BBC News => Blake’s 7 poised for Sky comeback
The satellite channel has given the green light for the development of two 60-minute scripts for a “potential event series”.
Hurray for Sky!
I can only hope that it was the BBC that made the mistake about adding the “‘” intro the title and not Sky. The apostrophe may be grammatically correct, but it isn’t Blakes 7.
(I can only hope they don’t screw it up like that damn Battlestar Galactica remake-in-name-only travesty.)
Spoilers, I suppose.
Well, the Indian Premiere League (IPL) is off to a flyer. The first match, between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Royal Challengers Bangalore was a rout. Bangalore lost by 140 runs. Since 140 runs isn’t a bad Twenty20 score on an Indian wicket, that’s like loosing by an entire game.
Not to denigrate the contribution of the other Knight Riders, but this victory can almost be handed solely to Brendon McCullum, the Kiwi wicketkeeper who carried his bat for 158 runs and bringing the Knight Riders’ score to a staggering 222. This man is an amazing striker of the ball and I still remember his pounding of Bangladesh last year when he kept hitting balls out of the grounds and onto runway of the nearby airport.
He certainly put on a hell of a show for the estimated 50,000+ spectators in Bagalore.
So, I suppose I’ll make a few comments about the IPL and, by extension, the Indian Cricket League ( ICL).
The ICL and the IPL are competing cricket leagues in India. Both use the controversial (but only to stick-in-mud, luddites) Twenty20 format. (I’ll go on record as saying it is the superior format of the game for spectators. It’s not without some problems that time should smooth out, but then it is a very new format of the game.) The ICL was created when a television conglomerate repeatedly lost bids for cricket television rights, even though they were the highest bidder. What the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had in mind by rejecting the bids, I won’t speculate on. Nonetheless, the ICL was formed trying to use a more football-like club system. International players were brought in (and in a fit of childish anger) subsequently banned by the International Cricket Council (ICC) from playing in traditional international cricket.
The buzz for the ICL made the BCCI realize they’d possibly missed a colossal money-making opportunity, so they moved to create the IPL, using much the same format of the ICL. The main difference being that, with the BCCI and ICC’s nods of approval, international players weren’t necessarily struck from their home countries’ teams. This lead the way for current players of McCullum’s ilk to be in the IPL. (Not that there aren’t some top international players in the ICL, like Shane Bond, but they had to burn their bridges to sign.)
I watched through a significant number of the ICL games, and found that with no geographic support for any of the Indian cities, and not knowing virtually any of the players, I had trouble picking a team to support. I finally choose Hyderabad, simply because they did so poorly at first and turned themselves around. No one was more surprised than I was when they went into the semi-finals, then finals and then actually beating the seemingly unstoppable Lahore team in two nail-biting matches.
So, now we come to the first match of the IPL series and, despite the similarities, the contrast – in entirely superficial ways – is marked.
I’ll say that, having, once again no loyalty to any city in India, prior to the start of the series, I had decided to support the Knight Riders simply because of their name, which is ludicrous, and because McCullum is one of my favorite players. (I support New Zealand in all international cricket events.)
That was before I saw their uniforms – black with glittery gold fabric, and metallic gold-painted helmets and pads?!?! I think McCullum was just trying to prove he wasn’t a sissy-pants wearing that uniform.
In fact, the uniforms almost sums up the differences in a nutshell. The ICL played on smaller grounds, probably with a capacity of about 20,000 people. In some cases, the stands were packed, with people climbing onto roofs and every available spot to see the games. The commentators we good with a nice banter between the pairings. The uniforms were colorful, as is the norm in Twenty20, but not outlandish and they even had cheerleaders and Bollywood stars performing during the break between innings.
Now, switch to the IPL. The first match was in a stadium with a capacity of 55,000, and was nearly full. There were lasers and smoke, and hot cheerleaders (the ICL cheerleaders were pretty, but not what I’d expect for professional sports), performers, flashy gold uniforms, banners and streamers… it really did look like they were going for some form of 70’s glam rock concert. For the first time ever, I kind of saw what the test cricket snobs are talking about when they say it cheapens the image of the sport. This certainly looks like it is turning the game into a circus.
