Scrabble and TV

Played two games of Scrabble with noisms last night whilst watching the amazing Monday night line up on BBC2. I might say more on that later, but first the games!

Game #3
noisms:
jap, dig, kith, cub, via, vale, cubic, web, (sole, go), hex, reef, (four, no), zed, (don, do), (alp, pa), (ho, no), (do, tot)

zero_zero_one:
parish, (jape, rouge), aide, area, aviary, (boss, go, japes), jib, meow, (tuna, am), feint, gift, hexed, minuet, trysts, qi, (news, as), (li, in)

Final score:
noisms, 262
zero_zero_one, 273

Woohoo! I managed to pick up a small lead about a third of the way through the game (playing 'boss' whilst allowing 'go' and 'japes' at the same time), and just held on to it all the way. Sadly, my Scrabble prowess did not last...

Game #4
noisms:
fez, dewy, (yobs, sow), jet, lines, axle, (our, um, re), (omit, me), aide, lash, any, fie, (poof, to, if), pub, (gas, scart), oak, si

zero_zero_one:
fever, yob, (jilted, ed), solved, melt, (cost, smelt), pie, cart, laden, nand, dirge, (crag, are, rum), tonne, bane, (ta, aura), (phi, gi), ow

Final score:
noisms, 273
zero_zero_one, 232

noisms had the lead for the whole game here, right from the first word. Sigh... Next time, noisms, next time!

I very rarely watch TV any more, there are a select few programmes that I always try to watch (usually just Heroes and Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares), but yesterday we watched the Monday evening line up on BBC2, which is a mix of quiz shows like Mastermind and University Challenge, comedy and current affairs from Have I Got News For You, business and reality TV (kind of) in Dragon's Den and a wildlife show on the cane toad narrated by David Attenborough. Something for everyone really.

The highlight for me, and the programme that made us laugh more than any other, was Nigella Express, in which Nigella Lawson gives recipes and tips for hosting a party. It was absolutely outrageous. Nigella Lawson, for those not in the know, is a British woman who, after various careers in media, has settled on cookery programmes. What is most incredible about her shows is her presentation style: she blatantly flirts with the camera and quite literally everything she says has a coy, flirtatious undertone. It makes for pretty funny television, and while I'm sure her three million books have been sold to mostly women, I imagine that her show is watched by mostly men...

I Need A Hero...

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I had other ideas today for a blog post, but having read noisms earlier post about the series Heroes (which debuted on British TV last night with an impressive 4.3m viewers) I felt like I had to respond.

I have to say, that based on the hype and things I had read about Heroes I had a feeling that I would like it, and I think that noisms could like it too if he had given it more than five minutes - in that time I think only a fraction of the characters had been introduced, how can you get a feel for an ensemble show in five minutes? Granted, the opening of Lost hooked you with the aftermath of the plane crash on the beach, but from the outset we're shown hints that Heroes has a much greater ambition, a cast split all across the world. To say "I don't like this" based on the first character one meets is a little extreme (perhaps noisms just really wanted to watch How To Look Good Naked, and this gives him a reason if pressed for one later).

Despite the first person we meet going on about the magnificence of cockroaches (noisms can pick it apart like a pedant if he wants, but I think the sense was supposed to be "cockroaches are hard bastards"), I'd heard about some other things in the show that kept me watching. Anyway, maybe a university professor of genetics wouldn't say this, but if we're watching this show are we expecting a documentary? Are we expecting to watch a sci-fi/fantasy show and see total realism? Forget that, do we expect to watch any television fiction and expect everything to be in accord with our conception of reality?

I'm watching Heroes because I've been told that there is a good story developing over the series, and I thought that the characters introduced last night were really varied; they were all at different stages in their lives with different dreams and reactions to their manifesting powers - the geek who can't get enough, the cheerleader who doesn't want anyone to know, the desperate mother who doesn't understand what is happening to her - this is not just teenagers coping at some fictional high school with the fact that they are mutants.

I put it to you, noisms, that you didn't give Heroes a real chance, and I put it to you ladies and gentlemen of the jury that while his writing about slugs and evolution has merit, his introduction to the topic was based on a prejudice against genre television in general.

Saying that, if Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit.

You've Got to Search for the Hero....

