official_site_statements

I've been having so much fun with thinking about these things over the last couple of days, that I thought I ought to get these thoughts down on paper, or at least the electronic equivalent.

Subject to change, according to the vagaries of fashion and my libido, Mattscrew's Written Words Proudly Presents:

Follow this recipe closely, young novices, and soon, you, too will achieve Craigy Enlightenment.

Or start rocking in a corner, whimpering slightly. It's not foolproof.

Official Site Videogame: International Superstar Soccer Pro Evolution Two.

Runner-Up in the Longest Videogame Title competition in the 2001 VD Awards - the winner, of course, being "Final Fantasy Twenty-Five: Taking it it Turns to Attack while Mincing on the Spot, when a Five-Titted, Six-Eyed Floating Scrote Monster Dangles his Tentacles in your Face" - this football game is the bees' knees. You take the reins of a national team of your choice, and play ultra-realistic football, all the while listening to the...ahem, expert commentary. Or, you can create your own team, with names, appearances and abilities of your choice.

Which is why I get to see myself scoring goal after goal after goal, several times a day.

Ahhh, it's narcissistic, I know. But you score eight goals against England in one match. You try doing that without smiling.

Uncomfortable Secret About Your Host, Number 13,952:

I taped a game of ISS, once, back when I was a professional scientist. I used to work with these cool people, and I decided to put them - the lads at least - into the football team with me. And the character designs were so good, you could almost, almost be fooled. If you squinted. And were ripped to the teats.

I taped a cup final match, and made sure everybody in the team got their name called out (although, I had to some jiggery pokery; the game didn't have names like "Craig" or "Willey" or "Bijay", so we ended up with names like "Davinio" "Mattelo" and "Beast"). And then promptly thrashed my opposition. We won the cup, and got a little CGI celebration for our trouble.

Then, the best bit. The credits.

The credits put both our team and the losing squad into a CG series of acrobatic, magical, and highly implausible goals. All scored, close-up and in the Matrix style, by either me, or one of the other members in the squad.

That tape was passed around the lab like a bad cold that week. Superb.

Official Site Theme Song: The other day, I said in "Hey!" that the Official Site Song was "B.O.B" by OutKast. I have since revised my opinion. And, considering the reason why I started this site in the first place, there can only be one choice for the new Official Theme Song:

"Self-Preservation Society" from the movie "The Italian Job." Great melody, appropriate name. and my first thought on returning home, three months ago exactly, was, "hang on, lads. I've got an Idea...

   'Nuff Said.

Official Site Pin-Up: Get this out of the way earlier, rather than later. There are two.

Kate Sanderson. Reads the news. Sex on legs. Has the dark eyes I talked
about in an earlier View. Has lovely dimples.

Perhaps I should elaborate. Kate reads the news on a kids news show, as
well as the main BBC news programmes. She looks like this (right.
Tall, beautiful., dark hair, dark eyes, and a lovely voice. Sigh.

The other...the other...the other one is a secret. Which means you don't get to see her.

She's the most beautiful woman I have ever, ever seen. Even more beautiful than Mira Sorvino. I don't really care much what a woman looks like when I'm interested in her: she could be tall or short, skinny or dumpy, bald or hair to her knees. But this woman this mysterious woman, is everything. Physically, at least. And no-one said "pin-up" had to
                                           mean "emotionally compatible...right?" Or even "must have met."

Official Site Literature: This is the hard part. How do I select one thing out of everything I've read, from Allan Quatermain to Uncanny X-Men, to be the printed face of this site? Answer: I can't. So here's a short list of things that I think everybody should read:

To the Stars, by George Takei. George played Mr Sulu in the original Star Trek
amongst other things. He was also in an American internment camp during World
War Two. This is one of the few biographies that I've read, but it was unputdownable.
Follow George's life from his birth in San Francisco, through the horrors of the
internment camp (it may not sound like much, but for Christ's sake, the Yanks were
imprisoning their own citizens!) through to George's early acting career and beyond.
To quote another member of his most famous company, "Fascinating."

