Posts from January, 2007

Awesome Or Off-Putting: The Mad Gasser of Mattoon

Mad Gasser, Mattoon, Botetourt, Paranormal, SightingsAwesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts or just the plain unexplainable.

This week: The Unexplainable

In the early to mid 1940s reports of a tall thin man dressed in black abounded in the town of Mattoon, Illinois. The man would sneak up to the window of houses and spray in an unknown gas from his flit gun - a device normally used for spraying pesticides. There were several reports of this gas-man, and in two different towns no less, but the police could find no trace of him.

This is the story of the Mad Gasser.

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Prince Charles Goes To Harlem To Awkwardly Play Basketball

Prince Charles America Harlem Basketball Environmental awardYou have to love Prince Charles - his sons are never out of the newspapers, his dead wife is a saint and his Mum is now a movie star, but good old Prince Charles is still plugging away, uncomfortably posing for photo-ops with poor people like always.

This time Prince Charles has zipped off to America on aeroplane and vast motorcade to accept an award from Al Gore, ironically for being so environmentally friendly. But a black-tie gala dinner and award ceremony isn't enough for Prince Charles, mainly because it didn't present him with enough opportunities to look clumsy, awkward and out of touch with people who don't wear clothes made out of swan feathers. And this time Prince Charles decided to set the global image of British people back 50 years by playing a stiff-jointed, cringe-worthy game of basketball with some Harlem teenagers while wearing a double-breasted suit. It's thought that only very strong words from his royal advisers prevented Prince Charles from following up the basketball game with a quick attempt to Ghostride The Whip in his limo.

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Katie Holmes Exhibits Her Keen Career Sense

Katie Holmes Batman Dark Knight Mad Money Queen Latifah Tom Cruise We’ve had quite enough of all of the relentless Katie Holmes bashing by the press. Just when she’s settled into another $50,000 shopping spree with Victoria Beckham at Barneys Department Store, the media starts thrashing her for not reprising the character Rachel Dawes in the Batman Returns sequel, Dark night.

Just because Batman Returns was a colossal success (even though she played the role with the excitement of a wet rag) doesn’t mean we should give her a hard time. You all know how sensitive we are to people's feelings here at hecklerspray.

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Epic Movie Crushes US Weekend Box Office

Epic movie US weekend box officeSome clever people have realised that there's a gap in the market for people who thought the Scary Movie series was too scary, so they created Epic Movie - a spoof of literally every film that couldn't be shoehorned into any of the four Scary Movie films.

And the tactic seems to have worked as well - Epic Movie is now the top movie at the US weekend box office. It's heartening to know that in the week where Babel and The Queen received blanket coverage for winning so many Oscar nominations, Epic Movie - a film that gets a cheap laugh out of Borat's success by dressing a man who looks a bit like Borat up as Borat and making him say "nice" in a spoofy Borat voice even though the act of trying to spoof a self-aware comedy film is ultimately pointless - took more than three times the combined total of those two films at the US weekend box office. Not heartening. We meant rubbish.

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Helen Mirren & Forest Whitaker Predictably Win Their SAG Awards

SAG Awards Screen Actors Guild Helen Mirren Forest Whitaker Last night's Screen Actors Guild awards threw up some major upsets; for instance, when Helen Mirren, Forest Whitaker, Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson won their SAG awards, it was easily the most unexpected thing since the sun rose this morning.

OK, the SAG Awards held last night genuinely couldn't have been more predictable. Helen Mirren won a SAG award for The Queen, Forest Whitaker won a SAG award for The Last King Of Scotland, and Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson both won SAG awards for Dreamgirls, continuing the trend of an awards season that has seen barely any of them lose anything they've been nominated for. But, as well as a stomach-churning precursor to what looks likely to be the dullest Oscars ever next month, the SAG awards did conclusively prove one desperately important fact - that Forest Whitaker wouldn't be able to give a coherent acceptance speech if his entire life depended on it. 

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SLACKERJACK - Super Granny 3

Super Granny 3 GameWhen we get old we'd quite like to be like Super Granny. While most old people are content to forget the names of their own children and occasionally soil themselves for excitement, Super Granny is out having wild adventures.

True, most of Super Granny's adventures do involve her chasing after cats like a bit of a crazy old lady, but an adventure is an adventure. Super Granny 3 sees Super Granny still bumbling around intricately-designed game levels collecting her cats like a vaguely wee-smelling Pied Piper, only this time Super Granny is trapped in a theme park. Why? We don't know - perhaps Super Granny has a thing for abnormally long queues or obscenely expensive hotdogs. Anyway, In Super Granny 3 you can buy power-ups to help you rescue her cats, and you can even build your own levels should you wish to. Super Granny 3 is taxing, fun and won't get you arrested for literally forcing an old lady to walk off a cliff. What more could you ask for?

Order Super Granny 3 Now

Download Super Granny 3

New Stupid Feud: Jared Leto vs. Elijah Wood

Jared Leto Elijah Wood Feud 30 Seconds To MarsIt seems Jared Leto doesn't like it when people diss his band, 30 Seconds to Mars. This was a bitter lesson Elijah Wood learned when the two got into a hobbit-sized scuffle in October at the MTVU Woodie Awards. 

This titbit of recycled drama was needlessly resurrected when Wood, who is obviously mature enough to let things go, recently detailed the spat in a recent interview for Jane magazine (where he no doubt also reveals his secrets to flawless, timeless skin). We're all sure to see some quick resolution now that it's been brought out into the open, because that worked so well for Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump.  