But then… have they never seen any Bollywood movies? We were at an Indian Bistro for dinner last night and they had the Zee Cinema network running. (Zee entertainment, by the way, are the people who bring us ICL cricket in the US and are the only network I know of that broadcasts cricket in the US, thank you very much!) The film was in Hindi, but typical of the Indian Films I’ve seen. A guy is in love with a beautiful woman. She’s in a car accident. She’s dying. Another woman is dying – she needs an organ transplant. The first dying woman gives up her organs to save the other. They break into a massive musical song and dance number with what appears to be people in traditional Greek outfits. Although we didn’t see the end of the film, I’m sure the man falls in love with the woman who received his lover’s organ transplant – along with a few other obligatory sound and dance numbers.
Why would they not expect this in Indian Cricket designed for showmanship?
Still, even in the few months I’ve been watching Twenty20 games, I’ve seen marked improvement in the tactics and the skills, as the players adapt to the new format. Who knows, maybe they will finally crack the US market?
I don’t care what the stuck-up, toffy-nosed “Test Cricket”, cricket-must-be-boring-and-take-5-days snobs say, I, for one, have been enjoying the India Cricket League Twenty20 matches and am looking forward to the India Premiere League games, too.
How could you not, with adverts like this one?
Pompeii? Vesuvius? Volcano Day? How could you go wrong?
Is Rose the fourth series’ Bad Wolf? David Tennant is back for the fourth series of the revival Doctor Who…
What can I say?
Three cheers for Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Recently, Dick’s, a mega-sports store, has opened a couple of outlets in Phoenix. (And when I say Phoenix, I actually mean in the desolate wastelands of Phoenix’s suburbs.) Not too long ago, we stopped in the one just past the Hawaiian BBQ place and just this side of the Arctic circle and I made a fairly exhaustive search to see if they carried any cricket gear.
No such luck.
While I’ve located an “English” grocery in town (that’s really Indian) that carries bats, balls and protective gear, I can neither afford to spend hundreds of dollars on the gear, nor do I have any practical opportunity to play. However, my kids – Michelle at least – are getting old enough to try playing sports (and James is willing to give it a try, even if he hasn’t quite got the coordination yet.) The problem is, I just can’t really see handing Michelle a fine, expensive chunk of English Willow and letting her brandish it. That just seems a recipe for a broken skull and a broken wallet.
No, what I needed was something like those cheap plastic kids’ baseball bats that they sell at every toy store in America. Well? Come to think of it, why not? Surely they must do the same thing in the UK. If not there, then surely in Australia, where no doubt they wean their children by giving them cricket bats soaked in a mixture of beer and vegemite.
While I couldn’t find exactly that sort of thing online, I did finally come across beach cricket sets, which not only feature plastic bats, but include plastic balls, stumps and bails.
Perfect.
Except for one thing: Shipping to the US is quite literally $60 – that’s more than the cost of the actual set.
That’s where Dick’s came along. They might not have cricket gear in their stores, but they’ve got a limited selection from the mail order service, which included a Gray-Nicolls beach cricket set. It cost twice as much as the set from the UK, but also has twice as much equipment – two bats, two sets of stumps and bails and four balls, and shipping is only $10.
The set itself is considerably stronger plastic than I’d dare hope. Now I just have to figure out where to take the kids to practice… and find 18 more people to flesh out two teams…
One problem at a time. In the meantime, look at my son’s follow-through on his first attempt at bowling.
Ashes to Ashes just finished airing and, while not worthy of an episode by episode review, it’s worth a few comments.
Ashes to Ashes is the sequel to the successful Life on Mars. Life on Mars told of modern Manchester Detective Chief inspector Sam Tyler who, through a car accident, is transported by to 1973 where he has to cope with life as a cop in a world far removed from his.