High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby. One of my favourite books. The story really manages to dump you inside the head of the narrator/central character, Rob. So realistic is it that you feel you know him as well as you know yourself. Which is why the rug that Hornby pulls out from under you about halfway through the story gets you so wickedly. Hands-down, one of my Top Five Favourite Books Ever.

Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson.
Look. It's a comic book. Get over it. It's brilliant. Seriously brilliant.. I've
recommended Transmet before, but I can't praise it highly enough. Set in a
future of nanotechnological clouds with human souls, intelligent police dogs
with power of arrest, and reservations where ancient Mayan civilisation is
preserved, all within one great City, some things remain the same: politicians
are lying jerks, the good die young, and somebody needs to write it all down
for you.

That someone is Spider Jerusalem. An Outlaw Journalist with a love / hate
relationship with his City and it's denizens, Spider (and his Filthy Assistants)
writes an editorial column for a newspaper called The Word. In pursuit of The
Truth, Spider comes into conflict with many horrible, nasty people, such as
the President (a man Jerusalem calls "the Beast") and his challenger, a Blair-
esque psychopath called The Smiler. He also introduces us to more tragic
figures, such as: a bus driver called Mad Radhu; Mary, the cryogenically
frozen-then revived photojournalist from our time, who awakens in a future
that never planned for her, and one she was certainly not ready for; and
Mitchell Royce, Spider's editor, and a man so stressed by his job that he
smokes enough to require that he have one lung transplanted every month. And through it all, Spider sits, and watches. And writes. And despairs.. A man full of piss and vinegar and bile, but who still finds time to buy cigs for his cat.

Essentially a story of how, like the present, the future is full of great beauty, as well as great horror. This is a book I urge you, no, order you to go out and read. You'll be better for it.

Black Panther, by Christopher Priest, and various artists.
Like Transmet, Panther is more of a political thriller than anything else. It's
also funny as heck in places, but that's as much down to the characters
than it is the need for yuks. More so, to be honest. It's not wall-to-wall
comedy

Again, this is something I've recommended before, but here we go again,
anyway.

The writer, Christopher J. Priest, describes Panther as being a comicbook
equivalent of the West Wing. And this is largely true, I think: both are
about extremely powerful men and the lives of their support staff. However,
the Black Panther himself is a much more assertive personality than, well,
any American President I can think of. Seven steps ahead of anyone in
any situation, the Panther is a great King, in many senses of the word.
Struggling to keep his country united under internal and,external pressures
and the dichotomy of living in the most technologically advanced, and
isolationist, nation on Earth, King T'Challa has to be by necessity the
Worlds Biggest Boy Scout, Smartest Man and Greatest Chess Grandmaster
of all time, all of the time, whilst living up to the legacy of the Greatest Man
he ever knew: his Dad. No easy task.

Thrown into the mix is Everett K. Ross - think Michael J. Fox with a law degree and a bad suit - a State Department official who was assigned to mind the Panther on an American visit for four days. This was four years ago. In the first two years of this comic, Ross had been thrown out of a burning building, had a comatose Norse God fall on him, was deported and had his citizenship revoked by the US government, been given a pair of pants by Satan, lost his girlfriend, become King of a nation and fought an elephant whilst dressed as a cat. Believe it or not, Ross is the Everyman figure in this story, and while their friendship is tested severely over the course of the series, he swiftly becomes one of the Panthers most trusted allies, and few true friends.

A thoroughly engrossing comic, Black Panther is also the Official Site Comicbook. The first storyarc, "The Client," introducing both the cast and the overall themes of the series, is in shops now as a collected edition.

Which, I suppose, leads us nicely to:

Official Site Superhero: Spider-Man. As if it was going to be
anybody else.

Why Spider-Man? Easy.

There are characters in fiction who we tend to resonate with.
Characters who reflect something we see within ourselves, and
therefore are easier to understand, or even sympathise with. I
would say that I sympathise with characters like Red Dwarf's Dave
Lister (played by Craig Charles, whose name is an anagram of my
brother Chic's full name. I'll leave you to work it out) and John Cage
from Ally McBeal (the weird fella), amongst others. But there isn't a
fictional character in existence that I sympathise with as much as I do
with Peter Parker.