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The Stooges - My Idea Of Fun All Over The Internet

The Stooges My Idea Of Fun Iggy Pop MySpace New MusicLast week saw just about every dusty old band in the history of the universe get back together even though nobody has expressed an interest in them for longer than anyone cares to remember - yes James and Crowded House, we mean you.

So it's a breath of fresh air to know that there's one reforming band out there that still matters - yes The Stooges, we mean you. The three albums that The Stooges released in the late 1960s and early 1970s ripped a hole in music so large that its never quite been repaired - and now The Stooges are back just to make it a bit bigger again. Like the last 33 years never happened, Iggy Pop has recruited The Stooges for The Weirdness, a Steve Albini-produced album that'll be seeing the light of day In March.

That's too long to wait, so it's just as well The Stooges have discovered MySpace and splashed a new track, My Idea Of Fun, all over it. My Idea Of Fun is classic Stooges - Iggy Pop's red-raw livewire yell has never sounded better than when backed by Ron and Scott Asheton's planet-shredding primitive thump and roar - and, if nothing more, it answers the question of what Iggy Pop's idea of fun is ("My idea of fun" he informs us "is killing everyone"). My Idea Of Fun by The Stooges is exactly what you need on a Monday morning - loud, stroppy and more exciting than anything you can think of. Bring on The Weirdness.

Listen To My Idea Of Fun by The Stooges now  

Shilpa Shetty Wins Celebrity Big Brother & Jade’s Not Racist! Yay!

Shilpa Shetty Celebrity Big Brother WinsThat's the end of Celebrity Big Brother 2007, then - and after being bullied, insulted and squawked at relentlessly at monumental volume about Oxo by a fat-mouthed pikey, Shilpa Shetty has finally emerged as the Celebrity Big Brother victor.

Winning Celebrity Big Brother must surely rank as one of the greatest achievements of Shilpa Shetty's life, after all the being a superstar millionaire Bollywood actress with fleets of servants and adoring fans shadowing her every step, obviously. And, as winner of Celebrity Big Brother, Shilpa Shetty has a number of responsibilities to uphold. Just like Celebrity Big Brother-winning Chantelle before her, Shilpa Shetty is now required to have a shotgun marriage to some useless indie singer, ghostwrite a book that nobody but idiots read and hawk a tired catchphrase around chavvy nightclubs at 2am for £200 a pop. That Shilpa Shetty sure is a lucky girl.

Oh, and Shilpa said that Jade's not a racist, too. That's that one cleared up, then. 

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Dancing On Ice Betting Odds: No More Phil Gayle, Boo Hoo Hoo

Dancing On Ice betting odds Phil Gayle Kay Stephen Gately Ulrika Emily Lee SharpeThis series of Dancing On Ice is really hotting up, although sadly not enough for the ice rink to melt and drown all the competitors - and newsreader Phil Gayle is the latest to get the Dancing On Ice shove, primarily because nobody knows who he is.

Many events conspired against Phil Gayle on Saturday's Dancing On Ice. First was his height - Phil Gayle is over six feet tall and it's a scientific fact that only people legally classed as dwarfs can ice skate properly - and second was the fact that Phil Gayle couldn't act gracefully if you held a gun to his head. As a benchmark by which to judge Phil Gayle's bad skating, he was knocked out of Dancing On Ice after a skate-off with Ulrika Jonsson, who is universally disliked and keeps falling over all the time. Poor Phil Gayle - we'd miss you if we even had the slightest beginnings of a clue about who you are.

But who's going to win Dancing On Ice this year? Here's part one of this week's Dancing On Ice betting odds to win - for Kay Burley, Stephen Gately, Ulrika Jonsson, Emily Symons and Lee Sharpe - with betting odds coming from Paddy Power

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Creased or Folded? hecklerspray Tells You the Way it is

Creased Folded RockfordA snippet review of the week. Folded for the up, Creased for the down.

Folded:           

  • The View (we may as well give them a pat on the head. They are quite good)
  • Re-runs of The Rockford Files (never understood one episode, but it’s great fun. Lots of location shooting, too. Must have cost a bundle in its day)
  • Meccano (harder to build than a stable housing market. Frustrating and repetitive - suits the wet weather like a dream. Who cares if the box says 5+?)
  • Sod budgeting (no-one has any money at this time of year. Why should you be any different?)
  • Half price page-a-day calendars in Borders (pick up a brilliant Worst Case Scenario one for less than a fiver)  

Creased:                  

  • Mika (ironically dated for someone so, well, ironic)
  • Re-runs of Quincy (sadly the best part of this whole show is the opening credits. Look at Quince there… is that a body he’s examining? Perhaps discovering a vital clue to exonerate a disabled murder suspect? No, he’s just checking out some hot girl in her bikini. Oh, Quince, you are a lad!)                       
  • ‘Green’ Tesco (one step, two step, take over the world)
  • Sophie Ellis Bextor’s tattoo (clearly visible in her new video and it just does not suit her. At all)
  • All those calendar shops you see empty around Christmas time (yes, they have now gone bust. Keep your eyes peeled for a Subway)

CD Review - Drone, colourformoney

Drone colourformoney CD reviewIn some ungodly cock-up, the UK seems to be the last country on Earth to have the new Cornelius album released on its shores. While we're forced to wait one more poxy month for that, is there anything vaguely similar to fill the time?

Well, colourformoney by Drone seems to have been doing the trick for us. Released on Monday, colourformoney by Drone is just about as much folksy lo-fi skittering laptop braindance as you can fit on a CD. Containing tracks that shawshank into your brain and just drift around for hours, pushing everything else to one side, we're sure that we'd be listening to colourformoney by Drone a lot more if only some of it didn't plain unsettle us so much.

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