Seany S

Cool beans Deppo. You will love it, I would stick my neck out and say that series 7 of the Shield is actually superior to the final series of The Wire. Vic Mackey is amazing, one of the best characters in telly history. Wait until Glenn Close and Forest Whitaker turn up too - Whitaker was off the chain incredible in his role as the deranged IAD officer.

The Wire has been covered in plenty of detail on here, and for my money it is the daddy in terms of US television drama. But I would also heartily recommend the following: The Shield: Cannot be compared to the Wire; comparing the two would be like comparing ballet to slam dancing. The Shield is a much more fast moving, yet no less complex study of crooked cops in a fictional Los Angeles suburb. As the series progresses, the main, anti-hero characters all get dragged deeper and deeper into their own web of lies, and the show finale episode has to be one of the most profoundly moving television episodes I have ever seen. Sons Of Anarchy: from Kurt Sutter, who was also involved in the Shield, this follows an outlaw motorcycle gang and features Ron Perlman and Katey Sagal, amongst others. Said to be loosely based around Shakespeare's Hamlet, it is highly watchable, and I am looking forward to seeing the second series soon (it is already airing in the states, lucky sods) after a gripping finale to the first. Homicide: Life On The Street - the first six seasons of this laid the foundations for what David Simon created with The Wire. Following the Homicide unit of Baltimore PD, and based around Simon's superb book "Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets", it was a landmark series that married gritty realism, proper, grown up dialogue and intense characterisation to the cop drama genre. It went a bit crap from season 6 onward, mainly because they got rid of some of the most loved characters and tried to replace them with eye candy. Oh and get the Region 1 boxsets, as the R2 ones are gash with all the episodes out of order! The Corner - more David Simon/Ed Burns related stuff, this one based upon their book of the same name which tracked a year in the life on a Baltimore drug corner. This HBO miniseries is superbly done, features a lot of themes that would go on to appear in the Wire, as well as many of the actors. Now available on region 2, snap it up if you are a fan of the Wire and all things Bodymore related. Oz - HBO's first big name hourly long episode based drama, this is essentially a brutally violent, increasingly more ridiculous male driven soap opera set in a prison. If you don't mind the occasional rape, murder or ludicrous celebrity guest appearance, Oz is extremely addictive. Masters Of Horror - MOH was a hit and miss horror anthology series created by long time Stephen King alumnus Mick Garris, and featuring numerous unrelated horror tales directed by well known horror icons. Some episodes are pretty poor, but when they nailed it, they nailed it. Standouts for me were Dario Argento's "Jenifer", Don Coscarelli's "Incident On And Off A Mountain Road" John Landis' "Family" and the excellent John Carpenter's "Cigarette Burns". Well worth a look and the two seasons are pretty cheap in places like CEX.

The mexican place - a mate of mine had a look in there the other day and said it was excellent. Can't be any worse than the other two mexi options in southampton.

El-P Mike Douglas Company Flow - End To End Burners Truth Hurts - Addictive

Rumour today is that he is on his way to Portuguese side Braga.

Go down St Marys Street, they sell cans of it in the first shop you come to on the market side of the street, coming from town end.

Will be interesting and hopefully highly amusing seeing how Griffin conducts himself in the company of a noted black playwright and a British born Pakistani Muslim Community Cohesion spokesperson.

Wowee zowee. Definately going to be there. The last time I saw Pavement at the Brixton Academy they were supporting Sonic Youth there >_ Can't wait, presuming that is that I can get tix!!!!

DJ Green Lantern & Jadakiss - The Champ Is Here

I know!!!!!! I get paid on the 28th, that was going to be the first thing I go out and buy!!!! I hope it is just as sick, twisted and disturbing as the first one. "I Run Rap" is one of my favourite joints ever. Incidentally I listened to some more tunage last night. The Kids In The Hall "Brain Candy" OST Puressence - Puressence Arsonists - As The World Burns

Watched "The Man With The Golden Arm" the other night, the 1955 Otto Pre*****r adaptation of Nelson Algren's near flawless novel starring Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak. It takes a few liberties and is not quite as gritty as the book, but considering when it came out and the issues it deals with (heroin addiction, primarily) it was considered groundbreaking and made the movie bigwigs in the States change the way they went about classifying films. Sinatra is wonderful in it too, and thoroughly deserved his Oscar nomination. If anyone fancies seeing it, I spotted a copy in Cash Converters in Bitterne the other day for a couple of quid, well worth a search through their shelves if it is still there. Apart from that I also watched the 2004 Punisher movie the other night. I switched my brain off and vegetated through it, but lets face it, it is a pile of gash.

