Rivals

MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS Formula 1 drivers, Lewis Hamilton & Nico Rosberg, are great rivals off the track as well as on it. Watch this behind the scenes video as Lewis and Nico work to stay ahead of their closest competition, whatever the situation!

Winter Olympics Live Streaming

I'm quite excited by the Winter Olympics - the summer games always remind me of things I might have been able to do if I was younger, fitter, faster and considerably less lazy, but the winter games always show me things I could NEVER do - launching myself off a hillside while strapped to two planks of wood, hurtling down a hillside while strapped to two planks of wood, flying round an ice rink with two sharpened blades attached to my feet...and so on...

I'm looking forward to following the Winter Olympics on ESPN's Winter X Games channel, which includes both recorded interviews and live streaming events with some of the biggest names in winter sports.

Whiskers On Kittens

A few more of my favourite things.

The bridge/coda from Razorlight's "In The Morning" (from about 3:05 in the video below)

The smell of newly-cut grass on a hot, still, summer's day.

John Frusciante's backing vocals on "Can't Stop":

Baby Girl's giggle

The rumble from my surround sound system at the start of an action movie.

Extra large hoodies.

Stovies

Slide Away

As seen on another blog that I would link to if it wasn't "members only".

The Pakistani and The Automatic Door

I'm not sure if the gentleman in the video below actually is Pakistani or not, my Arabic isn't quite up to scratch. If anyone wants to enlighten me, I'd be grateful.

Keep On Walking

Fantastic commercial for Johnnie Walker starring Robert Carlyle.

As seen on another blog that I would link to if it wasn't open to invited guests only.

Legends Join Forces

Neil Young joined by Paul McCartney during his performance of A Day In The Life at Hyde Park two nights ago.

I was at Neil's Aberdeen concert last week, and it was one of the best I've been at in a long time - even without Macca guesting.

Need For Speed

Classy new advert from Vodafone featuring Lewis Hamilton, Heikki Kovalainen and Barry from EastEnders.

Phenomenal

Future Darwin Award Winner

To quote Con Air: "This is fucking spectacular".

One Love

The Stone Roses' video for One Love - because sometimes you just need the coolest-looking band since the 60s* playing in a room full of fire.

* Please ignore Mani's ponytail.

(I would have embeded this video on the page, but it's blocked - thanks Sony/BMG.)

Play Time

I'd imagine some of you will already have seen this video that Mrs Wife sent me a couple of days agao, but it was the first time I'd had the pleasure.

I think I was probably around three years old when I first got into StarWars. I had loads of toys, presumably from the Return of the Jedi series, as the third instalment was released when I was three.

Loads of them are still squirreled away in my garage, awaiting their rediscovery to fight more intergalactic wars on my sitting room and bedroom floors.

Many of them have seen better days - I've got a Gamorrean Guard with only one arm, Darth Vader's lightsaber was lost many many years ago and the C3P0 toy that had removable limbs was never reunited with his arms and legs after an outdoor play session sometime before my seventh birthday.

My StarWars toys are amongst the few surviving figures from my childhood days - my Thundercats and He-Man toys were torched in a bonfire in the mid 1990s shortly before we moved into a much smaller house.

(Incidentally, you've never seen a toxic cloud of smoke like the one generated by a bonfire of plastic toys from the 1980s. I'm surprised that Faither wasn't made to sign the Kyoto Protocol after that incident.)

But, as ever, Ebay comes to the rescue. There are hundreds of people selling vintage Thundercats and He-Man toys.

I wonder what Mrs Wife will think when the postman starts delivering 20-year-old toys to Dungroanin'?

Leona

Harsh, but I couldn't resist it - this is Leona from Aberdeen's personal dating advert. See if you can guess what unfortunate affliction she suffers from:



It's a real shame - she genuinely seems like a nice lassie.

James Marshall Hendrix

This morning has been one of those where I've been hopping around YouTube from video to video, mostly looking for videos of Michael Jackson dancing, Cream in their prime and, especially, vintage Hendrix.

One of my favourite sounds in the whole world is an acoustic guitar being played by someone who really knows what they're doing. And when that acoustic guitar has twelve strings and is being played by the greatest guitarist ever - well, that's just perfection:



Forty years on and STILL untouchable.

Easy To Ignore

"The leaders of the free world are just little boys throwing stones
And it's easy to ignore until they're knocking on the door of your home"
Leaders of the Free World, Elbow

Watching this video of the Baker underwater nuclear test in 1946, which I discovered courtesy of Videosift, should be enough to prove to anyone that nuclear weapons really aren't all that great an invention.

Yeah, sure, man now has the ability to wipe out all traces of its own species at the push of a button. But maybe that's not such a fantastic power for people like George Bush, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-il to have.

Chillingly beautiful? Yes it is. Although I'd imagine that if you were on one of the 90 vessels sitting around the blast zone to find out what would happen, you'd probably not be all that excited by the beauty, and just a tad concerned at the massive mushroom cloud enveloping everything in its path.

I'm no pinko lefty peacenik - if Iran has nuclear weapons, it's probably better that we do as well, if only to act as a discouragement. But maybe it'd just be better if all the little boys put their toys back in the cupboard, or - even better - dismantled them.