Ok, I admit it. I watched the first five minutes of Heroes last night. But there's still hope. Before it was too late, I realised it was a load of old cobblers and I'd be wasting two hours of my life, and I turned over to watch How to Look Good Naked instead.

What is it about visual sci-fi/fantasy that makes me want to claw out my own eyes? Is it the bad acting? The clunking scripts? The ridiculous stereotypes? The moralising? The idiotic pseudoscience? Yes, it is all of those things, but mostly it's just because I love the genre and what it can do, and I hate to see it brought down by naff things like Heroes.

Anyway. In last night's Heroes, one of the main characters, a professor, made a little speech about cockroaches, in which he outlined the idea that cockroaches are the 'pinnacle of evolution', not humans - because, as we all know, they can live off the back of a postage stamp for ten years and can survive without a head, and other cool stuff like that.

The idea that a university professor - of, apparently, biology, indeed - should spout such drivel is laughable (one of the reasons I switched channels) but it ties neatly in with a Ricky Gervais podcast I was recently re-listening to, in which Ricky made the interesting statement to Karl that "slugs are as evolved as you".

One of the things that people find hardest to understand when it comes to evolution is that everything alive today is as highly evolved as everything else. When it comes to life on earth there is no pinnacle; all species are exactly as 'developed' as they need to be, whether cockroaches, slugs or humans. We've all done what we had to do - we haven't died out yet.

The operative word is 'yet', of course.

Anyway, just think about this next time you step on one of these on a rainy day:

Biblically Challenged

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The new series of University Challenge started today. I love University Challenge, becuase it's one of the few remaining bastions of aspiration in an increasingly dimwitted and negative British TV climate - and because I can sometimes get one or two questions right and feel superior to the common man. For those who don't know it, it's a quiz for teams from different universities who compete over a few months in knockout rounds until there's only one team left. It has a uniquely dismissive and browbeating host, Jeremy Paxman, who routinely reprimands the contestants for failing to answer what he considers to be absurdly simply questions (Example: "Which distribution emits a probability density function f (x) equals 1 over square root of 2 pi times e to the power of minus x squared divided by 2?"). And, needless to say, it's bloody fucking hard.

So I was surprised to see in tonight's episode that neither team were able to identify the author of the book Proverbs in The Bible - a question which even I consider to be absurdly easy. What was even more surprising was that Paxman didn't scoff mercilessly in his customary manner when the answer "Saul" was offered. He just let it slide and moved on to the next question. It was most disappointing.

It seems like knowledge of The Bible is on the wane. Another BBC product which I condone is Desert Island Discs, an extended interview in which the interviewee is asked to choose eight records they would take with them to a desert island. They are also given a book and a luxury of choice, and copies of the Complete Works of Shakespeare and The Bible. (A fascinating insight, by the way, into the Britain of 1942 when the programme first aired: then Shakespeare and The Bible were pillars supporting the roof of the nation - now they barely make the school curriculum.)

A trend I've noticed in recent years is that a lot of people (Ricky Gervais the most recent example) quickly announce, even as the words are leaving Kirsty Young's beautiful lips, that "I don't want to take The Bible" - the implication being that, as an atheist, the speaker would rather flog himself senseless than have to even touch a copy and find himself associated even in this fleeting way with the thought of Judaeo-Christian belief.

It strikes me as odd, and quite sad. Regardless of whether or not you believe that The Bible is the word of God, or even if it is a great book of instruction, Christianity and Judaism are still hugely important cornerstones of European culture - the very bedrock, perhaps, on which the whole thing is built. Even as an item of history, anthropology and art, the thing's worth is massive. No other book has occupied the thoughts of European people for as long, nor become as entwined with our culture. To say it is extremely important is to understate to a ridiculous degree.

Not only that; it's a fascinating and interesting read, full of blood, sex, mayhem and weird visions in the first three quarters, and impassioned rhetoric about faith, love and hope in the last. Why not take it to a desert island with you, then, even if you're the most devout atheist on earth? At the very worst, it'll stave off boredom for at least a year.

But it seems that the Good Book has practically been confined to the dustheap of history - as evidenced by the fact that eight of the supposedly most well educated people in the country don't even appear to know who King Solomon was, and probably don't much care.