Penguin – Fooyah – Ian Parish

November 8 2026

Godzilla Minus Zero

I took a trip to Rochester to watch the Godzilla Minus One sequel. I remember really liking the original so was looking forward to this, even though I knew nothing about it. The tide was super low, I reckon I should learn about moon phases and the tide, because they are connected, but for now I’m happy to be surprised when I see so much of the base of the M2 bridges. We had to park near the river because the car park was mostly closed. I’m hoping they might actually resurface the place!

After watching the film I rated it on IMDb and this particular cellular spectacular got an 8/10 from me! There is a guide to judging the films within this communication. This feels like a rare event, a film scoring 8 or more. Looking through past judgements I have Hope coming in at 8/10 and The Odyssey as a 10/10.

I really enjoyed Minus Zero. We could sit and chat about the idea that zero is neither positive nor negative but we could also discuss that it could be both. I liked the title. I hadn’t really remembered much about the first film and it took a while before I understood where the characters were and who they were. The film did explain these things as new people were introduced. I remember liking the flying scenes in the first movie. I was not disappointed with this movie. There was plenty of flying and I really liked it.

I’m not into superhero films because they are always “whoever hits hardest wins” and not really about brain power. But this film requires humans to force a fight between two kaiju and it was great. I liked their powers, I liked the storyline, I liked everything. My only, very mild, gripe was too much of a child shouting at the end of the movie, but then that did fit with characterisation so I can tell myself to get over it.

There was some lovely interactions in the film showing the distrust of Americans and the effects of the war. It’s good for a film to show how war affects normal people. It’s not their fault and they end up being killed in action or just “collateral damage”. This film, and the previous, showed the effects of war really well and those plot points will stick with me. It’s all too easy to see the “enemy” as an evil collective, but in reality most people are normal.

November 5 2026November 4 2026

Happy Laps

Gran Turismo has many online modes but I don’t really like racing with other people as it doesn’t take much to get knocked off and then it’s really difficult to get back into a decent position. I have sometimes ended up last but tried to get fastest lap because I know I can’t get a decent position. Also, there’s a lap time challenge every week or so. I like it because there’s no other cars and you still get to find out how good you are compared to other drivers. I tend to get rated a “silver” driver form these but my recent performance around Barcelona left me happy:

Getting a gold time also means I get a bunch of credits when the time trial is over. I think it’s two million credits which would be nice as I’m trying to save up for a particular car. Considering I play about twenty minutes a day I think I’m doing well.

November 4 2026November 2 2026

Aesthetic Perfection – The Underworld

Smith and I went to see Aesthetic Perfection in Camden. This was a much needed gig, it had been quite a week up to then, mind you, it was a Sunday and that, I think, is the only thing I would say against this show. I tried a new travel programme. I might normally either drive the whole way and park nearby or get the fast train from Ebbsfleet. This time I tried the Rogers-Jones travel plan – drive the The O2 in Greenwich and then get the tube from there. This is a system I might try again in the future, it worked well.

Smith and I actually met on the escalator at Camden Tube Station. We were both heading to meet at the World’s End and I was starting the vertical journey to ground from the tube platform when I saw a bald man rush past me. I tapped them on the shoulder and thankfully it was Smith. It’s good to know I can pick out a fifty year friend from the corner of my eye. There were some other people we met at the World’s End, people from a Discord chat that I am part of but have never really participated in, Discord is another thing in a world where I don’t really have the time for things.

First band on was a person called Larva. They had a backing track and played a bunch of songs that sounded all the same and they sang through a distortion box so it wasn’t really that interesting.

Priest were the second act and I’d seen them a couple of times before so I knew what to expect. This band blew the first band away and showed how it should be done. It was an excellent set and the sound quality, where we were standing, was great. If you move any closer to the stage the sound does deteriorate because of where the speakers are placed.

Aesthetic Perfection were bloody great. Absolutely smashed it, I loved it. Daniel Graves had two guitarists and a drummer. There is definitely a case for having a live drummer. The sound of live drums is so much better than as a backing track. There’s a fundamental addition with the live sounds.

The entire AP show was great. I had a nice time and enjoyed myself a lot. It was a good end to an iffy week. So nice to be in London and surrounded by people all doing and enjoying the same thing.

The journey home was quite unspectacular. I got the tube and then drove. I got home around midnight which is the same as if I had got the train from Ebbsfleet. So all in all the new Rogers-Jones London travel method works well. Leaving the parking at the O2 was easy, I had expected it to be a pain as there was a large event on in the arena but I honestly didn’t notice it.

November 3 2026November 1 2026

Not Deserving Of My Money

I was spending some time in the ancestral lands and I needed to have a drink. My first stop was a pub called The Thatchers. Now, as much as the naming of this pub recognises the trade of thatching for rooves, I prefer its old name which was The Wagon and Horses. How else does the name of the road nearby, Wagon Mead, make sense? Also, the name was changed a few years post Thatcher as prime minister and I always hated the pub for that. I’d been there a few times in my youth but this was the first time for many years. I was struggling to choose what to drink so I thought I’d settle for an amoretto and cranberry juice – a drink that reminds me of good times. The pub had no cranberry juice, like what the fuck? So, I settled for a straight JD.

I left the pub and was going to head back to my sleeping quarters when I decided I needed a little more walking time. I wandered along the main road, in the fog, and headed to another pub in the ancestral lands.

