Features

Awesome Or Off-Putting: The Boy Who Started Fires With Only His Eyes

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

In 1982 Benedetto Supino, an Italian adolescent boy, discovered something quite strange about himself. He was sitting in a dentist's waiting-room reading a comic book when all of the sudden the thing burst into flames right there in his hands.

At the time, no doubt, he claimed total innocence to deaf ears. Once a fiery pattern was established after a few more incidents, his surrounding adults may have been more likely to believe him - especially when they actually saw him accidentally ignite things without a match in sight.

Read the rest of this entry »

Top 13 Sci-Fi Babes

They are the women that drive men to warp fact five - the sex sirens of space.

Nothing quite gets you through the dull talk about black holes and plasma shields than the sight of a sexy girl in a spacesuit.

Well, grab hold of your lightsabres because hecklerspray has combed the length and breadth of the galaxy to come up with the hottest girls ever to appear in a sci-fi movie or TV programme.
Read the rest of this entry »

Top 7 Celebrities With Animals Named After Them

It can’t be easy to come up with new names for animals all the time.

Thousands of new creatures are uncovered every year, and scientists only have so many dogs and kids to inspire them.

So why not delve into the murky world of celebrity? Why not name a new type of predator after your favourite band? Why not christen a new species of maggot after your least favourite? In fact, back in Hecklerspray HQ we have discovered a new type of fungus growing out of one of our unwashed cups. Please free to write in with your suggestions, but at the moment we are leaning towards Sting or Elizabeth Hurley.

Read the rest of this entry »

Creased or Folded? hecklerspray Tells You the Way it is

The first: Goooooooood.
The second: Baaaaaaaad.

Folded:

  • Rambo on DVD (‘cos the man is a beast)
  • Low-cost, small town clothing retailers: ‘Bobby Dazzler’, ‘ReVamp’ and the like (probably the best shop names in the world)
  • Clarkson’s Car Years on Dave (laugh at his hair; laugh at his June 2000 prediction that the supercar is dead)

Creased:

  • The sad passing of movie effects auteur Stan Winston (from The Terminator to Aliens to Predator to Iron Man, this genius had a hand in everything great)
  • GTA IV fatigue (for all its perfecto gameplay, once GTA’s main plot is done and dusted the re-play factor isn’t that high)
  • The miserable surgeons of Grey’s Anatomy (a self-involved bunch of smart ass tossers. Except Addison, she’s a sexy lady)
  • McDreamy’ (see above – a live-action Ken doll, only with less brain matter)

Disturbing Friday Fun: The Quantum Sleeper

You could die at literally any moment.

Seriously - even by the time you finish reading this paragraph you could have contracted Ebola and shit your own face off, been struck by seven seperate bolts of lightening, been vapourised in a nuclear holocaust, been torn apart by rabid weasels or even set on fire by laughing blue pixies. Infact, the likelihood is that you will die, almost certainly within the next half-hour or so, and definitely in the most horrifying and painful way imaginable.

Unless you get protection.

Read the rest of this entry »

Myspace Trawl – Strangebusyworld

Pop is short for popular, everyone knows that. But just because it’s popular, does it necessarily make it good? In the case of most things, no, not at all. Music is very opinioned and people are influenced very easily and miss out on the good stuff unless it’s slapped in their faces.

Take the Mint Royale song/remix Singing In The Ring when it was originally released, no-one gave a shiny shit about it. But since George Sampson did a dance to it on “Britain’s Got A Bit Of Talent Which Simon Cowell Will Then Exploit” the whole country went nuts to the song and got it number one.

Hecklerspray just wants to get good stuff to you before its mass marketed to death. Take interview storming Chris Martin, we know they have a new record out but every time we switch on the TV his band are there either advertising it or promoting iTunes. All we know about this week’s band Strangebusyworld is that it’s one bloke just doing something he enjoys and trying to reach out to people.

Read the rest of this entry »

Awesome Or Off-Putting: Jacques Aymar, The Murder-Solving Dowser

Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

When mental imagery of a divining rod is conjured up in one’s mind, the picture of a man and a stick looking for water on the old frontier will no doubt be one of the first. Dowsing, as the art is called, has been around for ages. A long-dead Frenchy named Jacques Aymar was particularly good at it.

