The I.T. Crowd

After my technical difficulties over the past week, what better than present to you the entire The I.T. Crowd which finished last night. These are all over youtube and the writer Graham Linehan openly promotes the show being downloaded/ streamed. Check out his fantabulous blog here and the DVD boxset out October 1st.

Series 1:

Yesterday's Jam: Part one/ two/ three
Calamity Jen: Part one/ two/ three
Fifty Fifty: Part one/ two/ three
The Red Door: Part one/ two/ three
The Haunting Of Bill Crouse: Part one/ two/ three
Aunt Irma Visits: Part one/ two/ three.
Series 1 out-takes: Part one/ two


Series 2:

The Work Outing: Part one/ two/ three
Return Of the Golden Child: one/ two/ three
Moss And The German: one/ two/ three
The Dinner Party: Part one/ two/ three
Smoke And Mirrors: Part one/ two/ three
Men Without Women: Part one/ two/ three

Aside: Yay! Post 150! Is it even possible to stop blogging?

We seem to be experiencing some technical difficulties

Technology and myself have not being getting on well lately. My lovely 80GB video iPod's screen has been cracked from the inside, I have two Xbox 360s to return, the Halo 3 game I bought at the midnight launch was scratched to hell and my PC is giving up on life- it only works when it wants to work (iTunes is an effective way of turning it off). My phone is probably the next thing on the list to self destruct. Another reason for the serious lack of posting was that Halo 3 game.

Apologies then to all 6 of my regular readers. I'll get it back on track to have post number 200 on October the 22nd. Exciting stuff indeed.

Jenny Craig, Bitch!

I like CollegeHumor.com. Even though the website title is missing a letter, I find it's a good site to visit on a daily basis to find stuff like this. There are some genuinely brilliant and original short fims that range from Minesweeper: The Movie to the ongoing Street Fighter: The Later Years series.

I recently came across a series of pranks that two website staff members have played on each other in the last few months. It starts off fairly simple but effectively but then the shit kicks off towards the latter pranks. It's painful to watch but that might be what makes it so good.

Watch all of them here. I'd advise starting at number one.

Blistering Barnacles! A Tintin Superpost!

One of my favourite graphic novels/ cartoon shows while growing up was the Tintin series. Tintin is currently in the news as Steven Moffat (the writer of BBC's new "Dr. Who"and "Jekyll" series) has been recently signed to write the Tintin trilogy. The trilogy will have three different directors for each film: Stephen Speilberg, Peter Jackson and a third director who has yet to be announced. The films will be filmed in motion capture technology very much like Beowulf.

Here are some Tintin links:
Blistering Barnacles! Captain Haddock's Curse Generator
Captain Haddock Curse Count
Cars as seen in the Tintin comics/ real life
Tintin as you've never seen him before

Watch two episodes online:
The Blue Lotus: Part one/ two/ three/ four/ five
Red Rackham's Treasure: Part one/ two/ three/ four

Download links:
Theme Tune (MP3)
Intro Video (WMV)

The Comics:
Hergé's Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets (Black & White)
Hergé's Tintin In The Congo (Black & White)
Tintin In America
Tintin And The Cigars Of The Pharoah
Tintin And The Blue Lotus
Tintin And The Broken Ear
Tintin And The Black Island
Tintin And The Kind Ottokars Sceptre
Tintin And The Crabs With The Golden Claws
Tintin And The Shooting Star
Tintin And The Secret Of The Unicorn
Tintin And The Red Rackhams Treasure
Tintin And The Seven Crystal Balls
Tintin And The Prisoners Of The Sun
Tintin And The Land Of Black Gold
Tintin: Destination Moon
Tintin: The Explorers On The Moon
Tintin And The Calculus Affair
Tintin And The Red Sea Sharks
Tintin In Tibet
Tintin And The Castafiore Emerald
Tintin And The Flight 714
Tintin And The Picaros

Tintin Books by other writers:
Tintin And Alph-Art (Wikipedia entry)
Tintin And The Lake Of Sarks
Tintin In Thailand (Black & White- reportedly awful)
Tintin: The Freelance Reporter
Tintin And The Mysterious Visitor
Tintin: They Explored The Moon
Tintin And The Voice Of The Lagoon
Tintin And The Flute Of The Wendiago

This is exactly why I'm excited about the upcoming "Sex & The City" movie

I think I'm in love.