The similarities are there: both brought up by older parents (the Daddy had retired before I went to University); both bookish children who spent a lot of time alone (although I was never the pariah that Peter was); both interested in science; both spent time away from it; both with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. Now, Peter's led him to put on a spandex suit and chase men with metal tentacles and alligator-men. Me, it kept in school for twenty years. we both feel that it behooves us to use whatever gifts we have to the full, if not to help people then certainly to not hurt them.

Of course, Peter Parker was married by 23, although that was as much a publicity stunt as anything. No publishing company sponsoring my nuptuals...more's the pity.

I grew up wanting to be Spider-Man, in many ways. On the surface, it would be great to do what he does; climb walls, spin webs, wear spandex without looking like a ham on stilts. But, to be honest, now we're the same age, I'm just content to read about somebody else doing it. Aren't I?

Official Site Prophet: Bill Hicks.

As far as I'm aware, a prophet is someone who speaks the truth, as
much as someone who predicts the future. Now, I don't know if what Bill
said was entirely true, but damn, did he make you want to listen to more
of it.

Bill's message, I think was simple: you are your own best friend. And
you are your own worst enemy. You must decide your own destiny, and
take responsibility for that. And the Truth shall set you Free, if you
only try to hear it.

Of course, there were a lot more dick jokes in his comedy than that, but
you get the point.

Bill was angry at everything, it seemed: censorship, the media, the
government, the general public, even his audience at times. But it was
an anger borne out of desperation at how shitty the world was, and how
it could be better, if only we could come together for a second and do
something about it. Like Spider Jerusalem, Bill was kind of a preacher, trying to open our eyes to the world around us. The fact that he did it while making us laugh at his jokes was irrelevant. Bill Hicks was motivated by a deep, abiding love for his fellow man.

And like all true prophets, he was taken from us far too early. He kept on preaching, right up to the last days of his life, all the while aware that he was dying, and died in 1994, aged 32.

Official Site Movie: Another tricky one. Thus meriting another cop-out:

The Replacement Killers. Chow-Yun Fat. Mira Sorvino (right).
I suppose you might call it the "anti-Buddy Movie." If you wanted
to underplay it. Easily one of my favourite movies of all time.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Fat, again. A beautifully
designed and realised story, of love both requited and unspoken
this was amazing and unique to my jaded eyes, when I saw it at
the Odeon, Leicester. I saw Unbreakable straight afterwards,
and went home buzzing.

The Fifth Element. A film I first saw for a pound, many years ago. I've seen it on video enough times for the cost per viewing to come down to about 65p. And I'm not tired of it yet. Fantastic costumes, great locales, and easily the best Bruce Willis film of 'em all. Hold the sarcasm. My Favourite Movie, ever.

Rear Window.The original Hitchcock version. I've read the original short story, and Hitch doesn't just do it justice, he creates it anew. Beautiful design, fantastic actors, great show. As somebody currently watching the world go by without much power to change it, I can relate to this story.

To finish this list of Great stuff, some quickies:

Official Site Martial Art: Karate, Shotokan-style. Whupa!

Official Site Sandwich: Tuna mayonnaise, preferably in a white baguette, sometimes with sweetcorn. The Dole-wally's friend.

Official Site Drink: Dr Pepper. Fantastic tipple. Perfect for getting rid of the taste of Early Morning Drool..

Official Site Pizza Topping: I've sworn off pizza. It's eating pizza that has put three stone on my already ample physique. But were I to fold in my resolve like a well-used sofa bed, then I would have: Chicken, Ham, Pineapple, Tomato and Sweetcorn, topped off with Honey Mustard and Garlic & Herb Dip.

Great. Now I'm hungry.

Official Site Classic Sitcom: Father Ted. 'Nuff said.

Official Site Comic Strips: Red Meat and Calvin and Hobbes.

Official Site Cartoons: The PowerPuff Girls and Courage, the Cowardly Dog.

Official Site TV Show: ER. And maybe Will and Grace.
Just...don't tell anyone

Official Site Way to End a Really Long Essay: Abruptly.

                   Matthew Craig, Official Site Official, 26th September (God, three months went fast), 2