ThaOGDreamWeaver

Sonata Arctica - Christmas Spirits

The Monkees - Ríu Ríu Chíu (The Kingfisher Carol)

George Harrison - The Pirate Song

George Harrison - My Sweet Lord

Welp, things just got real. If you need a little more detail than that... 1 it's Christmas.

The new Marvel MMO property seems to be going ahead with Jack Emmert, and given what happened with Avengers, I don't think they're overly worried about quality.

All the Arachnos Arbiters should be voiced by Hamill, with randomly generated put-downs. If I had to get DW voiced (and it would, as I hate my own voice when recorded), I'm hiring Marina Sirtis.

Cab Calloway & The Blues Brothers Band - Minnie The Moocher

Sarah Vaughan - Baubles, Bangles & Beads

AC/DC - Big Balls

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - Big Bulbs

The Multiverse. It's so hot right now.

I started reading Terry Pratchett books when I was a teenager and still do re-read them. Except for Shepherd's Crown. Which is the last one. Which... I don't wanna. Because then there wouldn't be any more to come. It's stupid, I know, but... somehow it helps. Also, recently cleaned my Mum's house and found she'd been hiding boxes of stuff from when I was a kid. Hopefully I get to sit down with my great-nieces and do Asterix (with voices, natch, the same way I did for their mum 18 years ago.)

Persephone's Bees - Sleigh Ride

The tea I've heard is a little different to that. Joss's behaviour at Marvel and exit after Ultron left some with a bad taste, but the really bad stuff didn't surface publically until after Justice League. This is the tale I've heard - and it's more about intra-Mouse corporate warfare. Agents Of SHIELD was an experiment in doing mass-market Marvel stories in a more episodic format, alongside the niche, PG/R-rated Netflix offerings. (Which annoyed ABC, as they didn't get a go with the properties first.) It did well with the fans, and REALLY well for ABC's catch-up service, but didn't do epic numbers either in overall ratings or soap-powder sales. (So many great shows and projects have perished simply because admen didn't quite know what to do with them. Working in that industry, I can affirm they're not the most imaginative bunch. If you gotta explain it, it ain't working). Agent Carter similarly got pegged as "quirky and charming" but didn't do the numbers. ABC's Ben Sherwood - and his ad execs - whined about wanting an actual superhero show. Like the CW did. With, y'know, capes and stuff, whizzing, banging, big budget, big FX. And big dramatic stories, like Thrones. Thrones is big. Must have big. Big budget too. Money no object. Bighugelaaarrrrge. Big, like, say... Inhumans. Written and showrun by Iron Fist's Scott Buck. And stuffed with enough corporate partnerships (including IMAX above-the-line and a swathe of cinemas booked for previews) to fill an entire writer's room with angry yellow Post-Its about tone and referencing. But it had Hawaiian sets, a couple of big-name actors (Iwan Rheon on Alec Guinness gravitas duty), and a massive CGI dog. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but it didn't go well. The embarrassing and expensive disaster led Marvel Studios to cut diplomatic ties with ABC, and ABC put Agents through the wringer. Budget cuts (which you can see in Series 6), schedule changes, moving to the Friday Night Slot Of Death, but steady ratings and decent catch-up numbers kept it alive. Meanwhile over at Disney, people had been watching and learning. Agents' spectacular catch-up numbers proved there was clearly an audience for this stuff, but regular telly came with too many strictures. They'd also bought a skunkworks streaming project called BAMTech, which was originally meant for MLB and then ESPN: but sports rights are hideously expensive to start with, not to mention really fiddly with blackouts, international sub deals and team deals. There'd been a lot of other market changes and failures over at ABC, but the Inhumans debacle was one of the things that led the Mouse to form Disney Direct To Consumer. All the money, all the library, all the creative control. They cut deals with FOX for launch content and went on a major hiring spree across bizdev, content production, marketing and tech (even I had a headhunter sniffing around, but my background's more in the ad-tech side of VoD, and I wasn't planning on moving Stateside with the beige ballache still in charge). Needless to say, the threat of an actual Disney TV service eating their viewers really p*ssed off ABC, but they didn't get much time to moan. Disney bought out all Fox's entertainment assets* and merged the corporate structures. Ben got the boot. And Agents got a farewell half-series order, some script support back from Marvel (the plot was changed halfway through to have Fitz in the Quantum Realm and running around branching timelines), and a home on D+. As for Jed and Maurissa... their experience on Agents was rough, but not as bruising as you'd think. One of the odd things about working in telly is that if you're unsuccessful, nobody's interested and you get cut quickly. If you're too successful, a whole bunch of talentless execs you've never heard of will pop up and try and wheedle their way in, steal credit, send endless notes and force unwanted ideas and protégés in, or scream at you for being on their "turf" and shut you down. The best place to be is average and a little weird - too successful to lose, not interesting enough to steal, and just unnerving enough for people not to want to mess with. That more than anything kept Agents relatively safe, happy and well-fed for five of its seven seasons. ...I digress. Jed and Maurissa are pursuing other projects away from TV and film for a while: but still part of the Marvel family. As for Joss: well, this whole "cancellation" thing doesn't work nearly as hard as some loud and irritating TV pundits would have you believe. Even after the well-known problems on Ultron and Justice League, The Nevers went to a bidding war between Netflix, HBO and Amazon, and he was full-time showrunner for the first half of the season - although notably, HBO didn't promote it as a Joss joint. He quit in November 2020 (some would say he got pushed), but is still lurking around Whollyodd. *other than Fox News, which calls itself an "entertainment service" in court filings and pleads that all its stories should be regarded as fictional. Seriously.

Electric Light Orchestra - Twilight (inc Prologue)

Tom Petty - Free Fallin' Tom Petty - Hello! Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers ft. Stevie Nicks - Insider

OK GO - White Knuckles

Bill Withers - The Gift Of Giving

Mind you, not all 60s folks who got a record deal - and if they were on telly, pretty much anybody could walk in and get one - did weird novelty records. Some of them did really weird avant-garde jazz. I'm not wholly sure what Capitol were expecting when they signed David McCallum, but it probably wasn't this. ...yup, it's that riff. Still weirds me out to think of Dre, Dogg... and Ducky.

...I see your Shatner and raise you... Leonard Nimoy - The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins

I'm not sure why Netflix chose the whole GRIMDARK vibe when dealing with Marvel properties - given how the movies were presented and the success that drove. Then tried to flip it with Defenders and such, and got neither Nolan-style gritty or Favreau flashy right. The only one that worked was Jessica Jones, which is quite a deep and involved, character-driven story (and, of course, marvellously played by Ritter and Tennant.) Daredevil especially still didn't grab me despite the fantastic Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio: very happy to see them getting a second shot at the roles but with Marvel leading. In particular the intentionally shocking ultraviolence seemed there for, well, intentional shock value and as a marketing point rather than to drive the story, and did not go down well with those expecting Iron Man or Cap-style glossy. (Or their lunchbox-buying, subscription-controlling, parental-lock-enabling parents.) Agents Of SHIELD worked much better for ABC(aka Disney) because it definitively wasn't about superheroes - a bunch of ordinary if insanely talented working schmos whose job it is fit in around them, to deal with the terrifying and extraordinary. Even Daisy becoming Quake worked because it was unexpected (I honestly thought she was a goner until the cocoon cracked), difficult and took a lot of adjusting all round. It also followed more closely the feel and tone of the movies, and a little of the production quality. Plus that cast. It lost its way after season 4, which happens to a lot of shows, but finished out strong.

Queen - The Hero (Flash Gordon end titles)

Huey Lewis & The News - Power Of Love

Annapantsu - The Trail We Blaze