He didn’t stop at finding measly water though - he was reportedly so proficient police would call on him to dowse his way to murderers.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Incredible Hulk Delicately Tops Weekend Box Office With The Grace Of A Springtime Ballerina

HulkIn 1826, when Stan Lee first suggested Bruce Banner should get doused with a smidgen of radioactive-nuclear goodness, the other folks at the Marvel table must have been like ‘Not now Stan, we’re moving our families out west to claim some free government land‘.

Which must have been frustrating if you think about it. But Mr. Lee is nothing if not patient, and he was content to wait until 2008 to release his big green film upon us.

Well, he waited until now if you don’t count the 200 different comic book series, an overly dramatic 70s TV show, a few made-for-TV movies and a previous film a few years ago, in which we think the Hulk spit in his hand as not to be overly abrasive on Heath Ledger.

Some of that may be slightly out of context.

Anyway, The Incredible Hulk topped this weekend’s box office - and oh he topped it good!

Read the rest of this entry »

Top 25 Bond Deaths

As far as James Bond is concerned - a license to kill is a license to thrill.

And what better way to exemplify that fact then to look back through all the James Bond movies and pick out the most memorable and gory death scenes.

Now, we realise some of you might think such a list to be slightly in poor taste. We know your type. You believe all killing is wrong - even if it means wasting a homicidal maniac who is hell-bent on world domination - and glorifying it only adds to the problem.

Well, frankly it’s only a bloody movie. It’s all just make-believe and we are having a bit of fun. We bet you are the kind of people who think there is something wrong with beating innocent bystanders to death with a baseball bat in GTA IV. It’s a game, duh! And you think we are the strange ones!

Read the rest of this entry »

Top 15 Annoyingly Catchy 80s TV Theme Tunes

Some TV themes just refuse to go away and leave us in peace.

They are stuck in our heads forever. You could be innocently sitting in a bar or a pub having a nice drink, when someone’s annoying mobile starts playing the A-Team. Then, bang! You can’t get the damn tune out of your head. What makes it even worse is you don’t want to either.

Give it a few more hours (and a few more drinks) and you will annoyingly start shouting “a pity the fool” at your mates, who despite their protestations, also start to feel nostalgic and end up humming the tune on their drunken way home. It’s like torture.

Well, just to continue the cycle, hecklerspray has come up with 10 TV tunes from the glorious 80s for you to ponder. Now, some of the series started in the 70s. We are well of it, but we only picked the ones which subsequently ran during most of the 80s. Anyway, enjoy. If you can.

Read the rest of this entry »

Creased or Folded? hecklerspray Tells You the Way it is

The first is cool; the second is just a plain old fool.

Folded:

  • Take the personality test! (are you extraverted, introverted, insane? Find out here! Takes a while to do though – oh, and at least one of us turned up with the same Jung personality as Abraham Lincoln)
  • The Long Walk To Finchley (regardless of your opinions on Margaret Thatcher, this one-off comedy/drama plays as the epitome of what BBC4 do best: light political fluff)
  • Lee McQueen (seems like, for once, any old Alan has picked the right candidate; apparently he’s putting Lee to work on the London Underground somewhere)

Creased:

  • CGI (why is it seldom as good as filmmakers think it is?)
  • No more The Apprentice (in 2005 it started off worse than Dragons Den and then swiftly became the only reality show worth watching. Big Brother then, everyone? Hmm? No)
  • Gone Baby Gone (far and away not a bad movie, but Mr Ben Affleck needs to find his own voice and not Clint Eastwood’s if he wants to succeed as a credible director)
  • Jumper on DVD (even with some mildy interesting deleted scenes, you’d still be better off eating your money rather than spending it on this)

The Five Best Stand-Ups You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Mainstream comedians are fantastic, aren’t they? Of course they are, why else would they be on the telly?

Dawn French, Lee Mack, Justin Lee Collins, Alan Carr… the list is endless.

Just thinking about them makes us want to round up every TV executive in a small room and hack the testicles off them that they haven’t even got in the first place.

And so the following is a list – in no particular order – of some of the most brilliant, unique, prime-time repellent and, therefore, largely anonymous comedians we’ve had the privilege to have never heard.

Read what we’ve got to say, watch and listen to what they have to say, fall in love and spread the word.

Read the rest of this entry »