May’s Notes: July 2006
As a childless man, there are things about the dark art of so-called ‘parenting’ that completely baffle me. Please don’t get me wrong here. I don’t want to bang on about how all my mates have been utterly emasculated by evening classes, where they’re expected to sit on the floor and talk about their feelings with other men. Neither is this the place to lament the way some friends, having never before seen fit to discuss their wives’ private parts with me, suddenly decide, unbidden, to describe in detail the injuries sustained in the ladygarden during labour. I don’t want to know, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want the state of it to be the subject of a late-night pub debate either.
Rocking My iPod: Tiny Wings
Name: Tiny Wings
Genre: Casual/Distance
Price: £0.59/$0.90
Link: Tiny Wings, big dreams
Simple as hell but oozing with charm. If you own an iPhone, you’ll likely hear about this soon. If not, buy one and then you’ll hear about this soon. You might as well just buy it now, then when it becomes popular you can tell everyone you got there first.
Hammond’s Notes: August 2009
Moaning about commonplace events and facts is something generally best left to my two esteemed Top Gear colleagues. They’re possibly the world’s best - and I really do mean that - at picking on something that the rest of us cope with quite easily, and ranting on about it for hours, and getting all red-faced and indignant.
Lenny Henry: From Cradle To Rave
To time for posts today, I’m off to see this guy. Y’all have fun now y’hear?
Rocking My iPod: ChuChu Rocket!
Name: ChuChu Rocket!
Genre: Puzzle
Price: £1.79/$2.99
Link: I miss the Dreamcast
Anyone familiar with the Dreamcast’s most original and inventive cult-classic puzzler will know exactly why they need to own this game when I tell them that, nope, nothing has changed. It’s the ChuChu you know and love/hate; every puzzle is in there, multiplayer mode is in there and the game looks more beautiful than ever on the retina display. Obviously there have been some slight enhancements, the character models for instance, to bring them up to date, but rest assured none of the awesome style has been compromised. Go relive one of your finest gaming memories.
Anyone not familiar with the Dreamcast’s most original and inventive cult-classic puzzler… get a life.
Clarkson’s Notes: July 2007
As we all know, the Citroen Picasso is bought by the sort of driver who likes to press his trousers and press wild flowers. But press on? No.
So when such a car wheezed out of a side turning in front of me yesterday, I was a bit disappointed. This was my first outing in the new Gallardo for a month, and now I was going to spend it stuck behind someone with no sense of style, no sense of joie de vivre. Someone who was going to trundle along at 40. I should have been so lucky. In fact, the car settled to a diesely 30 until it came to a corner, when it was braked, often quite hard, to a speed most Victorian bargees would describe as “quite stately”.
I Wish I’d Seen This Ten Years Ago
There’s a chance I would have picked it up at the price of £240. A decade later and you’ll be lucky to find an unopened copy going for anything less than £2750. That’s a value increase of around 1045% and as much as I like music memorabilia and rarities I just can’t see myself forking out that kind of cash for a book. I’m pretty sure it’s a fantastic collection though (photos, for the lost among you), Dominique Tarlé was a lucky son of a bitch.
