Paperjam

Oh yes, its the top half of the table for the Sky Blues following another win which was made up of:

• Everyone booing referee Uriah Rennie before the game had even started.
• A dour first half punctuated by amusing chants regarding the sexual orientation of the Brighton contingent "We can see you holding hands" was a highlight, to which they responded "You're too ugly to be gay". Touche.
• A proper old dust up at the back of the NTL stand, the perpetrator was removed by about 10 stewards to cries of "Wanker, wanker" from pretty much everyone in the place.
• Dele "Pele" Adebola taking the complete piss out of the Brighton defence, only to find that his teammates were not on the same wavelength, time and again.
• A single moment of quality when 87 year-old Dennis Wise nodded in an inviting Marcus Hall cross.
• The fans saluting Wise with "He's only five foot four, he'll break your fucking jaw", which he seemed to enjoy.
• Cov completely dominating the second half, with Wise outstanding and deserving of his second goal. At this point (to the tune of "Go West") a large proportion of the Cov crowd started singing "Your dad - takes it up the ass" to a now morose Seagulls faithfull.

For a more accurate depiction of events check out LAST. Needless to say if we can keep this sort of form up it might be a top half finish this year!

Tom over at ace music-tech blog MusicThing has gone mad on our new favourite thing YouTube, and scouted out a fair few classic music videos, including a suitably mental early TV performance from Iggy and the Stooges, a cracking new Prince single, and the most arse-shaking beat from James Brown's funky drummer Clyde Stubblefield.

Also check that Chaka Khan drumming performance mentioned in the comments. So far I've managed to find a load of scary old Gary Numan doing his Bowie-as-a-robot schtick ("We are glass"), Joy Division being impressively bleak ("Shadowplay") and yet more France Gall ("Quand on est ensemble").

The good news is that the video streaming seems to work through corporate firewalls (Flash videos over normal HTTP?), so if you're at work and the YouTube website isn't blocked, you should be able to get your Chaka Khan fix at your desk. And slow everyone elses connection at the same time, marvellous.

Over at Filth and Saving the World, our compatriot and lyrical postman Howe2 discovers Austin Stevens (...not Steve Austin), the South African photographer and renowned snake molester, currently doing roaring business on UK TV on Channel 5. Howe2 says:

> He bounds through dense, humid jungle upsetting various brands of reptiles by picking them up sometimes with tongs and almost certainly with a big stiffy...

...so what does this involve?

> All of this involves gripping the snake by the tail and using a set of litter pickers to grip the furious, highly dangerous snake behind the ears and froth to the point of explosion about it's fabulous scallyness and large pointy, serrated fangs, that i'm confident will smart if he sticks his face within striking distanced.

And it's great stuff. Less relentlessly chirpy than that other reptile-fancier, Steve Irwin, Stevens goes about his task with absurd relish, springing from on high to surprise a snake which is clearly not expecting a fondling from a crazy South African.

Emma the cynical wife looks quizzical all the way through, while I'm just grinning like a fool. She's thinking - how does the camera crew get there? Our crazy Austin is all on about being almost out of food, and being really lost - what are the camera crew doing? Are they just laughing at him inbetween mouthfuls of Kit Kat and Monster Munch?

Austin Steven's Adventures is on UK TV on Friday nights at 8pm, Channel 5. Here's a link to the Austin Stevens fansite, with the oddly homoerotic Flash animation (Austin, wet and dripping, shirt half-off, man-handling a whopping snake - I ask you...).

Ed Banger Records (here's the Ed Banger website, there's sod all there right now) seem to be doing the business at the moment, with a couple of Justice tracks ("One Minute to Midnight" and "Waters of Nazareth") that have had me doing the traditional lame-horse dancing round the kitchen.

And now, here's Myspace sensation Uffie, who's impressed/made you run screaming in the opposite direction (delete as applicable) with her astonishingly inept but filthy spitting.

I love slightly rubbish rapping me - "Bad Young Brother" is still on my iPod somewhere, and our oddly named daft hiphop troupe the Cold Ghetto Suckers did a cover version of "Ice Ice Baby" with an Akai sampler and a Stylophone - Public Enemy meets Rolf Harris. You're lucky, there's no recordings available.

And Uffie reminds me of the sassy and squealing L'Trimm and JJ Fad, who came out with the bass-cone ripping "Supersonic" (produced by the Arabian Prince) at the arse-end of the Eighties.

Feadz and Mr.Oizo are on the production case here - but I recommend you head for the SebastiAn remix of "Pop the Glock", which sounds like a cute and sweet sounding vocoder rap. Until you realise how filthy she's being. Some have said this is all just a bit wrong, and "Ready to Uff" is near-guaranteed to make you feel pervy, like listening on to one-half of an 0898 'phone call.

She claims to be from Miami/Paris, but there's a British sound in her voice, particularly in some of the vowels, which suggests she's aping UK grime vocals to some extent. It'd be interesting to see how some of the UK styles could travel and affect the pop charts across the world - particularly the ponderous and evil dubstep sound. Or maybe I just prefer it if Lady Sovereign hadn't fallen off quite so badly...

Hear "Pop the Glock" and "Ready to Uff" over at Uffie's Myspace site. According to Discogs, the 12" is released on 27th Feb 2006 on Ed Banger Records in France.

Clearly I've had my head in a bucket since last August, 'cos I've only just discovered this new 7" issue of a 1981 record by a bunch of steel drummers doing a version of the Gary Numan robohit.

Apparently it was in a bit of a state and needed a bit of polishing up in the mastering by Red Hook, but it still sounds very funky and nearly completely ridiculous - check those lovely rough-arsed drums, Shitty Is Pretty in full effect.

As usual it was Shadow that got there first - this appears on Diminishing Returns. As well as the lovely 7", you can get it on the latest Rough Trade Counter Culture comp along with a bunch of other stuff from the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Sleater-Kinney and The Fall-ah.

Rotoscoping? One drug maniac? One kleptomaniac? Richard "I-don't-make-particularly-good-films" Linklater? The Shakespearian acting legend that is Keanu Reeves?

"A Scanner Darkly" has it all. Or at least it will do when it finally gets released in the US in the Summer. Possibly.

You might want to see the trailer (warning : huge .mov file, will need Quicktime). That rotoscoping/live cel shading thing looks a bit Bob Godfrey to me, with the outlines wriggling all over the place. Apart from on Keanu Reeves' expression-less, botoxed-from-birth face, that is.

Who knows if it'll be any good - the personnel aren't too auspicious, and we could see how Dick's stories are tricky to adapt for big audiences because of their downbeat endings.

At this point there was going to be a big picture of Godfrey's Roobarb and Custard, but I can't find any decent pictures. Draw a big cartoon dog in black felt tip, and shake it around in front of your face - there you go. That's your afternoon gone.