For Christmas, my wife bought me a copy of Jeremy Clarkson’s book The World According to Clarkson. Being a fan of the BBC show Top Gear (shown on SBS Monday night 7:30pm here in Australia), she thought I might like to read some of Jeremy’s books. This book is actually a collection of his articles written weekly for a newspaper in England – and so each “chapter” is short, which makes the book quite easy to pick up and put down.

In the book, Jeremy attacks everything is his usual, sarcastic manner – and although some of the references to people and events are “you had to be there” type things which will leave non UK readers scratching their heads, there is so much other stuff that you can easily relate to – especially if you know what he is like from the TV show.

It’s brutally honest, very funny, and well worth the read if you are looking for some light hearted – if somewhat puerile – humour.

Find books written by Jeremy Clarkson at Amazon.com

It was a fantastic show – Hugh really knows how to work an audience (not that he has to work very hard … he has a lot of fans there … especially amongst the older audiences who typically attend matinee shows). Lots of very funny moments.

There was a lot of improvisation, and quite a bit of audience interaction.

Colleen Hewett was great playing Peter’s mum (not a dry eye in the house after her song “Don’t cry out loud”), and Angela Toohey was a very convincing Liza Minnelli.

… and the song Tenterfield Saddler finally starts to make a bit more sense now!

Very much worth the effort (despite the rather extravagent cost).

Was a great evening – we took a picnic dinner, stretched out on a rug on the lawns in front of the stage (along with about 1000 other people) – and enjoyed the show … including singing along with almost every song, swaying, clapping, dancing – and laughing at the antics of the lead singer trying to bring elements of Freddy Mercury to his performance.

Thoroughly entertaining and well worth the effort.

Microsoft iPod packaging parody (link to streaming video)

(via The Dancing Poodle)

I made a list of who trained and who killed whom (plus a bit of other info) … roughly in chronological order, and posted it over on my Ask Sim’ blog: Star Wars Masters & Apprentices

Well worth the effort in my opinion.

I will admit to being a completely biased Joss Whedon groupie – a month or so back we finished an 18 month effort to watch every single Buffy and Angel episode, in order – that was something like 254 episodes. But I honestly think most people will enjoy Serenity – no geek or fanboi status required.

Go see it – you won’t be disappointed.

It was a great movie – and it joined up the saga nicely, filling in a lot of the gaps between Episodes I & II and the original Episodes IV, V & VI. The action sequences were amazing – especially at the beginning with the seige of Coruscant – but it’s the lightsabre duels we all go to see, and these don’t disappoint at all.

Some noticable bits – the character Obi Wan seemed to have enormous confidence as he takes on foes such as Count Dooku (Darth Tyrannus), General Grievous, and of course, the epic battle with newly appointed Darth Vader. Was a pleasure to watch him in action.

General Grievous was not as menacing as I expected – especially after seeing the Clone Wars animated series from the Cartoon Network. Darth Tyrannus died with not much more than a whimper. The battle between Yoda and Darth Sidious was pretty cool. Padme was a bit of an “extra” – not really adding much to the story (other than causing the whole mess in the first place by being the love interest that causes Anakin to go off the deep end!). Artoo rocked with a lot of cool attachments – showing a lot of personality and heroism.

Overall – a great addition to the saga. Now I can’t wait for the upcoming TV series George Lucas is about to start filming here in Sydney – will be set to fill in some of the 20 year gap between Episodes III & IV (with the development of the Empire and the rise of the rebellion obviously feature storylines). Lots more StarWarsy goodness to come !

From what I’ve read, it gets really good reviews in the UK – so I’m looking forward to it.

Remember that this screenplay was written by Douglas Adams himself – he had been trying to get a movie version made for nearly 25 years.

It’s not a reproduction of the radio or TV series or the books – the storyline is roughly the same, but there are some divergences (they did have a time limit in the movie format).

I think if people go to see it expecting it to be like the books or the series – they will be a bit disappointed. Just watch it for what it is – a movie of its own right.

I must admit that there were some bits that most people who haven’t read the books or seen/heard the series will probably just not get, but it’s just a typically zany British comedy really.

I think it’s worth the effort – really quite a sweet movie, and quite a bit of fun.

We especially liked the intro – hillarious.

… and don’t forget to stick around through the credits – there’s a little bit more for those people (like me) who remember Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and always stick around just in case !

I quite liked the movie – much better than their earlier effort in Ice Age, although Leanne wasn’t all that impressed – she put it on about a par with Ice Age. I thought Robin Williams did a fantastic job as Fender – very Genie-esque if you remember his role in Alladin.

Even the fart jokes were funny !

Very well created, and worth the effort in my opinion.

Still not quite Toy Story though – the original and the sequel are still two of the best of this genre in my opinion.