Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy - part four!

Bit of an Electric Goose exclusive here. During my travels in India I stumbled across a manuscript - not literally, of course, I'm perfectly capable of remaining upright in the face of paper obstacles - which I believe to be a fragment of the fourth book in Stieg Larsson's bestselling Millennium trilogy, a follow-up to third and supposedly final book The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. People, on the day the movie version of the aforementioned novel is released, I give you an extract from the new Lisbeth Salander/Mikael Blomkvist crime epic: The Girl Who Went to the Shops...


THE GIRL WHO WENT TO THE SHOPS

Lisbeth Salander put on a T-shirt which read You don't have to be mad to work here, but it helps and went into her kitchen. At 8.58am, she placed a white ceramic bowl on her Svasbo breakfast table. She poured some cereal into the bowl, followed by some milk. She ate the cereal. At 9.10am, she washed the bowl and spoon, then dried them. She picked up her Apple G4 PowerBook with 60GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM and 15" screen with two USB sockets, and put it in her bag, along with a small canister of Mace. Then she went out.

***

Jerker Strömström was a noisome, vital man. He was one metre sixty-three, with vigorous long blonde hair, an untidy beard and a noisome expression. He had noisome grey trousers, a blue shirt and black shoes. He watched as a childlike young lady with a number of tattoos and piercings walked into his shop. Fucking lesbian whore. The girl picked up a basket.

Shops are business establishments that allow individuals to purchase items for personal use in exchange for money. Items can be bought using cash, debit card or cheque, although in 1993, the Swedish government in their wisdom had introduced draconian legislation forcing anyone using a credit card to pay a 12 percent surcharge on all transactions under 100 Kroner. In 1995, a group of rebel MPs had tried to overturn the ruling, but had failed. In 1998, they had tried again, but had also failed. In 2001 they had tried and failed again. In 2003 they had tried and failed again. In 2006 they had tried and failed again.

Strömström looked at the girl suspiciously.

***

Journalist Mikael Blomkvist sighed with satisfaction. He had just finishing writing and editing the latest issue of Millennium magazine and an accompanying book, having worked for 19 hours straight with no breaks. He flicked on the radio in his office. The song that came on was 'Reach' by S Club 7. He stood up and reached for a copy of The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. Being one metre and eighty-three tall, he managed to grasp the book from its place on the top of his bookshelf with ease. He sat down and started to read.

***

Salander looked around the shop, deciding what she was going to need. She picked up a basket and began to shop, taking a tube of Colgate toothpaste, two pencils, an apple, a 1.5-litre bottle of Coca-Cola, four packets of ready salted crisps and a pair of shoelaces. She walked further down the aisle and took a 200g tin of baked beans. I really like baked beans. She went to the cashier, who told her the items came to 98 Kroner. She took out her card to pay.

***

As the girl took out her card, Strömström narrowed his eyes, and smugly began to tell the girl about the 12 percent surcharge. Before he had even finished his sentence, he felt a sharp stinging in his eyes as Salander sprayed Mace directly into his face. What the hell? Out of nowhere, he felt his jaw break as she kicked him in the face and he fell to the floor in agony. She took out a hammer and he moaned in pain as she smashed him in the ribs. Another woman-hater had learned not to provoke Lisbeth Salander.

***

Blomkvist looked across from his office window, frozen with shock at the supermarket scuffle he'd just witnessed. What the hell? Then he recognised Lisbeth Salander. Of course. Despite being only one metre fifty tall and weighing less than 90 pounds, she truly was the smartest and most introverted person he'd ever met. She was just so... odd.

***

As Salander left the shop, she happened to glance into a nearby window. A man was watching with a look of surprise on his face. She couldn't believe it. Kalle fucking bastard bloody idiot Blomkvist.

THE END

(Posted with apologies to the late Stieg Larsson and his translator, since I did actually really enjoy the books. After finishing this, I noticed Nora Epron had written her own parody for The New Yorker - it's rather good, and you can read it here.)

