Hello, world. I’m MacDara Conroy, and this is my blog.

Two weeks after appealing those bullshit customs charges and not a peep from An Post so I’ve paid (with much resentment) the crooked double tax so I can have the feckin’ things I can’t get anywhere else. I still want to know who’s responsible for messing this up so completely #aside

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Is it just me, or is today the most Tuesday-feeling Wednesday we’ve had in a while? #aside

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A model of the USS Enterprise-D’s shuttle craft Goddard, from Star Trek: The Next Generation, made from LEGO-compatible bricks. It’s sitting upon the dust cover of my turntable which has side D of Sonic Youth’s Walls Have Ears in silver vinyl on the platter, and the LP sleeve (orange, featuring a lit jack-o’-lantern) is displayed in the background on the left.

Weekend project. Next up: the DS9 runabout I impulse bought last week that’s easily five or six times bigger than this #image

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So annoyed with this, I just splurged on a BlueBrixx DS9 runabout (it was on sale!) to cheer myself up #aside

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Further to this: I get the IOSS number from Juno; I read it out to An Post on the phone; they tell me it’s not valid, and that ‘Revenue don’t lie’. Ha! It’s an Irish institution, I trust it about as as far as I can throw it! #aside

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Somebody in An Post and/or Revenue is messing up big time: I just received a customs charge notice for a single LP from the UK, which cost €36 with shipping, but they’ve assessed the customs value at €122? What??!! #aside

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Another year, another Puppy Bowl I won’t see because it’s not broadcast or streamed in Europe #aside

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#NowPlaying Sonic Youth - Walls Have Ears (the new double LP arrived this morning) #aside

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It might be baltic out there but the sun finally rises before and sets after my day-job hours. Every cloud, etc #aside

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Film review — Final Justice

I feel like the only reason the MST3K people have to rip this apart is their very specific distaste for Joe Don Baker, which I don’t get at all. Sure, he looks like if Powers Boothe got really into dairy, but he’s got an everyman charm that brings a certain verisimilitude to his roles, especially here. And anyway, who doesn’t love cheese? People who hate life, that’s who. I mean, except for vegans and the lactose intolerant. Fun fact: the woman who plays Baker’s buddy cop in this one is the current European Commissioner for Equality. More…

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Breaking my radio silence to report that the mighty Horse Lords are playing Dublin in April > tickets.ie #aside

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The WWE Raw/Netflix news is kind of burying the lede that WrestleMania (and the Royal Rumble, and SummerSlam, etc) will be a Netflix exclusive outside the US come next year #aside

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Film review — Albert Brooks: Defending My Life

Albert Brooks deserves better than this tribute to be sullied by so many unnecessary talking heads, a disconcerting number of whom have been cancelled (or as we used to say, rightfully ostracised for doing really shitty things). More…

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Film review — Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins

There’s a parallel universe where they cut their losses and go with Kate Mulgrew as the unlikely but actually pretty believable action hero. Instead we get this weird mashup of comic-book magic tomfoolery and disjointed Bond-lite action set-pieces that desperately needs a plot to make it all work but there’s just nothing here. Reminds me a lot of Buckaroo Banzai in that respect: just a mess that has no real reason to be remembered but was probably shown repeatedly on cable so it became some kind of pop cultural touchstone for a certain cohort of American millennials. More…

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So, this bottle return scheme thing… I’m not the only one who thinks it’s being set up to fail, am I? > @MacDaraConroy #aside

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Pre-order in for the latest in the Meat Puppets LP reissue campaign, this time the classic Meat Puppets II (but all their SST ones are classic). I wish there was a local (based in Ireland) option but sadly not, so Juno get my business again #aside

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Film review — Rage of Honor

There’s a brief but stupendous sequence roughly halfway through this where a traditional Argentine dance is intercut with Sho Kosugi bashing henchmen’s faces in. I don’t expect high art from these things but that was remarkable (as is the main villain who looks like if René Aubergonois and Andrew Robinson got merged in a transporter accident) and I was disappointed it never returned to those heights, and indeed reached some dispiriting lows (at one point Sho massacres a bunch of Amazonian tribespeople who don’t appear to be baddies, just people defending their land?). More…

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Film review — Pray for Death

After a thrilling start, this one gets really bogged down in all that ‘story’ business when all we’re really here for is to see Sho Kosugi kick some ass. I guess he needs some motivation or whatever for the third-act revenge against the sociopathic mob killer Limehouse, and that’s a grisly, weapon-filled one definitely worth waiting for. Even Sho’s son Kane has a go at being a ninja James Bond with a gadget-rigged bicycle. More…