During Life on Mars’ two series, the initial ambiguity of how Sam got to 1973 is slowly eroded. By the second series, it’s clear to all that Sam is in a coma, not “back in time” or “mad” as mentioned in the opening credits. I really enjoyed Life on Mars, except for the final episode, which was, to my mind, a betrayal of Sam Tyler’s character.
Ashes to Ashes picks up in London, where Detective Inspector Alex Drake, the police psychologist who was assigned Sam Tyler’s case, is mysteriously confronted by a man she doesn’t know, but seems to know her, who then puts a bullet in her brain.
Drawing on her knowledge of Sam Tyler’s coma-fantasy world, Drake creates a fantasy world of her own, 1981 London. In this world, DCI Gene Hunt, figment of Sam Tyler’s imagination, and Chris and Ray, his equally unreal subordinates have moved from Manchester to London to flesh out Drakes fantasy-world.
Drake, knowing full well this is a construct of her own dying mind, tries to escape by solving the murder of her parents, which, from her current perspective hasn’t happened yet. Her reasoning is if she can work it out, she’ll survive. Pity she studied Tyler’s case so well that she can recreate his fantasy people – and they even look the same (How’d that happen?) – but didn’t remember that Tyler thought the same thing about the mystery of his father’s disappearance. That didn’t get save him either.
Ratings for Ashes to Ashes were very good, and so Alex Drake is destined to spend another year in 1981.
It seemed to me that much of the magic of Life on Mars is missing in Ashes to Ashes. For starters, this is more a vehicle for Gene Hunt than Alex Drake – hardly surprising since the show was created to continue Hunt’s adventures as a fantasy construct, Drake being needed as a plot device to get us into Hunt’s world. Witness many scenes in which the fantasy characters are present but Drake isn’t! My memory might be wrong, but I think Sam Tyler was, by necessity, present in every scene in Life on Mars (except any dreams he may have had) since it was a first-person fantasy.
Second, the mystery is well and truly gone. In Life on Mars, even when it was fully established he was in a coma, they managed to sling a few “how could that be possible in a coma?” moments that might make you think something bigger was afoot. Not so in Ashes to Ashes, where Drake is fully informed on Tyler’s experience.
Third, 1981 London, while an important time in the revitalization of London, is not nearly so far removed from today as 1973 Manchester was. The culture shock isn’t nearly as profound, which was the core premise of Life on Mars.
Finally, and I’m sure I’ll get a,”I don’t see you writing any better”, comment along the way, the first series finale triggered my that-doesn’t-add-up warning bells too much to be avoided.
Absolutely, spoilers if you continue.
The basic idea is that, this homeless guy captures Drake. He talks to someone on the phone, mentioning that he’s got your past here. He shoots Drake. In the first episode, she tracks down the guy who shot her, back in 1981 he was a crime lord. That doesn’t get her back to 2008, so she fixates on saving her parents. She meets and continues to interact with them, particularly her mother and her godfather, Evan, who we saw in 2008 taking Alex’s daughter away to her birthday party.
It’s obvious at this point, that Evan must have been the link between past and present, but how? During the course of the series, Alex learns Evan and his mom had an affair. Did she really know this and had suppressed the memory or is it all a fantasy construct?
Finally, she learns that her father knew of the affair and, rather than let his wife and child go, he decided to commit murder/suicide by having them all blown up in a car. (The bomb provided by the man who shoots Alex in the present, a client of her father’s) As a child, Alex had escaped by accident, and the crime remained completely unsolved.
Evan asks for the suicide video to be destroyed so Alex will never find out, explaining why the case was never solved. Alex also explains that the bomb-maker will try to blackmail Evan in the future, and that’s why he shoots Alex.
For a few moments, that sounds like a nice packaging. Then the doubts start to niggle at the back of the mind. Could Alex have known this somehow, like the affair, and suppressed the memory?
Ignoring the obvious point that her father was nuts, even a nut doesn’t arrange a complex plan with a convicted felon, a borrowed car and exploding your whole family to commit a murder/suicide. They kill the wife and kid, then off themselves. If he really did try to use the bomb, why wasn’t he trying to stop Alex from getting out of the car?