Collins, Gonzales, Newsom

Thought you might like to read some album reviews I've written recently. We have Losing Sleep by Edwyn Collins here, and Ivory Tower by Chilly Gonzales here. If not, here's a two-year-old doing a convincing impression of Joanna Newsom.

Teh Nu Pr0nographers

I wonder - do folks who work in the pornography industry have special spam filters for their office emails to ensure that messages with dirty subject matter go directly into their inboxes? And how do these filters separate work-related filth from junk filth? Are there ever any situations in which colleagues are forced to flag up a link with the "NSFW!" warning?

The truth may never be known to me, but that isn't so worrying. Anyway, I interviewed AC Newman, chief of indie-pop alternative rockers The New Pornographers, a few weeks back. Click here to read the piece, published a week later than planned. Why? You guessed it: overzealous spam filters. Safe for work, though, I promise.

I Told You I Was Freaky - Flight of the Conchords

"Some people say that rappers don't have feelings. We have feelings," raps Brett McKenzie on the opening track of Flight of the Conchords' second album. Sounding vulnerable and miffed, he continues, "Some people say that we are not rappers," with colleague Jemaine Clement adding defiantly: "We're rappers. It hurts our feelings when you say we're not rappers." Read more...

Britain's Best Brain, Wednesday 8pm, Five

For viewers of a certain age, Britain's Best Brain will prove both exciting and depressing. Why? Because it reunites Zoë Ball and Jamie Theakston, the duo who presented Saturday morning children's show Live & Kicking in the '90s and, slightly less memorably, Channel 4's The Priory.

Zoë and Jamie were presumably paired up in the first place because next to either of them, anyone else would look like they were kneeling down, and it's comforting to see they're both still very tall. But, like the rest of us, they do look older. Sigh.

Anyway, the show. "This is not a quiz show," Theako tells us, proudly. It sort of is, really, but the challenges are all geared to test different parts of the brain – so it's not something you can revise for beforehand, unless you count gorging on fish and blueberries.

The studio audience greet the five contestants like they're heroes returning from war, despite the fact that, as in every show like this, they're just normal people with ages, jobs, and one anecdote each.

The first round has contestants trying to answer fairly simple maths questions while heavy metal plays in their ears and disembodied voices shout numbers at them, while staring at a screen of swirling integers. It's that sort of thing.

The parts you at home can take part in – the memory tests, say – are reasonably fun, but the ones you can't – like the one where you have to watch someone wrestling with an egg timer while they're whirled around in a giant gyroscope – aren't so much.

Meanwhile, BBB's slightly clinical approach – the challenges are "each scientifically designed to test a primary brain function", we're told – means it's quite hard to root for anyone; it seems to be reducing the idea of human endeavour to something more random. In summary, then: when's the Trev and Simon revival due?

by Will Parkhouse, Tuesday 27 October 200

Originally published on Orange.co.uk

Slits and pieces

The Slits: a scary interview prospect indeed, what with them being 1) the original all-grrrl '76 punk band an' all that 2) responsible for one of the best cover versions ever 3) fronted by a singer whose stepdad is none other than Johnny Rotten and 4) one of only three artists to make the Goose funeral songs playlist.

But, of course, they turned out to be completely charming. The finished interview is over on The Quietus - and here are the pics I took after Ari and Tessa got all excited about a graffitied wall we happened to wander past.

The Goose honks elsewhere

A bit more extracurricular writing for The Quietus from me, by way of the new Brendan Benson album over here. By the way, did you ever read their fantastic interview with Sir Patrick Moore? I wish I had his reviewing skillz. "This song did make an impression on me. A negative one. Ha ha ha!"

All Quietus on the Richmond Font

I'm sure you're all dying to know what I thought of Richmond Fontaine's new album, We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River... Stop panicking: I reviewed it for The Quietus, so you can find out here. Ironic last line, given length of article.


PS Yikes, it's been over a month since I last posted here. Sorry, that's probably a new record. Um, I've been away on holiday, you know, cut me some slack. Well, since Saturday, anyway. The other three weeks were just really busy. Why? Tune in to find out. Maybe.

