Battle: Los Angeles and How To Lose Friends & Alienate People

Over the last couple of nights I've been flexing my blu-ray muscles and have rented a couple of films I quite wanted to see ion the cinema but me 'n' the wife (got used to saying that now, it just kinda rolls off!) never got round too it.

Thanks to a few (rapidly expiring) blockbuster vouchers we have from when we bought the player we went down and picked up, Battle: Los Angeles and How To Lose Friends & Alienate People, two slightly different films no doubt.

Well first up was Battle: Los Angeles.

I quite like my alien invasion sci-fi films (shocking I know), Independence Day is overly cheesy but remains a favourite to this day, I even quite liked the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds... sorry. I was expecting a cliché ridden, over the top, 'Go America!' film, with minimal character development and stuff blowing up all over the place, ending with a initial victory for mankind but looked like it would result in overall glory.

Got what I was expecting.

It's by no means a bad film, the predictable plot and the flag waving patriotism are hallmarks of a bad film no doubt, but I didn't go in thinking it was going to get many screenwriters guild nominations. After a bit of a slow start, which set up many of the clichés from the outset (1 guy close to retiring, 1 guy's wife having a baby so fighting to protect it etc) it is action packed, the constant action to action movement with the narrative done in the lulls was very video game in it's style, shame then the game of the film, as with so many film tie ins, sucked ass.

The acting was very standard for the genre, I'm pretty sure Aaron Eckhart's jaw has never been so square for so long ever before, and (unless there's a sequel of course) wont be ever again. But overall I think the film worked on most of the levels it went after, stuff blew up, mankind started to win, a good time was had by all. I've made it sound like a very by-the-numbers 3 star film, and yes I think that's fair enough and sometimes that's all you want from a film.

Second, and on the following night, was a British film, ropey territory for a start, set in America How To Lose Friends & Alienate People.

For which I didn't really know what my expectations were. I'd wanted to see it purely as Simon Pegg was the lead and he's usually pretty good, but had never got round to it. From the box office (quite a heavy loss) I wasn't the only one.

Turn out this film was pretty good. I wasn't aware of the support cast, but to be fair once they were on screen they were mostly good, Megan Fox (who was awful, but it suited this part), Kirstin Dunst, Jeff Bridges, Gillian Anderson, Danny Huston, Bill Patterson, even 2 of the 3 leads from the IT Crowd, Miriam Margoyle and James Cordon were in it.

It was mildly funny where necessary, I didn't think all the slapstick was really required, but it kept the film moving along. It got quite predictable towards the end when it was always easy to see who would end up as the love interest, but it was a good watch. Pegg was very good, Dunst was good as she tends to be in a more supporting role (E.g. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Bridges was a little subdued but was funny on a number of occasions.

Bonus - no game to slate, it'd be awful anyway, just assume.

Battle: Los Angeles took better advantage of the blu-ray looking better, but then it's an sci-fi slash action film not a comedy, it would!

Of the two, it's hard to compare, but if it came down to watching one or the other again, I'd go for How to Lose Friends. It just worked better as a story, as it actually had a concrete not 100% predictable one. Go watch, if enough people do, it may one day break even!

Lloret rocks, alpharooms suck

Right, it's got to be said, these blogs are turning a little into the consumer section on that's life. But I don't care, it's my blog and I'll write what I like so there :p

Firstly, I had a delightful time in Espania. Lloret is a lovely place, not really targeted at the Brits so much any more, or maybe not at this point in the season anyway. But the hotel was decent the staff was nice, all in all it was a lovely little trip.

The only downside was... well getting home at the end. We noticed the night before that Alpharooms, who we'd booked everything through, had made a mistake with the return transfer, which would have left us stuck for a very long time in the airport. So we rang up to arrange, the first woman, unhelpful but gave us another number, the second one took their time, seemingly couldn't work their own systems (all while we should have been partying on our last night out there) then eventually gave us a new time and pick up point. To be sure, we passed the phone woman to the receptionist to write stuff down due to slight difficulty understanding the Spanish accent. She even drew us a little map, how nice!

We ate and drabnk and were merry! Eventually after sorting these people out, it can take the shine off the last night of a holiday (actually a honeymoon) when you have to sort out stuff people have cocked up on your behalf.

Following morning, checked out after a nice breakfast (gotta love a bit of all inclusive buffet style grub!), at least 50% of us remembered to get their wrist band snipped, (the other 50% may have kept it on til we were in a party on the sat night) and we trekked over to the Guitart Monterray to get picked up (We were staying in the Guitart Capri!). Well we waited for the bus, and waited and the due time passed, and we got a little(!) stressed and waited and then phoned.

