So! I went to Vancouver a few weeks ago on a press trip to the Stargate Universe studios. I flew out on a Wednesday, arrived at 2pm and spent the rest of the day re-discovering my favourite city, spent all of Thursday on set and then had Friday, Saturday and most of Sunday free to do what I wanted. Because it was a work trip, I had my flights paid for, was put up in a swanky hotel and had my meals included. I spent an extra night staying with a friend, got to hang out with her and eat honey doughnuts and, in total, spent £35 during my entire stay.

HAVE I MENTIONED RECENTLY HOW MUCH I LOVE MY JOB?

Here, have a few pics:

The view from my hotel room.

The Stargate and me.

A very purple me with Stargate Universe star David Blue.

The glorious view from Prospect Point.

Star Trek fans (there was a convention).

To sum up: I love Vancouver. I’ve loved Vancouver since I first went there in 2004. This is my third visit and I’ve decided I want to live there. Alas, I have no job to go to, no money and no chance of being able to do it. Piffle and balderdash! Still, at least I’ve visited enough times to know I love it as much as – if not more – than London.

Also?

RACCOONS!

I’d never seen them in the wild before, so coming across this chittering, chattering little family in Stanley Park made my day! Of course, by the time I’d finished strolling around the park I’d seen so many raccoons I wasn’t that thrilled any more, but… CUTE!

THANK YOU, James!

You’ve probably seen this poster before, a relic from the old days when Brits had terribly stiff upper lips and weren’t going to let a little nuisance like a World War from keeping them going about their daily business. The first time I ever saw this poster was on the wall on one of the magazines I work for, but I’ve noticed variations going up during the course of this month on other magazines…

This is Classic Rock’s poster:

Here’s the poster for Prog Rock:

And, best of all, here’s Total Film‘s effort:

I want one myself now. I’m thinking of “Keep Watching Supernatural And Eat Cheesecake.”

I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since, and have had many conversations with my thinky friend Paul, who loves to analyse stuff in a way I don’t. He hated it even more than I did, if that’s even possible, and we’ve been batting SATC 2 insults between us for weeks now. He made a good point yesterday during our latest bitch-fest: about how many of the critical reviews have focused on the general appearance of Sarah Jessica Parker et al, pointing out how old and haggard they look. What’s infuriating about this is that it’s something you’d never see if the critics were discussing a film starring a good-looking man who just so happened to be getting older. And, horribly, a lot of that personal criticism has been coming from female critics: the very worst kind of reverse sexism.

I’ve been reviewing for over a decade now and in all that time, unless I’m hideously mistaken, I don’t think I have EVER criticised the personal appearance of an actor or actress. If someone’s starred in something and given a bad performance – well, that’s fair game. If I’d written something and it was crap, people would call me on it, so why shouldn’t I call out someone who’s phoned in a star turn? But I wouldn’t dream of insulting the way they look. It’s bitchy, unnecessary and one step up from name-calling in a playground.

Of course, part of the criticism of SATC 2 is that these are women are almost inviting the nasty comments because they aren’t growing old gracefully; they’re wearing clothes too young for their years and behaving the same way. There’s even a moment in the film where a shop assistant tells Samantha that a dress she has her eye on is ‘too young’. But it’s glossed over: rather than making their ageing a theme of the movie – one a great many women can identify with, and I’m saying that as a 38-year-old who’s starting to realise that my looks aren’t what they used to be – they went off on a tangent and decided to explore other things, such as how married life when you’re rich beyond your wildest dreams can be boring, or how women in Abu Dhabi eat chips while wearing veils over their mouths.

Instead of treating the audience like idiots and insulting us, why didn’t this film focus on some themes we might actually empathise with?

It’s a shame that our culture has this terrible double-standard. Truth be told, I think SJP, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon and Kristin Davis look amazing and probably always will. But throw them into a film in which looks are everything and they’re doomed – particularly when they’re 20ft high on a cinema screen, showing off every laugh-line, vein and wrinkle. As much as I hated that damn script, I really feel for them as human beings, being ripped to shreds by a press who can’t draw the line between a terrible movie and four women being called ‘ugly’ just because it suits the purpose of the reviewer.