Tonight on ITV1: Boy Meets Girl

Ah, the body-swap comedy – it's an actor's dream. If it's of the “man becomes boy, boy becomes man” type, a jaded star gets to play completely against type by clowning around childishly in business meetings, while a young up-and-comer gets to show his maturity and range by teaching his classmates the value of youth.

New ITV1 six-part comedy Boy Meets Girl follows a slightly different route, but one that's just as liberating for the stars involved. A pesky bolt of lightning – close the door on your way out, science! – simultaneously strikes conspiracy theorist and hardware store worker Danny (The Office's Martin Freeman) and posh fashion journalist Veronica (Pushing the Velvet's Rachael Stirling), causing them to switch bodies.

Danny, in Veronica's body, suddenly finds himself a fully paid-up (and fully punchable) member of the middle class, living in a swish apartment with an emotive man called Jay (Paterson ‘Johnson from Peep Show’ Joseph) and a stack of Elton John CDs, with a job which requires him/her to write horoscopes. On the plus side, he has breasts. Stirling, a noticeably deep- voiced actress already, whacks up the slobbery, surliness and frumpiness, and it's all quite uncanny.

Meanwhile, Veronica, in Danny's body, has lost her memory and is wandering round the streets, asking passers-by for money. Freeman looks like he'll have a bit more to do in next week's episode – winning back Jay could prove tricky – but de-blokes himself well, without resorting to lazy camp.

And so the screwball fun whizzes by nicely, but, as always, we do wonder if things might go even quicker if, when trying to explain what's happened to their disbelieving friends, Danny or Veronica just namechecked Vice Versa or Freaky Friday...

by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 29 April 2009

Originally published on Orange.co.uk

Tonight on BBC1: The Real Swiss Family Robinson

The problem with being shipwrecked is that it often looks like such fun. When it happened to the Swiss Robinson family in Johann David Wyss's 19th century novel, they ended up learning some important lessons about family values and self-sufficiency. When it happened to the cast of Channel 4's Shipwrecked, they ended up with, like, amazing tans and a handful of invitations to a variety of low-budget film premieres. 

So what will transpire when the Dye family from Essex are sent to the tiny, remote, unpopulated Pacific island of Anariki (what do you mean, "Where?" It's part of the Republic of Kiribati, you dunce) to fend for themselves? Will they create the kind of idyllic community seen in The Beach – or will they head the way of Tom Hanks in Castaway, performing makeshift dental surgery on each other and ranting at volleyballs?

Dad Andy has particularly strong reasons for getting away from it all and trying out a simple life. His once lucrative building business – which also employs two of his three children – has failed, and he sees this as an opportunity to put everything on hold, take stock, slow down and have a good, long think about what life is really all about.

"Do we want to go back to how it was before?" he asks, round the family dinner table. "We did have a lot of disposable money and we could go out and eat where we wanted to eat, we could buy the cars that we wanted to buy and we could go on three or four holidays a year. Do we want that back – or don't we actually want that back?"

Hmmm, that sounds all right, actually. Anyway, the clan head off to the beautiful island on their three-week jaunt, and, after some moaning, manage to build their own shelter, catch their own food and, eventually, throw off some of their materialistic western ways. It's reasonably diverting stuff which, with a bit of luck, might even make you question your own position in the rat race.

by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 25 March 2009 

Originally published on Orange.co.uk

Last night on Five: The Mentalist

I've always wondered what would happen if Derren Brown decided Channel 4 wasn't big enough for him and started using his awesome powers of psychological illusionism for evildoing. Presumably he'd have his hands on millions of pounds and would have recruited an army of hypnotised mercenaries before you could say, "look into my eyes…" 

Five's glossy new US import – we know this is a quality drama, because its supporting cast includes two 24 stars and one former West Wing actor – imagines what would happen if Derren had the sunswept good looks of a Lost cast member and got a job as a homicide detective in California.

Simon Baker plays enigmatic Patrick Jane, a former phoney TV psychic who's given up his fraudulent ways and turned cop. We first meet him at the crime scene of a murdered young girl. Within seconds of the family's press conference, he's earned the trust of the grieving mother byguessing her favourite colour and so on – "You really only pretend to like skiing... you love India, but you've never been there" – and solves the case in true maverick fashion. "You're psychic?" she asks. "No," he laughs. "Just paying attention."