The bomb-maker knows the father commissioned the bomb. He saw the explosion. He knows Evan didn’t tell Alex. He blackmails Evan. Evan doesn’t pay. So, he commits murder? Blackmailers usually threaten to reveal something embarrassing or criminal, not shoot the person they’d be revealing the secret to.
If it weren’t for one fact, I’d think they rigged the pieces together at the end. The reason I think it was planned this way: The Death Clown. Sam had the Creepy Little Girl, who was death. Alex has the Death Clown, played for by the same actor who played her father. Again the question: Did she know that her father was the killer all along?
The morning the final episode aired, the BBC announced that it would be coming back. Did they shoot two endings and only decide at the last minute which one to air? Is that why it was a bit muddled?
It may not be as good as Life on Mars, but any show where the police brutally beat up suspects to get information can’t be all bad, right? Right?
I’m sure I’ve mentioned I dislike Easter. It’s literally the worst day of the year. Why? Oh, it’s not so much the Jesus freaks, it’s the fact that most business shut down on behalf of the Jesus freaks. And it’s the fact that it’s usually a glorious day in Arizona. It’s not the kind of day where you want to stay at home and have a quiet day at home.
We decided to take the kids out geocaching on the north side of the Phoenix Mountain Parks. At least the city parks aren’t closed, and try though they might with their depressing tales of torture and murder, they can’t take the beauty out of a spring morning.
We’d never been to this area before and parking is sparse around there, no doubt because the rich folks who live on that part of the park’s perimeter don’t want riff-raff like us parking in their neighborhoods. Too bad for them.
Miffed as I generally am on Easter day, my mind tends to ponder the sheep-like devotion to a fiction, and so I’m turning these issues over in my head, probably more than I normally would, as we came over a saddle between two hills and it was one of those surprise moments you sometimes get in the Phoenix Mountain parks: a valley, surrounded by hills, with not the slightest trace of the city skyline visible anywhere. Apart from the footpaths cris-crossing the valley floor, I could have been looking at how it was 200 years ago, or even 2000 years ago. (I’m afraid my knowledge of the geology of the Phoenix area is remarkably lacking, but I don’t think the hills are younger than that.)
Some people don’t see the beauty in the desert. Some people, like me, are born here, have lived outside the cities and feel an affinity with it – it has the pull of home. Others come here and immediately see it. Most take time to appreciate it. Others, still, never do.
The sky was cloudless and blue. Beautiful, as long as you recognize it’s letting all that sunlight burn you alive.
The hills and rocks that are so pernicious to walk over, at a distance stand, almost defiant and mighty. They’re not big, but they make up for it in determination.
The earth is mostly desert brown, even the shrub brush are sparse enough and dull enough in color that it makes everything look that desert color, which at first glance is dull, but as you look more, it just makes the colors even more alive. On this spring morning, the hills were covered with yellow-flowering plants. Tiny little things, but in their millions, visible across the valley.
Not as obvious, because they are even smaller, little purple flowers dot along the trails.
Looking at these things is as close as I ever get to a “religious” experience. What an amazing world we live in. What a beautiful, diverse world that, even though I’ve lived in Phoenix 26 years, I can still walk over a hill and see something this beautiful that I’ve never seen before. How sad that, in our lifespan, none of us will ever walk over every hill and see every wonder this planet has to offer.
And then there’s the universe – that mindless, mind-bogglingly vast frontier. What wonders await us out there?
Ten minutes later, I ran across two nuns, sitting on the side of one of the hills, looking out over the same scenery I was looking at, no doubt contemplating the wonder of their god for providing for them.
What a small picture that must paint in their minds.
In light of this link from the Guardian (Thank you, One-Ten for the link), there might be trouble a-brewin’ for Fresh & Easy.
Tesco suffered a double blow yesterday as City analysts claimed the group’s new US chain is in deep trouble, while its core UK business is being battered by the economy and losing ground to rivals.
One analyst claimed the new California-based Fresh & Easy convenience stores are missing sales targets by as much as 70%.
Tesco, the parent company, denies this, of course.