And bloody hell, if these women are fugly, where do the rest of womankind stand?

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Walking along the river’s edge, I came across an old couple

One arm oustretched, holding aloft a perch for an African grey parrot.

“Her name is Cleopatra,” the grey-haired old lady informed me,

Proud of her feathered pet. “She does seem very regal,” I agreed.

Cleopatra ruffled her feathers and pecked at the leash around her foot.

She squawked  and ring-necked parakeets, wild in the trees in West London,

Called back to their cousin haughtily.

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…Yes, I’m getting old, lazy and brainwashed by social networking. Fie on my rubbishness!

So, the good news since I last posted is that I’ve lost 9lbs in weight since February, my poorly back has improved massively thanks to the miles and miles and miles of walking I’ve been doing and, fingers crossed, an operation might not be necessary for a long while. Phew! I’m not yet fitting into all those too-small-for-me clothes hanging in my wardrobe, but at this rate I will be in a few months’ time, so I’m very happy about that. Plus I can do my belt up three notches instead of one, so I’m definitely smaller! Hurrah!

A couple of weeks back I met up with my best friends Biddy and Sam, plus many others, and spent a fabulous weekend at the Asylum 4 convention at the Birmingham Hilton. I had an absolutely wicked time and, unlike last year, there were no car crashes to be found! Unless you count costumes:

I think these guys were zombies or something; that’s Jim Beaver in the baseball cap (Bobby in Supernatural), looking suitably bemused/amused…

Although, speaking of car crashes, I did somehow manage to end up singing with guest Mark Pellegrino (Lucifer in Supernatural and Jacob in Lost) after he mentioned he was going to be playing Frank’n'furter in a production of The Rocky Horror Show this year:

I sound like a bag of cats being electrocuted – holy crap, was it nerve-wracking singing in front of 1,000 people! I’m glad I wasn’t on stage, although once they shone a spotlight on me and put me up on the big screen I nearly lost it…

Never let me near an open mike. NEVER.

Anyway, the convention was fantastically fun and, unlike last year’s con, well-organised. I had a blast. My favourite guest was definitely Kurt Fuller, who plays angel  Zachariah on the series, because he was twinkly and funny and warm and had appeared in just about every show imaginable, so he was full of great stories.  (My favourite being the one about how Bill Murray nicknamed his character ‘Hard-on’ during a scene in Ghostbusters II, before stopping the filming and saying, “I can’t call you that or people will be shouting it at you for the rest of your career.” Kurt is still grateful to this day!)

I’m already saving up for next year’s Asylum 6, although I’m saddened I can’t afford Asylum 5 this autumn, particularly because the awesome Misha Collins is attending. I wish they’d hold these damn things in London so I don’t have to pay hotel and travel!

Other news of import: I hated the finale of Lost. I know I’m not alone. It was beautifully acted and Michael Giacchino rocked it with his score (as always; three piano bars and he always has me snuffling). But The Big Twist was plain dumb after six years of build-up, essentially negating all of the ‘sideways universe’ flashes of this season, and it took me an entire day afterwards to figure out what the hell was going on. I wasn’t expecting total closure, of course, but I felt completely robbed by what we got. And that whole ‘there is a light and it never goes out’ crap? GET OUTTA TOWN. Too little, too late.

Although the final episode of Lost was bloody Shakespeare compared to Sex And The City 2, which I saw last night. Since when is it okay for a mainstream Hollywood film to be racist, homophobic and Islamaphobic all at once? I loved the series so much and didn’t mind the first film, but this was an exercise in hideousness (one touching scene between Charlotte and Miranda aside).

It didn’t help my mood when I ended up on the last train home from Waterloo – it was a very late screening – with a woman so drunk she asked the guy sitting beside her if she could eat his sandwich. Bizarrely, but very sweetly, he said yes, and she chomped away at it until she drunkenly folded over until her head was in her lap and threatened to fall off the seat for the entire journey. I ended up chatting to the sandwich-giver, who turned out to be from New York, and he informed me he’d just seen Colin Farrell in a nightclub getting a lapdance.