Baker is good, giving Jane a self-assurance which just about manages not to spill over into cockiness and a calm, ethereal air, meaning that even when he makes a ham and cheese sandwich, it seems mysterious and unknowable.

You'll see echoes of Life (kooky cop tussles with his uptight female partner) and moments of Dexter (each show has individual crimes to solve, but with an overarching serial killer case to tie it all together), but this opener seems to have a personality all of its own. And, irrespective of all of the above, how can you not love a show with a title like The Mentalist, when it's directed by someone called David Nutter?

by Will Parkhouse

Originally published on Orange.co.uk 

Last night on BBC3: Natalie Cassidy's Real Britain

Natalie Cassidy, aka Sonia out of EastEnders, is annoyed. Fed up with gossip stories about how perfect celebrities are – although actually only the really boring gossip stories are about how perfect celebrities are – the soap actress is presenting Natalie Cassidy's Real Britain, which tells the story of two unique real people (i.e. not from London, not obviously beautiful) as they hold their noses and hurl themselves face first into the swimming pool of fame. 

First up is endearingly naïve South Shields girl Lauren Luke, whose YouTube videos, in which she gives make-up tips, have pulled in a total of more than 30 million views. And what has it got her? Nothing, that's what. Luckily, there's a New York marketing firm who think they can turn the hits into dollars by releasing a make-up line using Lauren's name.

The second story follows the adventures of Nicky Avery, an Essex man diagnosed with breast cancer at the mind-bogglingly young age of 24. He wants to turn the disease into a living – hey, it's his cancer, he can do what he wants with it – so, despite having already sold his story umpteen times, he heads to London for a meeting with Max Clifford in the hope of getting a TV gig. Although both Lauren and Nicky are chasing their dreams in unconventional ways, neither seems to have any beef with celebrity culture, making for a programme that doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be.

The real life stories work well enough in their own right, but they're bookended by Natalie's tub-thumping "fame culture = last days of Rome" screeds, which at times just seem to be an excuse for the soap star to blow off some steam about the unfair way the celeb magazines have treated her. Could it be that the programme makers have just tacked a celebrity name onto the title in order to pull in a few extra viewers? Surely not!

by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 4 March 2009 

Originally published on Orange.co.uk

Last night on Channel 4: Red Riding

We'd very much like to shake the hand of the brilliant individual who signed up the Red Riding cast – that's once they've wiped the great globs of special thespian pheromones from their sticky mitts. With the likes of David Morrissey, Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Rebecca Hall, Andrew Garfield, Eddie Marsan and Warren Clarke featuring in this trilogy of feature-length dramas, this must be the most talented bunch of British actors to be seen together on the small screen for quite some time. 

Although it'll look familiar to anyone who's seen David Fincher's 2007 film Zodiac, which has both similar tone and content, Red Riding is based on David Peace's quartet of books, which are set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders, though also strongly concerned with alleged police brutality and massive corruption.

It begins with eager young Yorkshire Post journalist Eddie 'Scoop' Dunford (BAFTA-winning Boy A star Andrew Garfield proving he's no one-hit wonder) reporting the murder of a young girl who was killed wearing a red hooded anorak. As he joins the dots between the girl's death and other unsolved child killings years before, his colleague Barry is investigating the shady business activities of one John Dawson (a smarmy but vicious Sean Bean). Is it all somehow connected?

Set in 1974, part one looks fantastically authentic. Thanks to that nicotine filter camera lens, visually it takes its lead from Our Friends in the North or a grimmer Life on Mars: an era when most furniture and items of clothing were either green, brown or beige and when journalists pinned clippings and maps to the wall, instead of Ctrl+C-ing it all into a Word document.

