Tag: modern

7 Reasons Modern Cluedo Is Murder

I’m not really paying too much attention as Rob sets up the game. I’m too busy hitting my phone against my knee in an attempt to try and make the Eurosport app work.

“Who do you want to be?” he asks.

“Colonel Mustard,” I reply. I’m always Colonel Mustard.

“You’ll have to be Jack Mustard.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s no Colonel Mustard anymore. It’s Jack Mustard.”

I get up and move to the table. I look at the scene in front of me. Oh crikey! Oh blimey! Oh deary, deary me! Cluedo has changed! I don’t like it. I haven’t even started playing yet, but I instinctively know I don’t like it.

1. The Characters. They’ve all changed. They’ve all been… modernised! Colonel Mustard is now Jack Mustard. A former football player come pundit. Think Jamie Redknapp. I don’t want to play Cluedo as Jamie Redknapp. But what are the other options? Kasandra Scarlett, an egotistical ‘actress’. Think Kerry Katona. I don’t want to play as her either. Then we have Diane White, a former child-star still waiting for her moment of fame. Then there’s Jacob Green, the former white reverend turned black cool dude. Eleanor Peacock isn’t much better. She’s the wealthy daughter of a former politician. Presumably one who is in prison following the expenses scandal. Finally we have Victor Plum, a video game designer and self-made millionaire. And they’re all tits.

2. The Weapons. Rope? Check. Candlestick? Check. Dagger? Sort of. It’s now a knife. Revolver? Check. Lead Pipe? No check. It’s now a baseball bat. A baseball bat?! If you’re going to update it at least make it a cricket bat! Spanner? No check. It’s now a dumbbell. And we have new weapons too. There’s some poison, an axe and a trophy. Which no doubt belongs to Jack ‘Wholegrain’ Mustard. Probably his ‘Knob Of The Year’ award.

3. The Rooms. Can I read a book in the conservatory? No I can’t. That’s because Kasandra has had the builders in and replaced it with a spa. Also out is the ball room, the cellar, the billiard room, the library, the study and the lounge. Replacing them in the Chigwell manor is a patio, a pool, a theatre, a living room, an observatory and a guest house.

4. The Cards. Apart from having a make-over, there are new cards. Intrigue cards. The name, sadly, defies their being. The Intrigue cards are formed of two kinds. Keepers and Clocks. Draw a Keeper card and you get to look at another player’s cards. Draw a Clock card and you might be killed off by the murder. If this happens you are out of the game. What’s wrong with that you may ask? Well quite a lot. I got killed off on my second go. Which meant Rob had no option but to make an accusation. He was wrong. Game over in four minutes.

5. The Name. It’s not even called Cluedo anymore. It’s called Cluedo: Discover The Secrets. Has there ever been a more unnecessary sub-name in the history of board gaming? Actually, in gaming full-stop? No, scrap that. Has there ever been a more unnecessary sub-name? Ever.

6. The Design. I won’t lie to you, it’s gone to tackville. The simplicity, charm and vintage style of the original has been thrown into the bin of class to be replaced by smug looks and bright colours. It’s abhorrent. It’s vulgar. It’s vomit-inducing. It’s enough to make Professor’s Plums shrivel.

7. The Result. I lost. I had never lost a game of ‘traditional’ Cluedo in my life. I was family champion year after year after year. I was so good that whenever I asked school mates if they wanted a game at break-time they would immediately say no and call me a ‘freak’. Yes, I was so good that they had to resort to petty name calling and writing false accusations about me on the toilet wall. This modern version killed me. Again and again and again. I will not be playing it again. Again.

September 5, 2011
7 Reasons Sir Elton Might Like To Take A Look At His Own Songs

Hello, I’m back. I guess, in the grand scheme of things, that is not enough to make your Tuesday. As a result I shall also furnish your day with a 7 Reasons post. You may have heard that Sir Elton John has been having a pop at the songwriters of today. According to the BBC, he thinks they’re awful. ‘Fair enough’, I thought, ‘but let’s just have a listen to some of Elton’s stuff to find out how much better he was’. The results are staggering. Here are 7 Reasons Elton should probably listen to his Greatest Hits again.*

1. Song – Your Song. Lyric – “I don’t have much money but boy if I did, I’d buy a big house where we both could live.” It’s hardly the stuff of Chaucer, Hardy or Dickens is it?