Yay! We'd been given the wrong pick up location and the bus had fucked off without us. No choice, panic stations, ran back to hotel, asked the still helpful reception staff to get us a taxi and we taxi'd it back to the airport in time... and at a cost of €55, we were lucky we had enough cash on us. We also tried asking the Spanish taxi driver for a receipt, I may as well had been asking a Martian for a table tennis ball, so we gave up and went for the plane.

Obviously this annoyed me, it was alpharooms fault for booking the wrong thing and then the coach company (NTIncoming) for giving the wrong info when we tried to fix alpharooms mistake. So on return, I wrote a nice email ready for alpharooms stating I feel they should cover the taxi fare, refund the unused transfer and maybe a little sorry would be nice. I went to their site and guess what. No email address to complain to.

I asked if anyone knew one on twitter and the company themselves contacted me to say no. I mean honestly, how backwards a system. Fair enough if I was supplying receipts or something, but I could even scan them!! I just wanna complain! It's obstructive and obviously designed to make complaining as hard as possible. Poor show. But complain I will. Maybe they'll even read this who knows!

In other news today, series 5 of The Guild starts on XBOX Live! (Thursday for other formats) well I'm assuming that's the case as it's the US release schedule and it should be pretty uniform.

La la la la la la la - Y Viva Espania

So what's going on at the moment in the news...

Some moron has disrupted the Murdoch questioning by using a shaving foam pie on the old git.... There may be a poisoner in a Manchester Hospital, Rory McIlroy is single again.. oh wait

You know what, I don't give a flying fuck about anything as I'm off on holiday!!


In just a few short hours I'll be shifting my ass to the airport then spending the rest of the week in sunny Espania. I'll be sipping all inclusive drinks and chowing down on cheese and ham toasties (probably) and all inclusive buffet style meals while everyone else is in work (well almost everyone). I'll spare a thought for you all as I'm sitting in the sun drinking Reina (not the goalkeeper).

I'll return just in time to attend an engagement party and then relax.

Sadly the child won't be joining us, she's got a lovely few days with Nanny, Aunties and Grandads to look forward too. I'm sure she'll enjoy that far more anyway.

Of course if there is such a thing as karma, I've just screwed myself over here... oh well.

Cash Generator 2 - The reply

Right, here goes again, for anyone wanting the back story the original blog, including my communication to Cash Generator can be found here:

http://andrewdrisc.blogspot.com/2011/07/cash-generator-vs-good-service.html

Well you've never have guessed it, they've responded and to be honest it was a very predictable response, so as not to dilute the experience, here it is in all it's glory:

From: merthyr tydfil [mailto:merthyr@stores.cashgenerator.co.uk] 

Sent: 14 July 2011 15:37

To: Still not gonna leave my email address here, nuh-huh.

Subject: Kinnect Game

To

Mr Driscoll

In response to your e-mail as a gesture we will offer an exchange on the item or credit note to the value of the disc, our exchange policy is clearly stated and when initial query was handled no mention of disc burn was  mentioned and as far as we are aware this damage cannot be repaired, although scratches to discs can be. We will happily give you the exchange as above or credit note which has no expiry.

If you have any further questions please don't hesitate to contact us.

Thank you

Cash Generator

Merthyr Tydfil

I haven't responded.

A few points, not written the best (or maybe it's my years of letter writing giving me OTT standards) and it never fills you with confidence when they can't even spell the product... The product knowledge (disc 'burns' can't be repaired??) worries me a little also... and grow a pair (or the female equivalent) and sign your email.

No mention of disc burn, true, but saying that I didn't mention anything, I left the staff member to examine it, but they possibly/probably didn't know what disc burn was!

And honestly a credit note, like I'd ever want to shop in their pikey shitehole again after this experience. I'll leave that to people in tracksuits from now on.

I did take a picture of the pre-fixed disc and although it's a shite picture (I'm not a photographer!) you can see the white rings of surface disc scoring! Et voila:

By some crazy random happenstance though a guy from Trading Standards in Merthyr rang my house asking for me today, not long after the email landed in my inbox. One monster of a coincidence if you ask me. Maybe it's fate... maybe it's just really pro-active, maybe even it's some jester from Cash Gen pretending to be trading standards to judge a reaction! I'll give them a ring back tomorrow (or they now have my mobile) and see what they got to say.

There's very little in it for me to do anything, but I just feel like I should, or they'll just carry on.

