People are Reading This?

A quick special no-thanks to Blogger.com, as I've just realised that there were comments waiting to be moderated from up to three months ago.

I rather stupidly thought that there might be some sort of indication when someone left a comment, like a small icon, or even just a short message on the Blogger Dashboard, but I suppose that would be asking too much.

Still, for the (two) people who left them, your words have now been put in their rightful place as you can see, unless you've decided never to look at this blog again because you became disillusioned with my overly high standards towards user comments or something.

The only reason I decided to have moderated comments in the first place was because I didn't want to get flooded with offers for knob cream and vole insurance (ironically I need both now).

Mainly though, it was to protect my fragile ego. Some kid referred to me as 'that man' the other day, and I briefly considered taking my own life.

Liar Seeks Heir

Famous fork-warper Uri Geller is looking for contestants to take part in a reality TV show to find an 'heir' to his legacy.

So, calling all magicians who haven't updated their act since the '70s.

Geller is a strange character, a man who has seemingly made a living playing on the benefit of the doubt that some people seem to give him that he really has mystical powers.

Nobody goes and sees David Copperfield and thinks, "Holy shit! That guy can really fly!", because he doesn't claim to be anything other than an illusionist (and even if he did, the high tensile wire riding up his arse might be a bit of a clue).

The fact that Geller claims to have supernatural powers and never, ever backs down appears to be enough evidence for some people to believe whatever he says.

In a sense I don't really blame him - he's just exploiting the woolly thinking and ludicrous belief systems people find themselves adopting. In a world where you won't find a single newspaper that doesn't feature horoscopes, entire channels devoted to 'contacting the dead', or, most alarming of all, the increasingly scary rise of religion on different sides of the planet, the only surprise is that more people don't chance their arm with claims of mysticism. The odds seem fairly good that you'd have at least a degree of success.

The thing is, performers like Derren Brown have proved you don't even need to pretend to be something you aren't in order to turn out impressive performances. Brown has never claimed to be anything other than a magician/hypnotist, and yet has fashioned an air of freakiness around him that Geller couldn't hope to emulate, no matter how much cutlery he vandalises.

It's unclear why Geller and his 'gifts' have endured for so long - what kind of 'special power' is the ability to (eventually) snap teaspoons after fannying around for quarter of an hour?

If you look around though, Geller's the least of it. With 'evolution' virtually a swear word in parts of America and sales of dreamcatchers on the increase (probably), we may be soon pining for the days when some nutty Israeli used his impressive psychic powers to guess that David Frost had drawn a picture of a cat.

And the Loser is... Gaming

If there are any regular readers of this blog (and I'm confident there aren't), you may recall my first proper post which included a short list of reasons why any new games-related TV programme is virtually guaranteed to be shit.

That post, and also this slightly more recent one bring us bang up to date with The British Academy Video Games Awards 2006, or the Bafta Video Game Awards, as they were slightly less elegantly called in my listings magazine.

Despite the fact that my previously documented misgivings were actually directed more towards a weekly magazine-type show revolving around games and not a one-off awards ceremony, it nevertheless managed to tick most of the boxes anyway (it even managed to include a short feature on pro-gamers, Jesus God).

It smacked of a programme made and presented by people who clearly have no love for games (and who made no secret of it) - why did someone think it would be a good idea to have Dave Berry make 'hilarious' comments when showing clips of each of the nominated games for example? In fact that rather summed up the attitude of the programme-makers, and given that it was hidden away on E4 at 11.00pm, it was fairly clear that they seemed almost embarrassed to have to televise an awards ceremony for videogames.

Which, actually, is fair enough. But if you're going to do it, do it properly or just don't bother.

Apologists would say that the videogame industry is still in its relative infancy, and therefore any exposure in the mainstream is a good thing, but I would say a bad show is a bad show, and if they think this effort did anything to help the general perception of games and gamers I would suggest they are sorely mistaken.

Let's be honest - all awards shows are embarrassing and shit, so the chances of a ceremony celebrating games bucking the trend was unlikely, but it could have easily been made 1,000 times better by just playing it straight(er).

Some particular lowlights include:

1. An audience full of PR nobodies (Miyamoto will never been seen near an event like this) picking up awards for all their sterling work (threatening games mag editors with pulling their exclusivity deal if they don't praise their game to the hilt).
2. A potted history of videogames interspersed between awards which was so cursory, it seemed like they'd gotten a runner to spend a hour on Wikipedia researching it.
3. The fact that, without exception, every 'celeb' dragged on to present an award had absolutely no affinity with videogames whatsoever. They couldn't even really bring themselves to lie about it either.
4. Vernon Kay.

You may notice I've made no comment about the actual winners here, and that's because most of them didn't even register with me. The truth is they're really only of any interest to the people nominated anyway - I'm certainly no more likely to play Ghost Recon because of its win, nor am I about to cast New Super Mario Bros. into the fires of Hades because it lost in its category ('Best Children's Game' of all things - that's really going to help Nintendo with that kiddie image thing).

If anything proves what an immense waste of time the whole affair was, one of the categories called 'The Gamers' Award' (actually best mobile phone game) was voted for by readers of the Sun's 'Something for the Weekend' (whatever that is), and given that mobile phone games are at best regarded as an insult to proper gaming, you could regard your chance to influence the outcome of that category as an insult to yourself. I don't believe any of BAFTA's other glittering ceremonies include a text vote anyway.

Still, some woman who used to be in some pop band got to perform her new single at the end so it wasn't a complete write-off.

Just Play Some Records, You Twats

According to 'a man on the radio' (Nick Gillett from the Guardian), the upcoming Nintendo Wii is for a completely different audience to the X-Box 360, because, 'Microsoft is for gamers'.

Thanks for clearing that up.

It's bad enough when you get this kind of guff in some fanboy forum or the letters page of some tatty partisan games mag, but it's another thing when it's in the mainstream media (alright, 6 Music).

Whatever you think of Nintendo, it would be difficult to make an argument that they didn't have the enjoyment of gamers in mind when they create new products. Almost every genuine innovation in gaming can be traced back to a piece of software or hardware that emerged from their Kyoto HQ; the original NES controller which set the standard for joypads to this day, analogue thumbsticks, wireless controllers, rumble paks, battery back-up, and now the Wii remote.

For the first time in ages I find myself genuinely excited about a new console.

The slightly dispiriting prospect of having to upgrade your machine just to play the same games, but with slightly more realistic eyebrows on characters has been pushed aside by the mouthwatering prospect of a whole new way of playing games.

Given the seemingly endless possibilities this presents, to dismiss Nintendo's new console out of hand like that would appear to be the attitude of someone who either a) is an astounding graphics tart or b) has a grudge against Nintendo, possibly because he once got touched up in a lift by Hiroshi Yamauchi.

I shouldn't get so annoyed though - to date, the mainstream coverage of videogames has mostly consisted of screaming headlines about how Sonic the Hedgehog bummed a child through the TV screen, or how Grand Theft Auto made a kid go and shoot someone's head off because he would never have realised what all those guns that were lying around his house were for otherwise.

Some papers that don't decry games as the handiwork of the Devil (and hilariously some that do) sometimes try cozy up to them, occasionally dedicating half a page of ill-informed, out-of-date copy to them every now and again - my local rag once gave Driv3r 10/10. I wish I'd kept that.