I recently watched the Avid Merrion video for "Proper Chrimbo" which, I had been assured by that arbiter of humour, Chris Moyles, was absolutely hilarious.

I don't get it. More to the point, I don't recognise most of the celebrities in the video, let alone the impressions of them by Merrion. Does this make me incredibly out of touch, or, in some bizarre sense, does it make me cool to be above this level of cheap regional celebrity?

(If you said, "Who's Avid Merrion?", then award yourself five points and a slap on the back).

Still, it seems that the alternative for the christmas number one is a cynical cover version of "Love is All Around", which is a plot point in a film written by the guy whose earilier film first propelled the last cover version of Love is All Around to the top of the charts. Is it me, or is that just stupidly self-referential?

Can I do the joke about how this Hugh Grant thing is wearing a bit thin? You know, about how it was believable that he would marry Andie McDowell, and then dump her for Julia Roberts, but that giving her up for Martine McCutcheon is stretching it a bit? Well, let's take it as read.

Lolly stick joke: What kind of horse never wins a race?
Answer on stick: A sawhorse.
I believe that a sawhorse is some kind of construction upon which you saw pieces of wood. The concept exists in the UK as a Black and Decker Workmate, so the joke doesn't work there:

What kind of horse never wins a race?
A Black and Decker Workmate.

See what I mean? Anyway, I suppose a translation of the joke into English would render the punchline as something like:
A Clothes Horse.

Which communicates the appropriate level of crap-punness required, I think. I think it wouldn't work in America, since they don't have clothes horses in the states -- after they have worn their clothes, they just throw them away and buy new ones. More lolly stick frolics to come.

To recover my lost work from last week, I think it went something like this:


Is there a word for deciding not to email someone, but to post the message that you would have sent in a blog because you know tha thy happen to read that blog? Anyway, that's what I'm about to do, for the benefit of one of my Ivy League Professor Readers.

If you like Zero 7, then you might also like... Royksopp, whose hit Eple you should have heard either in the background music of every single Television programme shown in 2002, or else in the Soulwax megamix 2ManyDJs just after Destiny's Child has been mixed seamlessly into Dolly Parton. You should also enjoy Lemon Jelly.

Zero 7 are also of interest for their patronage of the emerging art of machinima on the video for "In the Waiting Line". Put briefly, Machinima is animation done using the graphics engines of popular video games such as Quake or Unreal to render the thing. Although, it can't be all that hip given that Wired magazine did an article on it last year, and we all know what trailers of the scarifying edge that they are.



Anyway, that's the crux of what I had to say last week, although I preferred it the way I said it originally. Damn you, Internet Explorer! Damn you to Hull!

(thought: when faced with the smug little error box that pops up in Windows 98 when something crashes advising you that "if this behaviour persists, please contact the manufacturer", how many people have actually contacted Microsoft to complain? I tried complaining to Microsoft once about an entirely different issue, and it never did me any good).