As I approached the White Horse I could see many halloween decorations and I could tolerate that. The pub industry needs to do what it can to keep that money flowing. Then, I noticed a sticker on the window:

Apart from that exclamation mark doing some work on the sticker, but not really making any grammatical sense I was surprised to see such an excluding sign. If you can’t make your pub welcoming to all then what the fuck are you doing? I thought about it for a short moment and then decided that these pricks didn’t deserve my money. Fuck them. I’m not suggesting that the other pub was in any way a left leaning pub. Pretty much everyone in the ancestral lands votes right wing, it’s that sort of place: large country piles easily scared by the lies of Reform and Restore. The sort of place that loves to think of itself as caring and wonderful until it sees people of a different colour. But at least The Thatchers didn’t advertise its exclusionary thoughts. The White Horse pub can go fuck itself.

November 2 2026November 1 2026

Almost Touchable

I spent about fifteen minutes recently watching aircraft land at Stansted airport. With local knowledge you can actually stand right under the approach to runway 22. There are planes every five minutes or so. As I drove towards the airport I missed a 747 taking off which is a shame, I watched it bank left while climbing as I travelled along the M11. The picture below is one of many I took. Gaunts End is quite a good spot.

November 1 2026

Primetime

I booked tickets to see Primetime because it was on and I knew absolutely nothing about it. The other offerings at the cinema at the time can be seen another time. I just wanted something to watch, but not a superhero type movie which is why I didn’t go see Clayface. I did observe that the tide was full when I drove alongside and for some reason that made me super happy. It gave me pleasure to see the reflections shimmering on the surface and all the mud covered. After watching this movie I rated it on IMDb and I gave it 6/10. There are reasons, you should probably read my scoring system laid out in this communication.

I enjoyed this film. It was very stylistic and showed the behind the scenes of a sting operation that really happened in the early 2000s. I guess that was roughly twenty years ago so what I am watching is equivalent to me, as a teenager, looking at a film covering the mid sixties! When I think about things like that I realise I’m getting on a bit!

The film was well made. I got slightly irritated with the blusher on the main character but perhaps that was deliberate. Maybe they just have coloured cheeks most of the time. I don’t know. It was an impressive performance. Because I knew very little about the story I was quite surprised at culmination of the film, I guess it was designed that way and why the film was made. It covers a period of time that in the hunt for ratings on a television show and the lengths that people go to grabbing those viewers. There were interactions between the police, tv crew and presenters that caused multiple moral issues and these were nicely explored. I don’t see much difference or growth with the television of today. How depressing we still sanction the same things.

October 27 2026October 25 2026

More Scenery

No words. Just show.

October 26 2026October 25 2026

Eating Things

I went to see some friends at a place that was new to me! Look at me heading outside and doing something brand new! I was tricked into visiting a garden centre and I realise that isn’t my natural environment. However, it was the Kent Ceramics show or whatever it was called and I had a look around and found a thing I really liked. I haven’t used it yet but I will be soon and I am sure it will be my standard favourite.

October 25 2026

Klara and the Sun

It was raining. Proper rain. For hours. It was lovely. The temperatures weren’t cold, the was wind and the rain was bloody gorgeous. There’s more rain coming soon and I’m looking forward to it. It could rain every day for the next month and I’d be happy. I guess the only surprise was a flood on a roundabout but I drove through it and considered it to be an under-chassis clean. I went to watch Klara and the Sun and afterwards I rated it on IMDb as 6/10. There’s a system to describe the scoring and it’s communicated in this communication. Oh, I have no idea what the tide was doing, it was dark and raining and the visibility wasn’t great.

I really enjoyed the film. It’s pacing was lovely. The colours were great. The story has me thinking. I’m still not really sure what happened at the end and what that means for the story before that. Maybe this film is the story of how humans ended up worshipping stupid things? I don’t know. It was perfectly enjoyable.

October 12 2026

Verity

There was so much interesting sport on this weekend that I forced myself out the house to watch Verity at the cinema. On Saturday there was the four hour ELMS race at Portimao which I had on while doing some work. Then Sunday there was an NFL match in London which started at 1430 and was very good fun to watch followed by the New Orleans Saints playing at 1800. I did watch both of these but had to multitask for the London match as I also played some PlayStation that afternoon. So, on Saturday I went to see Verity at the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I think the tide was about half way as I arrived, whether it was waxing or waning I don’t know. After watching this film I rated it on IMDb and I scored this one 6/10. Read this communication to understand how the scoring system works.

The star of this film is surely the house. It is a stunning house meant to be next to a Vermont lake. Absolutely gorgeous, but, oddly, no garage as far as we know. I don’t know if that’s an American thing or not. About halfway through this film I started to get bored. I was considering what IMDb score to give this film and it started to head to a 4/10. This means I was just waiting to see how the film ended but with no real buy-in. I was irritated that Verity’s life depended solely on the “man”. Everything she was doing was because of her obsession for the husband. This seemed so very usual and not interesting. I also wondered what it was about the husband that made him so needed.

This film redeemed itself and scored better than 4/10 because of the “twist”. I suppose it was a twist. A reveal that changes our opinion of what has happened in the film. If I am being honest I have spent time thinking about this film over the weekend and so I reckon it did a good job. I like how we just don’t know.

This is another of those stories where people write about what they know. Writers write stories about writer. Hollywood loves films about Hollywood. It’s amusing.