Wow, it’s like a bunch of bloggers fell into a cryogenic vault and all of a sudden there’s been like a power cut or something and like they’re all thawing and like coming back to life.

Deep breath.

First Australian tech blog Squash comes back to life in a flurry of posts, then everyone’s favourite Norwegian blogger (what do you mean, you don’t have a favourite? You do now!), Mr Haarball, gets himself a domain name and a spanking new blog, Apropos of Nothing. You never know, all this activity might shame me into posting more regularly.

Ah, yes. About that, I’ve been meaning to tell you; after doing such a great job of organising the music for my girlfriend’s birthday, I’ve been press-ganged into doing the same job for her brother-in-law (who, incidentally, is related to British wrestler Alex Shane and works with the father of The Office and Extras co-writer Stephen Merchant. Yes, look impressed), meaning blogging comes a distant fifth in my list of priorities (after eating, aimlessly wandering the internet and removing the protection from old ZX Spectrum games. No, really, that’s how I’ve been spending my time).

Sorry, did I say “fifth”? I meant “sixth”. I’ve got a super-secret project bubbling away in the tossr lab at the moment. I don’t want to say too much about it at the moment, other than the fact that it’s my attempt at a get-rich-quick scheme (although with the amount of work going into it a the moment, it’s more of a get-rich-slow-and-with-far-more-effort-than-spamming-blogs-with-porno-referral-links scheme, and in all honesty the “rich” part is a little optimistic anyway; I’ll be happy with paying off my considerable bar tabs in various pubs round my way).

Anyway, must dash; I’m off to play a horrible prank on those reanimated bloggers and make them think they’ve been in the deep-freeze for far longer than they have been. I reckon a Planet of the Apes mask and, I dunno, a big net or somehing should do the trick. Failing that, I’ll send them each a Futurama boxset and tell them it’s a documentary series. Job done!

It’s not often this jaded cynic gets excited about a telly programme but I’m really, really looking forward to That Mitchell and Webb Look, the forthcoming sketch show starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, who you may or may not know better as Mark and Jeremy in Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain’s POV-tastic sitcom Peep Show. Simply put, if this lives up to the original radio series then it’ll be one of the comedy highlights of the year. Admittedly, that won’t be hard in a year which has seen some appalling shite offered up under the guise of “comedy”, and admittedly, it won’t be hard for them to live up to the radio series seeing as how there do seem to be rather a lot of radio sketches appearing in the TV version.

Now, part of me sees that as a guarantee of quality; after all, some of my favourite sketches (such as “Now we know” and “Touching cloth”) have made the transition from FM to FV. However, another part of me sees it as something of a paucity of ideas. Has Mitchell spent too much time appearing on every panel show going to write more material? Has the endless drudgery of countless advertising voice-overs sapped their inspiration? I hope not. I suppose it’s a difficult balancing act; like a band performing live, they have to judge how much new material to play and how many old favourites to include in their set. In any case, at least they aren’t ploughing the furrough of catchphrase comedy, as is the current trend; having seen a list of sketches (courtesy of the BBC press pack) I can say that while there are certainly recurring themes and characters, none seem to be of the endlessly repetitious sort that has characterised so many recent sketch shows.

Anyway, the first episode is on BBC2 this Thursday at 10.30pm (after Extras, which I’m decidedly less excited about — I’m not even motivated enough to wrap the name in <strong> tags, that’s how apathetic I am about the show), and I’m lead to believe that each week’s episode will be available to view on the official site for a week after broadcast.

In the meantime, the official Myspace page has a couple of behind-the-scenes clips (which are proper behind-the-scenes clips, rather than the comedic ones which will be part of the series) although unfortunately the sketches which were there a little while ago (some Numberwang and a clip of an anxious Nazi) have gone, and slightly obsessive (but in no way stalkerish) fan-blog That Mitchell and Webb Log is your one-stop shop for press appearances and the like.

Finally, here are a few YouTube videos. First up are a couple of trailers for the series (both of which are ideas taken from the radio series):

Next we have a trailer for BBC2 comedy in general:

Finally, we have a video message encouraging you to go and buy tickets for their tour:

(Credit where it’s due: The trailers were captured and encoded by TTT before being uploaded to YouTube by myself, while the tour ad was uploaded by frequent Mitchell & Webb collaborator James “infinitemonkeys” Bachman, seen here dancing more like your dad than your dad himself)

There’s always something, isn’t there? Last time it was Big Brother stopping me from posting, this time it’s been organising the music for my other half’s birthday party. Don’t underestimate how hard it is to put together four and a half hours’ worth of music for a party, especially when someone else is dictating which songs they want. Once you’ve squeezed their initial nine-hour selection down to about six, you then have the arduous process of ditching a further twenty or so songs in order to get everything to fit into the allotted time. If I was to do it again (which I will be in a month’s time for her brother-in-law) I’d get a list of about twenty songs which absolutely must be played then whittle down the rest myself. Too long; too slow; GOD I HATE THAT FUCKING BAND; and so on.

Still, it all worked out in the end. And, best of all, everything was being played off my MP3 player so I was able to wander away and drink copious amounts of beer and spirits before making a spectacle of myself on the dancefloor. Result!