Cash Generator Vs Good Service

Give an opinionated introvert with basic writing skills a public forum such as this and you should be expecting... opinions! Particularly when something makes a real impression, whether that impression be great, or rubbish.

On Friday, among other things (and far more important things at that) that happened, I was also privy to service at complete opposite ends of the scale. For me 'n' the wife's wedding night, after everyone else had buggered off home we stayed in the Dragon Hotel in the centre of Swansea and in general it was an excellent experience. The staff were very helpful, nothing was too much trouble, the room was nice, clean and everything that was required and I acquired quite nice shower gel etc from the room (ahem). They did ID me (29 and lets face it pretty damn weather beaten) and Brandy (28, yes... petite, but still doesn't look young) at the bar, which I suppose is a compliment, or an annoyance!

The taxi that took us to the service was from Yellow Cabs and was fabulous, and to show service gets repeat custom, thanks to that 1 good journey, we booked 3 of them to get from the registry office to TGIs for the grub. If she'd been crap or shitty, the bookings would have gone elsewhere! If you're ever in Jackland for any reason and need a taxi, I heartily recommend Yellow Cabs.

On the other end of the scale was Cash Generator Merthyr Tydfil. Yes I know Cash Generator is probably the pikiest 'shop' around, designed to sell broken second hand stuff to chavs, morons and skint people (which I know now technically would include me) at a huge mark up than the 45p they paid Bob for his 32" flatscreen TV. I knew all this but they had a copy of Kinect Sports I wanted and they were like a tenner cheaper than anywhere else I could find.

I got the disk home and due to my newfound fandom of all things Call of Duty I didn't play it from purchase date (2/7) to the pre wedding Thursday (8/7). I stuck it in and, chug chug, nothing... hmmm try again, same, check disk and believe me this thing has had a hard life, more scratches than a Merthyr girl bitch fight and more burn than a bald bloke with fair skin on his holidays.

So, receipt in hand I marched in the following day, prior to departure for Swansea obviously, and asked for my cash back. The none-too-quick shop assistant looked at it, admitted it was proverbially shagged to buggery and phoned her manager (who was a full 12 yards away, so the call was necessary) and declined the refund as 'media' items must be returned within 48 hours. I pointed out that firstly I wasn't made aware of this and 2 I'm pretty sure that encroaches on an odd consumer right. She essentially said, "Tough"

I asked to speak to the hidden distant manager who trundled across, being sure to bring something with her, to give herself focus on apart from me, who essentially repeated "Tough" and confirmed they feel that their self created company rules take precedence over consumer rights. She said all this without ever staying still to address me or indeed looking me in the eye. Shocker. I asked who owns the franchise, they declined to tell me. (Didn't take a genius to find out it was Dave Elwood, I love the quote, "Cash Generator has allowed me to purchase a yacht and sail around the world in my spare time – a hobby not many business men are privileged to do.") yeah - allowed by exploiting whoever you can!

Riled by this, but holding in the language as little Gracie was with me, I left and called Consumer Direct who pretty much said their actions were shady and I should complain to the store. So back I rang complete with advice on the 1979 Sale of Goods Act (as amended) ringing in my ears, and was once again told, "Tough" and worst of all the advice that Cash Generator feel their goods do not need to be of satisfactory quality as they are 2nd hand. Manager Sarah's words not mine!

I actually wanted to play the damn thing so I took it to gamestation a few days later and had a disk repair done. Once again top notch service received, the guy behind the counter actually seemed to know about Cash Generator from other customers and didn't think it was legit either. This spurred me on.

So in line with the Consumer Direct advice, I complained in writing saying:

From: yeah - I'm going to leave my email address here... d'uh

Sent: 11 July 2011 12:14

To: 'customerenquiries@cashgenerator.co.uk'

Subject: Customer Complaint

Dear Sir/Madam,

Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended)

On 02/07/11, I bought a second hand XBOX 360 game - Kinect Sports from your Merthyr Tydfil franchise for £25.00 which is not of satisfactory quality.

The problems are:

·       The disk damaged beyond possible use, both scratches and disk burn was present. This rendered the disk unusable.

I attempted to return this faulty item on 09/07/11 (after first attempting to use it on 08/07/11) complete with original proof of purchase, but this was rejected, despite the staff present agreeing the item was faulty, as your company own rules dictate you may only return ‘media’ products within 48 hours.

The Sale of Goods Act 1979 makes it an implied term of the contract that goods be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality, which this item was not. It also states you need to give reasonable time to allow such returns, which I believe 48 hours is not. Also, at the point of purchase this extreme limitation was not mentioned to me and I was unaware of this until I attempted to return the item, otherwise I clearly would have tested the item much sooner.