For once I’m actually on the cutting edge frontier of this so-called new shopping paradigm. We shop there about once a week, usually for very specific items, such as imported butter, British bacon, packaged (not-frozen) dinners, unpasteurized orange juice, teas, occasionally meats, fruits and vegetables. (Despite malicious rumors to the contrary, vegetables and fruits are consumed in my household.)
Is Fresh & Easy’s concept something that will be big? I don’t know. I’m notoriously bad at determining what kind of marketing nonsense people will fall for. If I was good at evaluating these concepts, I’d own some sort of hi-end organic dog treat bakery and be making a fortune off people with more money than sense.
So does that mean I think Fresh & Easy is a bogus concept? Maybe a little bit.
Let me explain the Fresh & Easy shopping experience a little bit. Fresh & Easys (Easies?) (hereafter referred to as “F&Es”) are small grocery stores, roughly twice the size of a 7-11, Circle K or other convenience mart. They are laid out in an efficient design, the majority of things people are probably looking for are in the first 3 aisles. Those items are fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy, packaged meals and side dishes, sandwiches and meat. If you’re looking for just shopping for something to feed the family on your way home from work, F&E is tailored for you. Packaged foods are typically sized for two people.
As you move further back in the store, you reach alcohol, breads, crackers, chips, cooking ingredients, frozen foods, and along the front of the store, drug store items. Most items in the store are typically F&E branded, but a few national name products are available.
Meats, and many fruits and vegetables are packaged in plastic trays, some are netted or netted into the trays, others are sealed and filled with freshness-preserving gas. F&E makes a point of stocking items marked as having low or no preservatives. I’ll mention that more later. Non-packaged fruit items, such as bananas are priced individually.
F&E also carried no tobacco products, which I applaud. Somehow though I think it’s because of their check-out system and liability rather than any ethical stand they’re taking. Whatever the reason, while laudable, this does set them further apart from a profitable convenience store staple. Convenience stores always do a brisk trade in death.
Fresh & Easy has no dedicated cashiers, all check-outs are self checkout, which, normally, I hate.
The typical self-checkout equipment found in Frys or Walmart is oriented not towards facilitating convenience for the customer, but towards minimizing staff costs while deterring theft. (Because, obviously, all customers a scumbag shoplifters.) These systems typically are only allowed for customers with 15 items or less because all items need to be weighed in advance on the front side of the bar-code scanner, and weighed again on the backside to make sure you aren’t slipping an unscanned item in the bag. All you need is one child helping you at the checkout line who puts some weight on either plate to send the whole mechanism into shoplifter alert mode, often requiring staff to come reset the mechanism. At least it doesn’t trigger a full-body search – I can imagine that the TSA would love to implement these into their airport security system, but haven’t quite worked out how just yet.
Also, even though it has been years since the introduction these style checkouts, the average person is still too stupid to work them. I’m always seeing someone standing there, reading the screen, mouthing the words to themselves and they try to make sense of the obviously too-complex english words on the screen. (“Hey, Violinda May, what does, ‘scan yer’ first item,’ mean?”)
Fresh & Easy has a couple of these evil registers and they work just a badly as everyone else’s. However, they also have a different type of self-checkout – the semi-assisted model, which works infinitely better. These don’t use scales, they use baggers. You pull your cart up to the register (no weighing required) and scan your items, after you’ve scanned them, you place them on a typical checkout style conveyor belt which whisks the groceries down to the bagging area, where (typically) an F&E employees bags your groceries for you. Occasionally, you end up bagging your own, but not often. This system is typically smooth and fast (although I did once have trouble with coupons) and works much faster and better than the “You’re all riff-raff, thieving scum” self-check out systems.
If you’re not comfortable doing your own scanning, an F&E employee will do it for you – when you start, there’s a button for start scanning, or have a cashier do it for you. Just hit that button and someone will come to you. (Don’t bother, you could scan it yourself before they get there.)
Once annoyance, F&E won’t automatically clear any credit purchase over $50 without checking your ID. That typically results in an inconvenient wait while someone comes over to check and punch in the all-clear code. With the prices of groceries shooting up, they might want to bump that to $75 or even $100.
