scaryblog

Some NENDY tourism! 14/11/26 : Stanborough  The parkrun obsessive in the family has decreed that the second Saturday of the month is reserved for a trip to somewhere we've not been before - and it was my choice this month and I've decided that NENDY is going my default selection (because it saves thinking). For those not in the know (which included me until I Googled it recently), NENDY stands for Nearest Event Not Done Yet - which resulted in a carload of us (me (121st parkrun), both daughters (39 & 4) and the eldest's boyfriend, Luke(10)) to head 10km to the Stanborough Lakes area which is halfway between Welwyn and Hatfield.  And given that two of us had been at Noah Kahan the night before and muggins here volunteered to pick them up from the station afterwards, it's possible we weren't feeling exactly tip-top - but fortunately the temperature of -1 degrees perked us right up on the walk from the car park (close but expensive) to the start line, which followe...

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 films of 2025 #3 :     Weapons Images of sheer dread. Unexpected moments of laugh-out-loud comedy. Major narrative swerves. Weapons took everything that made Zach Cregger’s Barbarian such a horror hoot and amped it all up, in a perspective-hopping, head-smashing, spell-casting blast. It all begins with Justine (Julia Garner), a school teacher who finds one day that all her students ran out into the darkness overnight and didn’t return. From there, Cregger paints a portrait of the entire town of Maybrook as it deals with the disappearance – and other occulty occurrences – from Josh Brolin’s grieving father Archer, to unravelling cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich, borrowing John C. Reilly’s Magnolia ‘tache), junkie James (Austin Abrams) and headteacher Marcus (Benedict Wong). There are heart-stopping scares here, brilliantly executed, and Aunt Gladys is an instant horror icon – but Weapons’ greatest weapon is its funny bone, proving rictus terror ...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 14/06/81 : Magnetic Fields - Jean-Michel Jarre Our fifth visit with JMJ and I've liked his earlier stuff but not liked the later stuff so much and this is chronologically in the middle - so let's see where this fits in, shall we? Hmmm - it's OK. It's obviously got plenty of repetition but he manages to prevent it being too repetitive so I didn't find myself getting too bored. I'd even go as far as saying I  quite liked Part 2, but Part 5 is very odd - it sounds like something we'd have done in music lessons on those little Casio keyboards (who remembers the VL-Tone?). I obviously didn't love this and will never revisit it, but it coulda been a helluva lot worse. We're at #6 in the charts this week on his third week of a seventeen week run with this being as high as it got. The top five this week were Stars on 45 (a dreadful collection of medleys which was insanely popular, having spent five weeks...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 21/06/81 : Face Value - Phil Collins Our sixth visit with Mr Collins and I'm sure I must have heard this one, but I couldn't tell you when - I know it's got "In The Air Tonight" on it though, so I'm at least going to like one track. Well, I think you can guess which track they started with - and yes, I still like it (and no, it's not a bout "that guy who coulda saved that other guy from drownin' b ut didn't" ) . And the rest of it was perfectly fine and all well put together, but maybe just a little bit bland (although there's an argument he could be applauded for his restraint). I'm desperately trying to think of anything more to say about it but I'm coming up blank - if you like this, then I can totally understand that but I struggle to imagine too many people come to it these days and are blown away by it. We're at #10 in the charts this week on his 19th week of a d...

Continuing my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 28/06/81 : JuJu - Siouxsie & The Banshees The women are staging a mini-revival after a fallow period with this being the fifth album  in the last nine with significant female input. And this is our first ever visit with Siouxsie & Friends - they've been mentioned a few times in year-end write-ups as having produced decent albums that we've never met, so it's nice to finally get a chance to write about them. I don't think I've ever listened to one of their albums but I like their general sound and believe this is supposed to be good, so I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, I like this - although I appreciate it won't be for everyone. It's got, to no-one's surprise, a goth/indie sound but it's got much better playing and production than you might expect - and Siouxsie as an added bonus on top. It also gives strong "I bet they were great live" vibes - I can imagine plenty of moment...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 06/10/26 : Perfecth - Queens Of The Stone Age Our fourth visit with QOTSA and it's fair to say I've not been overly impressed so far - and I've got very little reason to expect things are going to improve here. Actually, it's definitely an improvement - it has strong Bowie and Nirvana vibes to it, with enough variety to be interesting (and lack of variety has been a common complaint on our previous visits). I can't say I loved it on first listen, but it certainly feels like another listen would be tolerable and it might even go up in my estimation as a result.  We're at #1 with a new entry in the chart this week (their second chart topper) and the rest of the top five are Olivia Rodrigo , Michael Jackson, The Snuts (a new entry) and  Fontaines D.C. . And we've got quite a few other new entries to consider this week. The Snuts (#4) The Snuts are one of my favourite bog standard indie bands - they don...