I have since had the disk repaired (10/07/11) at my own cost and am seeking a return of this outlay, plus reasonable costs for this inconvenience.

Please respond to my complaint within 7 days from receipt of this email.

Yours faithfully

Andrew Driscoll

It's not even I care about the pitiful amount it cost me to fix, but through being sarcastic, rude and the like to me in the shop, they made it into a big issue, and one I've decided to follow up. Plus you never know, maybe I'll save some kid from blowing his birthday money in there and being bent over in the same way. Since last week I've heard horror stories of TVs blowing up and them washing their hands of it, defective products being happily sold.

It's not on.

Only gone and got married!

So, last weekend was a big weekend, a very big, life defining weekend.

Last Friday (9/7/11) my wonderful fiancée (is that the right one, I can never remember?? I suppose I wont have to from this point!!) got hitched in front of a MASSIVE crowd of 9 in the Kilvey Room of Swansea Registry Office. Everything went to plan, nothing messed up and even the CDs for the music worked. Magic!

From this point onwards I will be mostly wearing:

The wedding itself, as you'd expect with attendance not making double figures (by choice I'll add we're not hideously unpopular), was quiet and indeed most awesome! Lovely music (Pretenders - I'll Stand By You / Piano Players version of Everlong (Foo Fighters) / Ben Folds - Luckiest), nice setting and of course wonderful other half, who looked gorgeous. Not massive amounts of photos as the outside bit was windy as, but some nice ones. Decent grub after and a few pints. Good day!

The day after it was all action stations to set up the hall for the 'party' aspect, and once again was a cracking night. From my sister-in-law doing a Dolly Parton act, avoiding actually singing any Dolly Parton songs in the process, to seeing the pretty damn decent turn out. I even confirmed the fact that I'm almost tone deaf banging through half of Summer Nights and half of Gold!

Very notable part was though you realise you have some damn good friends and family, donations were generous but more importantly some of the stuff in the cards was pretty damn awesome. Some minorly bizarre (you know who you are!). If I wasn't a horrible heartless shell of a human, could almost had brought a tear to my eye, but I am so... Everyone will be getting thank you cards of course, but if you're reading this. Cheers guys, you rock! Me and Cer were very happy everyone came, joined in and enjoyed. Well I assume enjoyed, I don't people generally don't make that much noise if they're bored.

Brandy Edwards did a sterling pair of impromptu speeches (I promised him none, he was heckled up during the meal, then very harshly called up by my sister in the party, as well as covering the female vocal in Summer Nights when Cerys legged it) and the buffet was awesome, even if I ate hardly any of it. Yes you heard me right, you can put any 'yeah whatever fatty' jokes in the comment section.

People raved on about the royal wedding and it got so much blanket coverage that I got sick of it after 30 seconds. But wedding the like of mine and the 3 other mates I've got getting/have already got married this year happen every weekend. Smaller by a factor of 100,000,000, but honestly wouldn't swap a second of mine for the whole royal faff and bullshit.

The Ben Folds song was perfect to close as (even though I heard very little of it on the way out) I am the Luckiest!

Right enough of this sounding all soft and sentimental stuff. For my next trick I'll stop looking confused at the phone every time I get a text from 'Cerys Driscoll' before going "....oh yeah"

Dara O'Briain

...or at least I think that's how you spell it!

I've got a very odd sense of humour, and as a result of this, there are very very many mainstream type comics that do nothing for me. MacIntyre? Annoying. Brigstoke? Blah. Addison? Meh? Djalli? Murray? Sorry, not for me, etc.

However, I do like a rather odd selection of 'funnymen', Jasper Carrott has always made me laugh, Daniel Kitson was the funniest Stand up show I've ever seen and of late Dara O'Briain has become quite popular!

I've always known Dara from stuff like Mock the Week, QI, Have I got News for You, all programs that can be very hit and miss but generally are worth the effort of watching. He's always come across as funny, quite intelligent and generally quite interesting. Something vital on these type of panel shows as unless you stand out, whether acting as presenter or panel show member, you do tend to just blend in and end up leaving no real impression (Unless you're Ian Hislop, then I just think you're a cock).

He was one of the first people I 'followed' (not a fan of the phrase...) on twitter and generally on there he's equally as witty and interesting, all boded well!