Man, I wish I’d spent my evening with him instead of at that stupid bloody movie…

I have to open every window in my flat when the weather warms up, because I live in an attic and I’ll fry otherwise. This could be a very painful summer…

In other annoying and painful news, another foe from the summer of 2007 has returned with a vengeance, too: my sciatica. I had an MRI scan a few weeks ago and my disc has herniated again, which means I’ll more than likely be having more spinal surgery at some point this year (or next year or 2018 or 2027, depending on when the NHS can see me). I’m obviously pretty gutted about this, but the good news is that I’m keeping the pain at bay with exercise and a ridiculous amount of walking – unlike my last bout of sciatica, I can stand up for more than six minutes at a time, yay me! – and I’m hoping this will help in the long run. I’m losing weight, too, and the joy of being up to pull a belt in an extra notch almost counterbalances the pain!

It’s also not too excruciating at the moment, either, merely uncomfortable. I’d rather be ‘uncomfortable’ than on morphine any day of the week, so long may this continue.

So while I contemplate the possiblity of a summer stuck in a boiling hot flat with a horde of angry wasps because I could be in too much pain to go outside, I shall enjoy whatever excuses I DO have to leave the house at the moment. In a few weeks I’ll be heading off to Birmingham for the Asylum 4 Supernatural convention – I’m going by train this year, anxious to avoid a repeat performance of the car crash that ruined last year’s – and I’m hugely excited at the thought of hanging out with my best friends, my not-quite-as-best friends and all the other people I know who’ll be attending. The guests look fun too and, hell, it’s the first time I’ve been anywhere in a year and could be the last time I go anywhere for ages, so I’m going to enjoy it! The show itself has been utterly phenomenal of late, too, so this is the icing on the cake.

Last week I went to see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. True to form, I blubbed (it’s the violins! I can’t help myself!) and yet again marvelled at how the sight of a live orchestra playing their hearts out in front of you is still less interesting than the sight of Aragorn kicking Orc ass on the giant screen behind them. Mmm…. Aragorn…

I also seem to be writing a lot of silly ‘poetry’. I have no idea why. It just happened. And keeps happening. Sorry about that.

And finally, I had five serpae tetras in my aquarium last week and this week I have six. They’re all the same size, not a baby fish among them. A baby wouldn’t have escaped from all the other baby-chomping fish in the tank, either, or escaped my attention as I sit beside the tank all the time, so quite how I gained an extra fully-grown fish I HAVE NO IDEA.

I feel like someone is playing a trick on me, but I have no idea who or how. It’s those elves from that shoemaker story, isn’t it?

One last thing – how’s this for the bargain of the century?

Men from just a fiver? I’ll have ten!

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Shaky Paws

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We saw a cat by the road

Shaking its feet in distress.

We approached in concern

Tickled its chin and watched

It roll to show its tummy.

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Cherry blossom, freshly fallen.

A coating of petals, stuck between toes.

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Kitty wasn’t in pain at all:

It had stepped in the joys of spring.

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Advertising Space

As I stood and watched the turtle

Slide past me, little legs flapping

Safe in its aquarium home,

Unlike all its brothers out at sea

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I wondered if the way to save them

Is to give them a use of some sort.

Paint Coca-Cola logos on their shells

And claim them for the corporations.

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That way you’d be a thief if you

Caught and cooked them up for soup,

And their waters could be protected

Because their backs were copyrighted.

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Plus think of the free advertising

Logos on a half-shell, turtle power!

So much potential on the high seas

Where billboards would just go soggy.

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They could do the same for dolphins:

Have oceans full of Adidas porpoises

With lawyers poised to sue fishermen

For messing with their brand.

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Sperm whales could sell condoms

Giant Durex logos on their tails.

Portugese men’o’war sponsored  by

Rowntrees jelly, just because that’s funny.

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I don’t think this could happen though.

There are too many nets to kill dolphins

And plastic bags to choke turtles

And the paint would soon wash off.

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Fin.