Date Archives: Monday December 15th 2003

Feeling pretty jaded on Sunday, we sat down to watch the re-make of The Time Machine. I’d been meaning to see it for an age, but had never gotten round to it, so a hungover Sunday afternoon seemed the perfect time to put that right. This is the one with Guy Pearce under–playing the lead role to the point of anonimity, and Simon Wells butchering his grandfather’s original tale beyond recognition. You know the one.

In amongst the butchering was this hella cool scene set around 30 or so years from now, where Mike from Neighbours parks up the time machine and wanders forward onto a bustling city street of the future. In the background there is an animated billboard advert with voice-over for leisure homes on the moon. Cool future-spin, thought I. After a brief exchange with some futuristic lycra wearing cyclist chick, Mike jumps back in the time machine, but barely gets going before being jarred by some obviously very jarring thing. He parks up again and finds the same city street in ruins, flame all around and military vehicles patroling the area, yet this is only a couple of years since he parked up previously. Wow, I thought, very cool.

At this point a pair of soldiers approach our time traveling lead and try to apprehend him. When he enquires as to WTF is going on, it turns out that the demolitions on the moon (for the leisure complex) have “screwed up” its orbit. Cue camera shot of night sky and the moon looking a little bit wonky to say the least. ‘Kin Awesome!

If the movie had forgotten all about time travel at that point, I would have been a happy man. At this juncture, I wanted a near–future sci-fi romp where the moon had been skewed from its usually serene path around the Earth. This would have been exciting, and the effects up to this point had been pretty darn good by any stretch, so the scene was set for something pretty memorable.

But no, before a truly cool sci-fi romp could be snatched from the cleavers of the butcher, Mike from Neighbours was back in the time machine and off to ruin the rest of HG Wells’ classic story.

Rachel and Andy visted us at the weekend, and for their efforts we took them into town for a night out. First stop was Baa Bar for some cheap beer and shooters, before we made our way to Liverpool’s answer to the Star Wars Cantina, Krazy House.

We were there so early that the staff seemed kind of puzzled to see us, but it meant that we could get in a good few games of pool before regular folk and weirdo’s alike amassed at the mecca of mayhem on this particular Saturday night. After the pool, we spent the entire night on the K1 floor, and surprisingly I quite enjoyed myself, despite previously having bailed to the floors above when it got a bit heavy on K1. Saturday night, though, the music wasn’t too hard going, with a mix of obvious stuff like Rammstein and The Prodigy, to Linkin Park and other way more obscure stuff that swept along at break–neck pace.

The fact that we were in the door by nine pm and didn’t leave until three am shows how much fun we were having. Three quid on the door equates to 50p per hour, which is a steal in comparison to quite a few other pretentious dives in the city. Fliss topped off the night by performing a back-flip off of a set of barrels that you can dance upon. If you’re nuts. Okay, when I say “back-flip”, read that as “fell like a sack of spuds” taking the girl beside her and some guy who looked like Jesus along for the flight. On impact she managed to make a bit of a mess of the back of her leg and left arm, but got straight back up again ” to prove to the world that it hadn’t hurt” or something to that effect. Both leg and arm are healing nicely – pride was cushioned entirely by alcohol and escaped unharmed!

By the time we’d managed to get a taxi home we were all completely spent, crawling in the door around 4am.