Not that I really needed another excuse to show this picture again but, hell, it’s Friday so who cares? AdAge is reporting that ‘the hunk’, Jason Lewis, is claiming Absolue used the fake ad as genuine one:
The actor who posed as the “Absolut Hunk” in a fictitious ad that appeared in an episode of Sex and the City is suing the Absolut Spirits Co., alleging it promoted the make-believe ad from the HBO series as an actual advertisement without his permission [source]
Previously: Silent For A Week.
The Scotsman is tonight reporting:
The former lead singer with boy band Brother Beyond was charged with trying to pick up a street prostitute in LondonÂ’s seedy KingÂ’s Cross red light district. But friends of the former model claimed the accusation was ‘ludicrous’ because he is gay. Moore is to appear at Highbury Corner magistrates court in north London tomorrow charged under the Sex Offences Act. [source]
Also of note, Nathan Moore is now the manager of Phixx, Eurovision entry James Fox and Pop Idol finalist Hayley Evetts.
UPDATE: 6 JUNE 2004: Moore pleaded guilty to soliciting a prostitute at Highbury Corner magistrates court.
2003: The Government Could Learn Much From Big Brother
2003: Workings of Parliament
So, today is both Memorial Day in the US and the Whitsun bank holiday in the UK. Apparently, Whit Sunday commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit in the form of flames to the disciples (source). I see the cheese rollers of Gloucestershire have been at it again. That must really rank as one of the oddest of the British customs. Honestly, people roll cheese down a hill in the name of sport.
I am having a quiet bank holiday before returning to work tomorrow.
2006: links for 2006-05-31
So why did I go and see this film? Perhaps it was for the epic nature of the story or perhaps it was to see the battle scenes in all their cinematic glory. Of course it could have been just to see Orlando Bloom and Brad Pitt buffed up and clad only in armour for a couple of hours on the screen.
The film was a huge let down. The epic, cinematic battles looked old-hat when compared to The Lord of the Rings. The story seemed disjointed and unfulfilling. There was nobody to side with, nobody to support and precious little humour to lighten the feel. It may be based on real-life events but if you are going to take licence you may as well bring some feeling into it.
Trojan champion Prince Hector (Eric Bana) is the most likeable but – while not wanting to spoil anything for you – his fate entirely predictable even if you didn’t know the story. Pitt had all the moves, looks and swagger but was an unsympathetic mercenary and Orlando Bloom came across as a wishy-washy waste of space. Sadly, Achilles’ end (the heel, if you will) is entirely lost despite the best efforts of the film makers.
I’d wait until it’s on television if I were you.
2004: Polo Shirts: A Fashion Idea For 2004
2003: Open Secret
2003: Crossroads ‘was all a dream’
2003: Pop Life
2003: Unfortunately There Are Effectively No Funds Available To Pay The Salaries
2003: No Consensus In Support Of Same-Sex Unions
2003: Dr Kildare is a Sissy
If you don’t try and keep up with boifromtroy you end up with so much to read you keep putting it off. It’s an amazing amount of material. Anyway in case you – like me – have missed out on this season’s fashion tip (hot from New York City) you should click across right now and learn that polo shirts are back. Honest. When I was at University in the early nineties there was a hall warden in the residences who must have worn a polo shirt every day of the four years I was there (I do not believe it was the same one). His collars were always up and, unlike most people’s collars, they never went limp. I don’t know who did his laundry (maybe he did) but it was incredible. Now the fact I can’t remember his name is starting to trouble me.
2004: Troy
2003: Open Secret
2003: Crossroads ‘was all a dream’
2003: Pop Life
2003: Unfortunately There Are Effectively No Funds Available To Pay The Salaries
2003: No Consensus In Support Of Same-Sex Unions
2003: Dr Kildare is a Sissy
Last night saw the last Friends in the UK (it was Black Friday) and the first of the new series of Big Brother. As we all knew the ending to Friends it seemed like something of a disappointment really. Big Brother on the other hand was a very different beast. Having had a few hours to think about it I am slightly less caught up in it than I thought I would be. It would appear the producers have selected all the people who claimed that they would ‘mix it up’. The house is full of individuals who claimed that they would be outspoken. Last night I thought this was a dangerous tactic. Yes, it will be fun when they first explode at each other (which they surely will) but I think it risks getting dull. Part of the fun of the original series was the fact that the housemates had fun and were, therefore, funny to watch. Car-crash television isn’t that interesting after the initial look. A high quota of lesbian, gay and bisexuals looks like exploitation to me and doesn’t make me think of a happy, diverse home.
UPADTE 2 JUNE. The Big Brother links:
The big brother popularity poll is a neat interactive idea to get you coming back to the site again and again. I do quite like that idea.
No other posts on this day.
I know y’all won’t care but I’ve said before that the primary reason for the existence of this site is for me and a kind of diary/journal. The fact it is online is probably the incentive that makes me keep it up. The fact that you occasionally comment makes it feel more worthwhile. Ever since I introduced the ‘on this day’ link against relevant entries on the homepage I’ve found a great memory jogger. I end up re-reading entries from this day last year – or the year before. It certainly doesn’t seem like twelve months since I was sitting in Helsinki for the first time and listening to an afternoon, outdoor Jazz concert. It wasn’t what I expected of that city at all. And it looks like we may be doing more business in that part of the world over the rest of the year. I hope so.
2004: Internet Domains
2003: Helsinki Jazz
A number of site’s are pointing to Tim Berners-Lee’s discussion on new top level domains. I found it a fascinating insight to some of the concepts which were put in place in the early day’s of the internet. What I also see as interesting is that the tree-like structure of the domain system evolved from good technical reasons and was – back then – less about maintaining the concept of a trademark or brand. It’s a shame that it’s moved away from that really.
2004: Memories Of A May Afternoon
2003: Helsinki Jazz
Just in case you are reading this via a feed/rss reader of some kind – like bloglines – then you might be seeing you reader marking a whole stack of entries new when they are, clearly, not. I’ve made some minor code changes to the site to have the feeds validate with the Feed Validator as well as link to the comments from the feed. Additionally, I’ve added a couple of Movable Type plug-ins that will help me keep the rest of the site validated. Nothing major but it does mean some of the entries have been marked as updated when it’s just the background code that has been amended.
If you happen to use a web-based feed reader or aggregator you may see that images are broken. I’ve prevented images being called if the referrer is not this site because some of the images from the Man of the Moment section were being called by external sites and I don’t want to end up paying for that bandwidth. It’s not intended to stop people reading the site from seeing anything so let me know what reader you use and I will try and open images up to the relevant domains.
There are a lot of reports around at the moment about the levels of spam. BBC News is saying that junk mail now accounts for nearly 70% of e-mails worldwide. If this is true then I am doing rather better than most people. You may recall that my ISP is Demon who introduced spam filtering earlier this year. This has had a fantastic impact on the levels of spam I receive. Musak is hosted with DreamHost who use razor spam filtering server-side and then I use Mozilla’s junk mail filter at my end of the chain. If one message a day gets through then I am surprised indeed. I’m so used to this level of filtering that I hardly ever look at the spam folder. I just looked at it and while there are lots of pre-filtered messages there none of them were mails I should have had. All-in-all this is working very well indeed.