These registers are part of the reason things are packaged in plastic trays or, like bananas, priced individually. Everything has been pre-allocated for you so that self-checkout works. There’s nothing in the store that isn’t bar-code priced.
Fresh & Easy employees are typically helpful and friendly.
Since the term “organic” when it applies to groceries is actually more of a marketing smokescreen than an actual definition of anything meaningful. I’m not going to evaluate F&E’s organic pedigree. Others have done so and claim that it comes up lacking – better than ordinary stores, but not good enough to satisfy the Earth-mother Gaia crowd.
What it does mean, though, is that F&E doesn’t compete on prices. They may be more economical than a really-fanatical organic food mart, but they don’t fare well against a typical supermarket. Further, in this country, “store brand” products are viewed (wrongly, in most cases) and low-cost, lower-quality items. (There’s the beauty of marketing, if you want to call it that.) Since F&E’s inventory is mostly store-branded, I think there’s probably a bit of market resistance.
For example, and, I’m 100% percent making this up, let’s say that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is $1 a box at Fry’s, and Fry’s branded macaroni & cheese is 3 for $1. People still buy Kraft because it is perceived better. Along comes Fresh & Easy with a so-called more natural product at $0.90. It might be cheaper than Kraft, but people price evaluate it against the store-brands, in which case it is quite expensive.
Places like Trader Joe’s have managed to “sell” their store brand as being better than the national brands with a combination of “we’re all-natural” and “we cost more” because of it. Irony time, right? I’ll shop F&E any day over Trader Joe’s, but I suspect I’m in the minority.
Still, the fact that there are many chains of stores, and not all of them can be the cheapest proves conclusively that people don’t shop exclusively because of price.
Another “problem” with F&E is that, because of the no and low preservative model, their foods have terrible shelf lives. Fine, I don’t mind fresh meat expiring this week, but a bottle of salad dressing that expires in a week? I soak salads in dressing, but as a family, we can’t consume a bottle of dressing in a week.
When they first started, their meals, such as a ravioli in a bolognese sauce would typically have 3-5 days of shelf-life. Now, they have large stickers on them saying “Suitable for freezing” indicating that F&E may have realized that there’s some resistance to the short shelf life. (I have no empirical data on the subject, but I understand that Europeans typically buy smaller quantities of groceries, but shop more often. F&E is trying to tap that market, but this is not something that has caught on in the US, to my knowledge. We have large refrigerators, and they’re full.)
So, my conclusion is that Fresh & Easy has a convenient and fast shopping model. They stock enough items to do your full grocery shopping. All of the products we’ve had have been good, and some excellent. (Their French bread isn’t crusty enough, that’s my one complaint with their products.)
Do I think they’ve missed their targets by 70%?! I have no way to know that, but I can say this, location seems to be a huge issue in the success of the F&Es. There’s one location down at Baseline and 19th Ave, every time I’ve been there, it’s been quite busy. But – there is nothing else in that area, it’s a wasteland. It’s one of those areas that was rather like a slum that, developers desperate to build new homes that aren’t 90 miles from the city, started to reclaim, but as far as I can tell, F&E is the only store within 2-3 miles. How long will that last?
The newest store at Glendale and 19th Ave, an established neighborhood, has one of the larger Fry’s markets diagonally across the intersection. That store has been there (in one form or another) for as long as I can remember, and I’ve been familiar with this neighborhood for at least 20 years. That F&E is almost always empty when we visit.
Now, I’ll be quick to say that, because of the relative locations of those two stores, we’ve visited them at dramatically different times of the day, and, indeed, the same can be said of the other two we’ve visited, so that may completely invalidate my suppositions about location being more critical than concept. Time will tell. The newest one, which is moving along quickly now, is even closer to my home, but in an area near the central-corridor housing boom. There’s not much down there for shopping, and I predict this one will be a better location than Glendale and 19th.
I do hope they make it, they are a nice addition to the shopping scene..
Where does the time go?