Dr Dooom - First Come, First Served Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene Young Marble Giants - Collosal Youth

I see someone has mentioned Godwins fish and chips. Well I can confirm that it is still as good as ever in there, despite it now being called "Jims Place" or something, to this day one of my biggest pleasures in life is driving down there to grab a large cod and chips, then sit looking out at the sea down Mayflower Park, eating them. Other nostalgia stuff for me would be Peppi's hairdressers on Richmond Road. Can remember sitting there getting my hair cut as a kid and they had pennants for AC and Inter Milan up on the walls. Freemantle Park - always used to get flooded. Richmond Leisure in Shirley back in the late 80s when they had actual arcade machines in there!

Can't believe that the Vikes/Green Bay game isn't on tv over here. Watched the Ravens go down to the Patriots last night. Flacco sent some lovely passes down at the death with about ninety seconds to go, however the wide recievers conspired to flap at them in the manner of my four year old daughter. Really wanted them to win as well. Can't stand goody two shoes Brady and the Pats.

Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump Bonnie Prince Billy - Sings Greatest Palace Music Afghan Whigs - Black Love

Q-Tip - The Renaissance

My daughter is 4 and I took her to her first game this season - the opener against Millwall. I was proud as punch that she sat and watched the game and seemed to enjoy it, then pestered me afterwards to buy her a "stripy top" - ie a Saints shirt!! I go in the Northam club regularly as I am a member, and all the folks in there were also proud of her as she came in before the game and devoured a massive ham baguette whilst her dad enjoyed a pre-match pint. Oh and I echo the views of others on here - the Chapel stand family enclosure is terrific value if you have kids with you, it is refreshing to get change out of a twenty pound note - even if you don't quite get the same atmosphere you would in more rowdy areas of the ground!!

Alone: Rivers Cuomo. "The World We Love So Much" and "Chess" should have been on Weezer records.

Just finished reading Ian Holloway's autobiography "Ollie" having picked it up for chump change in a charidee shop. Standard football autobiography fare, really. Doesn't reveal anything vaguely controversial, glosses over some of the more interesting issues (for example, he refuses to name the players in the incident in Austria where Paul Wotton was glassed in the face by Chris Zebroski) and all in all it was one of the least challenging, least entertaining books I think I have ever read. Next up decided to re-read "the Corner" by Ed Burns and David Simon.

My mate emailed me about this earlier. I was lucky enough to see Pavement on five seperate occassions and not once was I disappointed. The London Astoria NME Awards Tour show they did with Mogwai, Gorkys Zygotic Mynci and Broadcast was one of the best shows i have been to. Wouldn't suprise me if they did something like All Tomorrows Parties, perhaps as curators? I see Mark Ibold is now a permanent member of Sonic Youth, too. Not sure how that would affect long term pavement plans... Am going to listen to some Wowee Zowee when I get in tonight.

Rudi Skacel

I love watching NFL. How can you not love Superbowl Sunday? Every year I get together with mates, stay up til the early hours and get completely massacred watching it. Last year was good but the year before, with the amazing play to Plaxico Burress that ended it, was just off the chain awesome. Personally I follow the Packers but keep an eye on Baltimore as well. This season I will watch with interest how the mighty Brett Favre gets on for the Vikings - lots of folks have written him off but he is not just statistically one of the greatest of all time, he has utter balls of steel. Was funny seeing him illegally up-end someone by basically laying down in front of them in the preseason game last week >_ Would love to go to Lambeau Field one day, Title Town baby!!

Real shame. Always seemed a nice guy who was devoted to his wife, and not a bad actor either. Roadhouse is one of my favourite kick-ass action movies ever.

Spaghetti hoops on toast are nice but have to be Heinz ones and a nice bit of salt and pepper as they are too sweet otherwise. Am also a big fan of grated, toasted cheese with lots of Henderson's relish. It is a variation on worcestershire sauce that is made in Sheffield, a mate always brings me a bottle when he goes home to visit his folks. Dairylea cheese on toast is also awesome. And of course your classic beans, but I tend to put a splash of HP brown sauce and Hendersons into my beans and like to cook them for ages until they are mushy!

"His type is somewhat familiar, small personality, big ego, useless in bed. Women everywhere would have had a lot of laughter when discussing him." Now pull me up if you disagree but I don't think Pards' abilities at doing rudies in any way affect his skill as a manager. And this opinion was formed when the Charlton fan in question met him whilst on a caravan holiday. Hope I never meet them, wouldn't want to be psychosexually analysed and then discussed on a football blog.