A few years of consistent merriment and I decided to acquire his DVD, This is the Show, after all who doesn't love Tits. I can't say I paid for it, it was Christmas time and the always lovely wife (almost!) provided me a copy in shiny wrapping paper, we watched it and I was impressed by both his levels of geek (also very present on twitter) and of course the routine. It remains one of my favourite comedy DVDs to this day (that's not a particularly huge thing, I've only had if for like 6 or 7 months... but it's still good)

Although I had realised I liked the guy, I didn't really consider myself a fan still, even though I was. I was in some kind of Dara denial. It only came into sharp focus when I was on my way to Tenerife for my mates stag do a few weeks ago. I popped into the WH Smith in Bristol airport to get some reading material for the plane and the clearly relaxing(!) weekend which was to follow, I'd been hankering for Nerd Do Well by Simon Pegg for some time, after all he's nerd royalty and he's motherfunking Scotty! Now the paperback had been issued, I marched in with my £7.99 in my (metaphorical) hand.

I picked it up and noticed the book was in a buy 1 get 1 half price offer.... ooooh the possibilities. I scanned round and noticed Tickling the English, a book I was unaware of the existence of before. So I got it and easyjet whipped me 4 hours to the Moroccan coast. I intended on reading the Pegg book, with the expectation I had for it and in the unlikely event I finished it, Dara would step in.

I looked at both and found myself drawn to the Dara book. I then proceeded to read his book over the holiday and finished it when I got back, not giving a second thought to the Pegg book. The book was excellent, I think there would have been something extra too it if I had been English (I'm Welsh...) as there would have been more to relate too etc, but it was good from the perspective of watching one Celt dissect the next door neighbours, of whom I do of course have my own thoughts, hates, preconceptions, for the pleasure of another.

After this I am fully converted! The final piece is to see the guy on tour, so I'm sat waiting patiently for some dates.... anytime your ready Dara... and play Cardiff or Swansea or both, can't be arsed trekking to Bristol thank you very much.

But he does have an excessively large head...

News of the World

Before I start, I don't buy newspapers, be they daily, Sunday, weekly, monthly whatever. I don't even get the freebie Metro 77 people assault you with as you walk to work in the mornings in Cardiff. Generally I tend to use a blend of a few websites to gather whatever daily knowledge that I'm needing.

Partially this is because websites tend to update as things happen, while once a paper is printed, that's as up to date as it gets. Partially as I don't want some jumped up journalism graduate pushing his bosses OTT political views down my throat, expecting me to believe them as fact just because they're in print.

But primarily it's because the vast majority of the British press is of a very low quality. Actual news stands aside for bullshit 'celebrity' news (it escapes me how people like the '3am' girls and Dan Wootten have jobs and well paid jobs at that, where in a less obsessive society they'd be branded nosey or stalkers), sensationalist crap (Daily Mail I'm looking at you), self indulgent pointless filler (we won the election... did you fuck) and downright made up stuff (Sun Hillsborough story immediately comes to mind).

Possibly the worst at this has always been The Sun, and of course it's Sunday sister paper the News of the World. Over the last few days I'm sure everyone is aware of the allegations against the Sunday waste of paper, in that they have been responsible for hacking into the phone of missing girl Milly Dowler, quite what they hoped to achieve by this god only knows, but hopefully he'll get the chance to judge them soon enough.

Off the back of this (they've hacked many a celebs/MPs phone before, looking for the dire shite excuse for stories that populate their pages) it's come to light that this may well have been common place in such things as missing persons cases and they may have done it on other occasions. It's absolutely sickening. I've always thought these papers were low, doing whatever they could to appeal to a pretty low common denominator but this is new depths.

Problems are, so much of the media has a common owner, things like this will get about half the coverage of Prince William having a cold or a photo up some celebs skirt proving she's a 'slut' or something that the photographer had to lay in the gutter to take (easy to get shot then). Let's be fair the gutter is where the papers (Sun/NotW) and everyone who works for them and condones these actions (I see silence or brushing over as condoning) belong.

No action will ever be taken against the likes of Rebekah Brooks (editor) the actions were probably fully supported by everyone at the paper at the time. They'll be quick to look after their own no matter what hurt and concern they've caused other people. People, probably the same people, will still buy the papers regardless of meaningful content, just because there's a picture on the front that Cashley and Cheryl Cole were in the same postcode last Thursday, which of course proves that Diana was murdered as she was pregnant with Hugh Grants child following some sort of alien link.

If there was no demand for the gutter press these nobs provide, they'd be out of a job, but as long as there's demand they'll continue to exist and do more of the same. Occasionally overstepping the mark (as they have done now) with no real consequences, but for the most part, just feeding the public's obsessions. With a bit of luck this could start to change peoples attitudes towards papers like the Sun, but I doubt it.