As Eddie probes further and events take their horrifying course, the drama has the feel of a bad dream spiralling surreally out of control. You're likely to end up so sucked in, all that "acting masterclass" stuff will be the last thing on your mind. Very strong stuff.

by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 4 March 2009 

Originally published on Orange.co.uk

Tonight on Channel 4: The World's Most Enhanced Woman and Me

Those of you who remember what The World's Most Enhanced Woman and Me calls "the big boob scene of the '90s" will presumably have fond memories of Eurotrash staple Lolo Ferrari, whose record-breaking beach ball breasts brought her fame and fortune. 

The movement, says presenter Mark Dolan (don't worry, we've stopped with the Louis Theroux comparisons), seemed to disappear from view with Lolo's death in 2000. "Personally, I can't see the attraction of freakishly large breasts," he adds, "But I wondered if there were any women out there who can compare with the girls from the '90s."

The current record holder, Maxi Mounds (not her real name, we'd wager) has five-litre breast enhancements – Lolo's were a mere three – but her agent tells Dolan she's "out of action", although we would've thought being Maxi Mounds was a full-time job, even if she's wearing a jumper.

So instead, we head to Las Vegas to meet porn stars Crystal Ashley and Minka. Crystal once had the world's largest implants, but downsized after they started leaking into her body and making her ill. Ugh. Meanwhile, Korean Minka and her less-than-charming husband Woody have made millions from her four-litre boobs. Tragically, she has a passion for tennis. Dolan gets a taster of the kind of attention she attracts when he goes for a wander round Vegas with her pal, the aptly-named Kayla Kleevage.

The show concludes with a visit to Brazil, where vivacious attention-seeker Sheyla Hershey has travelled to pump up the volume, in an attempt to win the word record with a 5.5-litre pair. "They love my personality," she says as she poses for pictures in the shopping mall.

There follows footage of a gruelling operation. Those looking for titillation, pardon the pun, should head elsewhere. Despite the premise, this is one of the more serious – and better – efforts in the ...and Me series, with insecurities as big as the breasts on show. Dolan, to his credit, looks every one of the women he's interviewing right in the eyes.

by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 4 February 2009

Originally published on Orange.co.uk

Last night on Channel 4: The World's Cleverest Child And Me

After his last "…And Me" run, which covered the world's smallest, hairiest, tallest and fattest, Mark Dolan, who has hopefully resigned himself to becoming known as "the poor man's Louis Theroux", returns with a second quartet of superlatives. Read more...

Tonight on ITV1: Piers Morgan on... Dubai

Despite everyone being struck down with the credit crunch bug, it seems there's going to be no let-up in programme-makers packing celebrities off to glamorous locations to make travel shows. It sort of works, though, since no one will ever be able to afford to go on holiday ever again – but sending king of smugness Piers Morgan to Dubai, where the spookily clean streets are paved with tax-free gold, does seem to be rubbing it in a bit. 

Never mind, because Piers actually does a pretty good job of it, meeting both the expats and the rich Arabs who live in the country and gawking at some of the impressive sights dreamt up by PM Sheikh Mohammed. These include such follies as the new seven-star Burj Al Arab hotel which cost so much to build, it’s expected never to make a profit (despite charging £12,000 a night for one of its top-end rooms), the 800m- tall unfinished skyscraper (160 floors and counting), and a theme park which, when complete, will be bigger than Birmingham. As Piers says more than once: "This is absolutely ridiculous."

The former Mirror editor is from the Jeremy Clarkson school of confident motormouthy presenting, at one stage pointedly telling a pair of investors who've just plugged $50m into some redistributed sea bed (i.e. sand): "You've both completely lost your marbles" – but with such enthusiastic camaraderie, it makes the interviews sparkle, as well as making this pair think they're crazy maverick pioneers.

The dizzying figures make for an eye-opening watch, the material feeling fresher than Griff Rhys Jones's recent Greatest Cities trilogy. Piers doesn’t quite get to the bottom of it all, though: it might have been good to hear from, say, someone who has come to recognise Dubai for the soulless money pit it probably is, or – perish the thought – a poor person.

by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 28 January 2009 

Originally published on Orange.co.uk

Tonight on ITV1: Demons

Although it begins with a blonde bombshell being slaughtered by a weird furry monster with eyes like magical gobstoppers, the thing about Demons that will most shock viewers is probably the fact that Philip ‘Life on Mars’ Glenister speaks in... an American accent. Yikes! 

