Alden Bates' Weblog

...

After drinking this, I was catapaulted into a world of rock stardom, touring the world, hanging out with groupies, and the associated slide into a mire of drugs and rehab clinics. And then the caffiene buzz wore off and I was a computer programmer again.

Rockstar (or Rockst*r) is a product of the US, comes in a can the same size as Demon and Relentless, and has the standard energy drink taste. I suspect we'll be seeing more energy drinks in cans this size...

Looks like the energy drink market's getting busy again.

Alien with Rifftrax Presents soundtrack: What better way to improve a classic movie but with a commentary full of jokes? Absolutely the best use of time.

Hancock: A fantastic comedy with only one flaw - it's too short. At only 90 minutes, I came away feeling like it was more like the pilot to a TV show than a movie. I'd still recommend it to comic book fans. Speaking of which:

The Dark Knight: Everyone is right. Go and see this movie.

OTOH, don't take your kids. Seriously, when I saw this last Friday, the cinema was full of parents taking small children to see it. There's a good reason why there was an article in today's Sunday Star Times saying not to take children to see it - It's a violent and disturbing movie.

Cola-flavoured energy drink! Thanks, Demon! (NSFW)

Added to the usual caffeine disclaimer is: "Also not for anyone who doesn't think Jordan has a nice set of... eyes :)" Is Jordan that well known in NZ?

Today's dodgy alien comes courtesy of another Irwin Allen series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The season three episode Doomsday Island:

Why, the chaps on Seaview have brought aboard a giant egg! Nothing bad could possibly come of this!

Ah, crap, an alien from the planet Scorpius!

Nice ears...

[Previously: Dark Star's Beach Ball, Lost in Space's Carrot Man]

My average rating for episodes this series was 7.153, which is down on Series 3. Though I thought this season was better overall - the finale really dragged it down. A handful of spoilers and misuse of the dl tag:

Continue reading "Series 4 in Review"

Let me take you on a trip back in time to shortly before the millennium, which is a roundabout way of saying that TSV issue 58 went online yesterday. In the last pre-Y2K issue, there are many lovely shiny things.

Beyond the Sofa is one of my favourite TSV article series, wherein Peter Adamson and Alistair Hughes watch old Doctor Who (in this case Nightmare of Eden) in a similar vein to DWM's Time Team. Also Scott Gray gives us an article on the making of the DWM comic strip Happy Deathday!; there's A Locked Room Mystery, a comic strip featuring the first Doctor and Steven; and a look at the Sherlock Holmes continuity in the Virgin book All-Consuming Fire by Jamas.

There's nothing from me in 58, so instead I'll mention Neil Lambess' column in which he mentions having seen episodes of The Macra Terror and hearing rumours of The Highlanders, raising the possibility of more missing Doctor Who episodes existing in the hands of collectors. Since it's some nine years later and no more complete episodes have been found here, nothing came of it, but the recent discovery of a complete print of Metropolis, missing for the last 80 some years, does give me hope that more missing episodes exist out there.

Here's hoping, anyway.

Previously: TSV 57
See also: Jamas, Paul

Blah blah, continued from Doctor Who Series 4 (Part 4), spoilers, etc.

Continue reading "Doctor Who Series 4 (Part 5)"

So, lately Fucor have added Lemon V to their range, giving us a choice of regular (green), "dark" (black), diet (silver), berry (red), or lemon (yellow). Now, lemon covered a fair range of flavours - why just in the Coca Cola stable there's Lift, which has a fairly smooth taste, Lift Plus, which has a harsher, more chemical flavour, right through to Diet Coke with Lemon, which tastes like dishwashing detergent. Lemon V tends more towards the Lift end of the Lemon Spectrum, I think. I'd be interested to know exactly why lemon as a flavour seems to be so popular, but in the meantime I'm hanging out for V Cola.

Demon "Killer Tropo", also introduced recently, contains orange, mango and passionfuit juice. And according to the ingredients list on the back, a hell of a lot more apple juice than the other three combined. The result is unsurprisingly a tropical fruit taste, albeit slightly-tart. It comes in a black and brown can. Text on the back states "If you've had a back, sack & crack wax... put this can down!"

... Yeah.

Not really a fan of that one either, but good on them for giving us a choice of flavours.