If I was Britney, I'd be bat-shit loco too.

Pedro sez: Hey kids, steal some TV!

I had this link in my bookmark toolbar for a good while but never had the time to look at it, let alone the bandwidth. It's called TV Links and I've just noticed that there are real classic television shows that you normally wouldn't find on general release DVDs. You can stream full episodes from the latest Heroes or Curb Your Enthusiasm episode to Monty Python Flying Circus and Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds.

It's essentially Youtube but with a neat accessible layout. There's also a list of movies, documentaries and cartoon shows. Enjoy.

Update: Two days after my post on streaming TV and Movie, KaZoop compile the top 10 of similar sites.

Meet Kanye West's biggest fan...

Yet another lazy post and I apologize for that but the video above is just so funny whether you like him or not. Because of Halo 3, I'm so tired right now... Tired like a FOX!

Conclude The Quarrel

I'm off to the midnight launch in Galway tonight for Halo 3. I'm a huge fan of the series having read the books and over past two days, managed to finish the first two games for roughly the sixth time. I'm genuinely very excited to play the entire campaign on Legendary setting with it's online four player co-operative mode and Finish The Fight. After that, I'm ready to unleash a can of whoop-ass online against American teenagers. Luckily, I'm prepared to take their verbal slagging and give them some of my own.

Employers in the States are expecting a "Halo Sickness". I'm lucky to be on holidays this week. Watch the TV advertisement (which, oddly, features no game play at all) here or take an interactive tour throughout the diorama here. If you're new to the story and want to find out what happened in the previous games, here's part one and here's the more complicated part two.

Woah, I'm all for hyperlinking today. I suppose it's what I'm famous for. If you're up for a bit of gaming, my gamertag is Pedro Monscooch. Original, I know. It just came to me while I was sitting on the toilet.

This is the story of Star War. Let's begin with pt. 4

Family Guy's season premier aired over the weekend and had an hour-long Star Wars parody called 'Blue Harvest". It was so good, there's already talk of covering the sequel "Empire Strikes Back". You can download or stream this episode here. There is also a link there to a similar site for American Dad and my new favourite show Robot Chicken.

The episode would have been too long to squeeze into 22 minutes but it seems to drag on in it's 45 minutes. As much as I like "Intergalatic Proton-powered Electrical Tentacle Advertising Droids" as a reference to "Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-flailing Tubeman", you can find a lot of filler throughout. Some of the ship sequences are downright boring too. One of my favourite moments in the entire episode was the opening crawl:

Episode IV
A NEW HOPE

It is a time of civil war, and renegade paragraphs floating through space. There's cool space battles, and the bad guy is the good guy's dad, but you don't find that out 'til the next episode.

And the hot chick is really the sister of the good guy, but they don't know it, and they kiss. Which is kind of messed up. I mean, what if they had done it instead of just kissed? Angelina Jolie kissed her brother once. Yeah, she did. You know it, I know it, and her dad knows it. That's why they hardly ever talk anymore. You can run away to Africa, but you can't run away from the truth.

Oh, by the way, here's a tip for you: when this is over, go out and rent the movie "Gia." She's way naked in it and makes out with another chick and everything. It's awesome. I stumbled across it late night on HBO after I had just got back from hockey, and I almost fainted, But I digest...

Princess Leia was coming back from buying space groceries when this happened...

Go Home Productions goes home

One of my favourite mashup artists who helped define the genre is hanging up his headphones. Go Home Productions a.k.a. Mark Vidler decided early on in the month to walk away from producing these mashup classics. But first, he's promised to release all of his previous collections from the last 5 years for free. That's over 200 songs in 16 different albums. Right now, he's got the first 12 ready to download (Torrent file here) with the rest of the compilations (unreleased rarities and whatnot) to come soon. Check out his page here where you can download each album individually.