Seriously though, it actually takes ages to get used to. Glenister plays Rupert Galvin, an über-confident cliché-spouting hardman without, sadly, any awareness of how silly he sometimes sounds. He rocks up at the house of teenager Luke (Christian Cooke) one day claiming to be both his godfather and a “warrior” whose job it is to rid the earth of “inhumans”.

Luke’s not convinced – and he has a test tomorrow – but Galvin insists that these creatures are everywhere. It is a bit surprising no one’s noticed them, though: the one hunting Luke is a seven-foot-tall trenchcoat- wearing Marilyn Manson lookalike with bad teeth who spends his time sitting in bars on the South Bank eating cockroaches and snarling. And his evil boss Gladiolus Thripp, played by The Office’s Mackenzie Crook, has a prosthetic nose nicked off the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family and hair so outrageous he would’ve been thrown out of Kajagoogoo. Inconspicuous they ain’t.

There are a number of awful moments: Luke’s attempts to save girlfriend Ruby are set, hilariously, to the musical strains of the Kaiser Chiefs’ ‘Ruby’, the fight scene with some hoodie ninja bear-men is ludicrously leaden and Zoe Tapper, who’s had herself a busy lesbian Christmas, what with the Survivors finale and Affinity, doesn’t convince as a blind seer.

Despite all that, Demons is so irresistibly bizarre and nightmarishly disturbing, it’s hard not to like. The words “cult viewing” are written all over it in big silver writing, and whoever scheduled this show for primetime Saturday night will prove to be either a madman or a genius.

by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 31 December 2008 

Originally published on Orange.co.uk

Award in your ear

It's glitzier than the Oscars, more pointless than the Brits and bitchier than the, um, TV Quick Awards. Yes, it's my Orange's Alternative Celebrity Awards 2008! See who won...

Last night on Channel 4: Country House Rescue

Essentially Changing Rooms for toffs, Country House Rescue sees entrepreneur Ruth Watson spraying on lipstick and mascara with a face stencil and visiting a series of impressive but flawed country homes to transform them into viable money-making ventures. Thankfully, this doesn't involve turning Britain's historic treasures into Burger Kings filled with blackjack tables... Read more...

Tonight on Channel 4: The Fun Police

"It's a lovely autumn afternoon to spend a couple of hours in the garden," says retired health and safety consultant Ed Friend. "But don’t forget that an anagram of 'garden' is 'danger'." 

Is this health and safety gone mad? This lot don't think so. Although we see several H&S inspectors at work here – Frank, who patronises his quarry with a smile and Pauline, whose visits to the local nail salons to check they're using the right glue turn into epic battles of thick-skinned reasonableness – it's Ed who's the star of the show.

In scenes that bring to mind Gareth Keenan's health and safety tutorial in The Office, we see Ed telling a group of sniggering workers not to lift things that are too heavy to lift, demonstrating how he arranges his cutlery drawer at home to prevent accidentally cutting himself, or showing the camera a range of H&S leaflets, one called Fatal Traction. In this humourless world, it's hard to know whether that's a joke or not.

It becomes a bit less funny when we start to peer into the inspectors' motivations behind their work. Ed's wife (yes, he is married) hints at preventable workplace fatalities that have affected him deeply, and we also hear about serious burns suffered by his father as a foundry worker. And it's quite a jolt to see his distress at a disgustingly hyperbolic Richard Littlejohn column calling H&S inspectors "the very people who would have been loading the cattle trucks to the concentration camps".

In the hated professions stakes, these guys must surely be ranked alongside, if not above, traffic wardens, serial killers and journalists. But while The Fun Police does its bit to reinforce the stereotypes of geeky, obsessive killjoys, it's also a reminder that whatever Littlejohn would have you think, it's actually not much fun having your hands sawn off by a piece of shoddy machinery.

by Will Parkhouse, Wednesday 3 December 2008

Originally published on Orange.co.uk