yourself. If not for you than for the children you might end up with. Even if they do somehow manage to dodge Trish's DNA they've been conceived in an apartment so loaded with cleaning products even Hitler couldn't untangle the mutant DNA.

I think you know what to do. Get that wireless connection. Order those channels. Be the change you wish to see in the world. Just don't do anything you will regret.

TFIF (You Can Work That One Out For Yourselves)

2008-10-03T01:06:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

So this is my shiny brand-spanking new blog, where the wonders of that new-fangled internet thingy have allowed me to express to the world at large things which I wouldn't say to my closest friends. And isn't that the joy of the virtual world?

Well first things first, that's me at the top, looking something like a Belgian serial killer ("Waffle happen if he strikes again?"). But I'm not actually Belgian, if you can believe it, and I'm still undecided about the whole serial killer thing.

I'm Irish, born and bred, and if that photo isn't evidence that 8,000 years of inbreeding might not be such a good idea then I don't know what is.

I grew up in a small town in the centre of Ireland called Lanesboro, in the county of Longford. 'Twas (and, I suppose, 'tis) a picturesque village on the banks of the river Shannon where I used to swim, row, go boating and frolic with the local swans. What a childhood.

Since then I've moved up to The Big Smoke (Dublin) and have been here for the past five years, studying journalism and generally causing havoc wherever I lay my head. I'm now working in Google (the loveliest place on Earth, or Google Earth at least) and living on the DART line, which makes everything so much easier. Well, obviously not ON the DART line, more NEAR the DART line. In a place called Murder House (long story).

I enjoy pina coladas and getting caught in the rain, long walks on the beach, short walks on shorter beaches, and adding liberal dollops of razzmatazz, vaudeville and handstands to every working day. Look, I even give lessons:

And you thought I was a liar. Well shame on you.

I hope you get the phage.