Some other sources of mashup goodness:
A+D (site of The Rebel DJs)
Bootie USA (Collective American mashup scene)
DJ BC (creator of The Beastles)
Get Your Bootleg On (forum set up by McSleazy)
Party Ben (famous for Every Car You Chase)
ThriftshopXL (he made the fantastic Do You Wanna Cuz It's Tricky)

Here's one of my favourite GHP mashups. It's The Osmonds featuring another totally different band but I'm not going to spoil it on you. Check it out:

Liverpool Watch: Birmingham

Liverpool 0-0 Birmingham

To be fair, Birmingham are a world class team with such quality players as Rowan Vine and Stuart Parnaby. Hopefully, in their next match against Reading in the Carling Cup, Liverpool will make it four draws in a row. That'll show Chelsea who's boss.

Marcel Marceau dies at the age of 84

Marcel Marceau has died yesterday in his home in Paris and I feel the need to mention this today. I'm also known as a silent clown but I find his life story is so astonishing. Marceau was born Marcel Mangel to Jewish parents in Strasbourg, France. He changed his name to Marceau to hide his Jewish origins when the Nazis marched into eastern France and he fled with family members. His father was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 and did not survive

Tribute via Yahoo:

The Frenchman's extensive tours and appearances on camera brought his silent art to people around the world. His comic and tragic sketches appealed on a universal level, with each audience interpreting his performance in its own way. "Mime, like music, knows neither borders nor nationalities," he once said. "If laughter and tears are the characteristics of humanity, all cultures are steeped in our discipline."

On stage, he charmed with his deft silent movements, a white-faced figure with a striped jersey and battered top hat. Off stage, with the costume and the pancake makeup removed, Marceau was a slim, agile man whose eloquent description and explanation complemented his mute mastery of mime.

In mime, Marceau said, gestures express the essence of the soul's most secret aspiration. "To mime the wind, one becomes a tempest. To mime a fish, you throw yourself into the sea." He created the figure of Bip, the melancholy, engaging clown with a limp red flower in his hat, 60 years ago this year.

"The mime Marceau will forever be the character of Bip," Prime Minister Francois Fillon said in a statement confirming the performer's death. "He became one of the best-known French artists in the world. His students and the showbusiness world will miss him." The exact cause of his death was not immediately known.

Marceau traced his ancestry back through U.S. silent film greats Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton to the clowns of the Commedia dell'Arte, a centuries-old European tradition, and to the stylised gestures of Chinese opera and Japan's Noh plays.

Marceau was born in the Alsatian town of Strasbourg on March 22, 1923. He was brought up in Lille, where his father was a butcher. When World War Two came, his father was taken hostage and later killed by the invading Nazis and in 1944 Marcel joined his elder brother in the Resistance. He later joined the French Army and served with occupation forces in Germany at the end of the war.

He began to study acting in 1946 under Charles Dullin and the great mime teacher Etienne Decroux, who also taught Jean-Louis Barrault. It was in Marcel Carne's famous 1947 film starring Barrault, "Les Enfants du Paradis", that Marceau, who played Arlequin, first became known as a mime artist. He formed his own mime company in 1948, and the troupe was soon touring other European countries, presenting mime dramas. The company failed financially in 1959, but was revived as a school, the Ecole Internationale de Mimodrame, in 1984.

A veteran of dozens of films, one of his best remembered roles was a speaking cameo in "Silent Movie", made by American director Mel Brooks. For Marceau, mime had a philosophical and political level. One of his most famous sketches was "The Cage", in which he struggled to escape through an invisible ring of barriers, only to find that one cage succeeds another and there is no escape. In Czechoslovakia before the Soviet-led invasion of 1968, he recalled that audiences understood it as an allegory about capitalism. After the invasion, they saw in it an image of themselves under Russian domination.

"I am a progressive, a man who deals for peace, and who has struggled for enlightenment in the world. I am not just an entertainer," he said. "I want to be a man who will represent as an active witness my time, and who wants to say, without words, my feelings about the world."

See the best of video of sorts on Youtube here.

Song Of The Week: Collective Edition

Animal Collective- Peace Bone:

To be honest, I'd love to post Beirut again, but I have to give some other guys a chance. Anywho, click here for previous songs of the week.