Episode 7 opens at Viv’s funeral. As the crowd sings “Abide with Me”, the curtain is drawn to allow Viv’s body to enter the crematoria… only it gets stuck. The gang look at each other, and finally Gene puts his hymnal down and walks up to the curtain to pull it shut. Gene apologizes to Viv, while Chris and Ray snicker and find the whole thing amusing. Gene notices.
We then see the gang at Luigi’s, where they have a few drinks and share memories in Viv’s honor. But then Chris spills a beer whilst trying to open it, and this sets Gene off:
He hurls his glass at the wall and tears into Chris, saying that he’s lost one of his finest officers and is now left with a “clumsy bastard” like Chris. Gene then asks for Alex, who is back at her desk at the station. Jim walks up to her and says that another good officer is gone. Jim says that if you find a dead officer, you’ll find Gene Hunt standing over him. Alex, not in the mood for Jim’s talk, says that she has work to do. Jim says that she’s lucky, as Gene’s bullet didn’t kill her. Alex insists that it was an accident.
Jim notices that Alex was looking at a photograph, so he walks over and asks who the man in the picture is. She says that it’s the ghost who has been haunting her. He asks where she found the picture, and she says it was in Gene’s office. Jim laughs, calls Gene slippery and says that he’s good in covering his tracks. Alex says that Gene is clean. Jim picks up the roll of film Alex found with the photograph at the end of the last episode and asks about it. Alex says that she’s going to get it developed, but Jim insists that he can get it developed at D&C. He then says that he and Alex are the same, but she says that the difference between them is that she doesn’t wish for cops to be bad. Jim tells her to “do what you were put here to do… get me Gene Hunt”.
– Well, the Lost finale sucked… and not just because of the crappy writing. Entertainment Weeklyreports that the finale had 107 commercials, or over 45 minutes worth! A typical hour long show normally has 18-20 commercials per, but the first hour of Lost had 37!
– A dude buys a used paragliding rig for £300 off eBay. He then decides to take it out with no training whatsoever. What could possibly go wrong? Find out.
– European mobile phone operators have suspended the number 0888 888 888 after a string of mysterious deaths connected with it. In fact, every single person who has had that number for the past ten years has died under mysterious circumstances.
– Speaking of spooky, the Amityville Horror house is up for sale. It can be yours for a cool $1.15m.
– Guess what? Not only might sunscreen not prevent skin cancer, it might actually accelerate it! Awesome! Read more here.
Almost everyone who grew up in the 80s knows that there were two versions of Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” video.
The “original” (uncensored) version, based on the extended remix of the song, features women having pillow fights, pouring champagne on their lingeried bodies, and other titillating scenes. This version was intended to air on adult video channels and on video screens at nightclubs.
The “edited” version of the video, which used the shorter single mix, is basically the same video, but with the more objectionable bits – like nipples showing through lingerie and topless scenes – cut out. This version was intended to air on MTV and other mainstream music video outlets like Friday Night Videos.
Not everyone knows that there was a third version of the video. This one is almost identical to the original, except that the mud wrestling scene at the end is slightly shorter and at the very end the band hold up a banner that says “Some People Will Do Anything To Sell Records”:
The reason I bring all this up is that I finally received my “Deluxe Edition” of Duran Duran’s first album yesterday (see it at Amazon here). It’s a three disc set: the first disc includes a remastered version of the album with all the B-sides from that era; the second disc contains a bunch of demos and early live versions of the songs from the album; and the third disc is a DVD which contains “live” performances from Top of the Pops, Old Grey Whistle Test, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop as well as all the music videos from that era.
Well, most of them. For some reason, the third version of the “Girls on Film” video is absent. Don’t get me wrong: I love that the two main version of “Girls” are included, as well as “Careless Memories”, “Night Boat”, and both versions of the “Planet Earth” video… including the rarely-seen “Club Version” filmed at the Rum Runner, the Birmingham nightclub where Duran Duran got their start:
But why couldn’t they have included the third version of “Girls on Film”?? As a completest, this drives me insane! Although all the videos look pretty good, it’s not like there wasn’t space enough for it on the disc. I guess it’s just EMI continuing to screw Duran Duran, even after all these years! Here I was, hoping to finally get rid of the crusty old MPEG file of the third version, and now I’ll have to keep it until EMI just decides to give up and release everything on DVD.
– From the “Let’s Hope It’s a Typo” Department: an Australian publisher is recalling and reprinting around 7,000 copies of The Pasta Bible… because one of the recipes calls for “salt and freshly ground black people”.
– Need gold? The Emirates Palace Hotel in the United Arab Emirates has installed a gold ATM machine. You simply insert some currency, and gold comes out. The machine uses a broadband connection to update gold prices every ten minutes, and has some incredible security measures, including anti-money laundering software. So the next time you’re in the Middle East and need gold at 4am, the hotel’s got you covered.
– A British woman is the first person to be diagnosed with phonagnosia – the inability to recognize voices. Unless the woman sees the face of the person speaking, she has no idea who it is. As a result, she avoids the telephone, as she can’t even recognize the voices of close family members without seeing their faces. Amusingly, there is one person she can recognize by voice alone: actor Sean Connery.
– George Washington is a deadbeat. It seems our first president borrowed two books from the New York Society Library – Law of Nations and Vol. 12 of Commons Debates – but never returned them by their November 2, 1789 due date. The president now owes over $300,000 in late fee dues to the library… although they’re not exactly expecting payment. They would, however, love to have the books back.
– Check out this nifty piece on spirolaterals at Futility Closet. Basically, if you gave two robots some pencils and the exact same set of instructions, one would draw a symbol of pure evil, while the other would draw the symbol of the people that evil persecuted, all based on differing angles. Chilling, but cool.
Various commitments prevent me from even starting the recap of episode 7 of Ashesto Ashes until next Thursday (05/20).
This is, of course, the day before the series finale of the show. Given that it takes me several days to write each recap, it is extremely unlikely that I’ll have the episode 7 recap finished before the finale airs. So what I plan to do is to do a special, short “finale recap” post on Saturday (05/22). The “regular” recaps will be posted as I finish them.
Sorry for the holdup and thanks for understanding!