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Ugh, I paid for 40 face masks and this shower only sent me half of them. Not happy this morning, not at all #aside

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Just went outside for a minute to wheel in the green bin and nope, nope nope nope nope nope #aside

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I can confirm, because it finally arrived after a month in the post, that the US-release Arrow 4K Blu-ray of The Warriors plays on our Xbox Series X. That’ll get watched some night this week for sure #aside

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Film review — Freelance

John Cena the Movie Star is pretty decent in small doses. Unfortunately he’s all over this piece of military-industrial complex propaganda in excelsis. Five stars if it were a satire, but I’m pretty sure they mean every bit of it. More…

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Dangerously frosty out there this morning. But only if you’re on foot, mind. Safer to walk on the road in many spots, so I did #aside

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Postponing my planned evening walk to the shops to tomorrow morning, for the chance to pet a dog in one of the gardens along the way #aside

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The place in Germany where I get our FFP2 masks has made them cheaper, but shipping is now no longer free so unless you buy more, they’re probably more expensive. Sigh… #aside

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I started playing Starfield last night. And despite it being a bit more shooty than I’d like, I’m enjoying it! There’s a mystery that I’m eager to solve, in a universe that feels Star Trek-ish familiar but informed by other less worn-out tropes as well. Also, it’s distracting me from still being ill after nearly two fucking weeks #aside

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Happy new year, I guess? #aside

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I can’t believe AEW did a Dusty finish last night smh #aside

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Film review — Jake Speed

This flick has a cute concept: the protagonists of pulp adventure novels are actually real, and write up their escapades to fund their future activities. But the execution leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. More…

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Film review — The Mirror Crack’d

Caught the first half of this on a visit to my mam’s and had to find out what happens. Quite the ensemble cast! And unexpectedly biting for its quaint English village setting. The tragic denouement doesn’t really gel with the tone, alas, but it’s hardly a wasted couple of hours. More…

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Film review — Unmasking the Idol

The ninja movie as Bond pastiche, from an era when pick-up trucks, hot air balloons and monkey sidekicks were the height of awesomeness. If that were ever the case. More…

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Film review — Stay Tuned

Surprising good, this one. Like the best bits of UHF, with a bigger budget, an arguably more appealing lead in everyman John Ritter and a decidedly darker edge (and no, I’m not referring to the presence of real-life despicable villain Jeffrey Jones). Some decent use of CGI that’s aged fairly well, too. And a bonus Chuck Jones animated sequence! What’s not to love? (OK, I mean besides real-life despicable villain Jeffrey Jones.) Also, this technically counts as a wrestling movie. More…

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Still smothered with this cold and in a shitty mood. Bah, humbug #aside

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Film review — The 6th Day

I’m sick with a cold so I’m only in the mood for watching schlock and this fit the bill. Amazingly I’d never seen it before; it’d make for a decent double bill with Total Recall, but definitely the B picture in that pairing. More…

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Once again, on this day of days, here’s a special Xmas message from our lord and saviour Joachim M Brewer > YouTube #aside

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It’s 11.30 at night and rooks are cawing at each other in the trees outside, which is frankly unsettling #aside

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First rum and cola of the season which I’m hoping will dampen this miserable cold I’ve caught #aside

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Film review — The A-Team

Second viewing, this time a hotel TV watch. I remember it being quite confusing and boredom-inducing the first time around, so I was surprised that it held my attention pretty much throughout. It’s still not great by any means, though, as it generally eschews the show’s gimmicks for Bourne-indebted self-serious action that drains away most of the fun. If they’d kept things as boneheadedly simple as the original (which I loved as a child; I had the van and the figures with the squishy heads and everything), they might’ve been on to something. More…

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Finally got around to watching #ROH Final Battle and what a great show it was, capped by a fantastic main event. Is there anything to be said for Athena vs Billie Starkz in a cage match? #wrestling #aside

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One more work day and I’m off till January. How worn out am I? Wrung like a wet towel, that’s how #aside

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Film review — Merry Christmas

I’m glad I stuck it out past the very broad ‘comedy’ of the first half an hour as it’s a real heart-warmer. And that toddler is a hell of an actor. More…

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Film review — The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix

My my, the Norwegians have been holding out on us! Aardman eat your heart out: here’s a stop-motion flick about an oddball inventor with anthropomorphic animal companions that beat Wallace and Gromit to the screen by a good 14 years and remains technically impressive today, nearly half a century on. What a shame it’s only got half an hour’s worth of story, stretched out to an interminable 90 minutes. More…

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