2. Song – Crocodile Rock. Lyric – “But the biggest kick I ever got, was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock, while the other kids were rocking round the clock, we were hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock.” I know this song is self-referential, but even so, it’s still a load of nonsense. I wouldn’t have thought the hallmark of a great songwriter was to make up some stupid dance name. I suspect Elton would laugh in Marc’s face if Mr Fearns approached him with the 7 Reasons Shuffle. Especially if he was wearing my mask.

3. Song – Daniel. Lyric – “Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane, I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain.” How convenient Daniel was going to Spain. Mind you, I suppose if he had been going to Derry he could have caught the ferry. Just a shame they don’t do a tram to Iran really.

4. Song – Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting. Lyric – “It’s getting late have you seen my mates, Ma tell me when the boys get here, it’s seven o’clock and I want to rock, want to get a belly full of beer.” Hardly the sort of message one wants to be sending out. Elton John and Grand Theft Auto have a lot to answer for.

5. Song – Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me. Lyric – All of them. This song is a cliche. From start to finish. In that respect, the songwriting is awful. It also doesn’t address the solution to the sun going down, which, in most parts of the world, is to switch on the light. Or light a candle. Actually, I’m glad Elton never lit a candle, he’d have probably written a song about it.

6. Song – Honky Cat. Lyric – “When I look back, boy I must have been green, bopping in the country, fishing in a stream.” I’m not a cynic, but I find it very hard to believe that anyone who is green and bops in the country also goes down to fish in the stream. I think it has more to do with the fact that it rhymes. Personally, for all the sense this song makes, I would have preferred it to have been, ‘When I look back, yowzer I must have been blond, chugging in the hamlet, pissing in a pond’. But I guess the tempo is not quite the same with that is it?

7. Song – Rocket Man. Lyric – “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.” No, neither is Preston. Talk about stating the bloody obvious. And whose idea was it to write a song about a fictional astronaut going on a fictional journey to Mars anyway?

*Edit: In response to all of you who told me Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics and not Elton, yes, I do know this. Elton still saw the lyrics fit enough to sing though. As a result, this post passes muster.

October 19, 2010
7 Reasons to get an Archipod

This, in case you haven’t seen one before, is an archipod. It’s a home office that you can put in your garden. This is why you need one.

1. External Aesthetics. Look at it. Just look at it! It’s amazing. It’s a pod that looks like a giant beehive. It’s got a door that opens upwards like a DeLorean or a gull-wing Mercedes or a spaceship or something. It has a porthole. A porthole! It looks like the coolest thing in the world; the only things that could possibly improve it would be a searchlight and a diamond-tipped funnel made of titanium.

2. Internal Aesthetics. Inside, it looks like a cross between a Japanese capsule hotel, a Kubrickian spacecraft and an igloo. It’s got a porthole there too! And a semi-circular command station…er…desk. Did I mention how cool it looks?

3. Name. It’s called an archipod, which is a portmanteau word consisting of archi from architect and pod, which comes from pod. But look at what else it contains. It says ipod in the middle of it. This means that all Apple-obsessives, or most-of-my-friends, as I call them, will believe that it’s the most desirable thing in the world; more desirable than a suit of armour; more desirable than a yacht; more desirable than a Fender Telecaster; more desirable than Jennifer Aniston. It even looks like something Apple would make. But I want one too. So it must be better than anything by Apple. And it is, because it’s an archipod!

4. Price. I have absolutely no idea how much an archipod costs. But if they were asking for all of the money in the world I’m fairly certain that someone would have told me, and they haven’t, so it’s clearly a bargain that’s worth every penny.

5. Roundness. Now, I have to be honest: It’s not totally spherical, and that’s something of a disappointment. But if it was a pure sphere, it might roll away, and then you’d have to ask the neighbours if they’d seen your archipod and they’d say, “You have an archipod? Wow, that’s so cool!”. And you’d have to explain that no, you’d lost your archipod, and then you’d be the cretin who lost the archipod (coolest thing in the world) and you would become a social pariah; an object of ridicule; a veritable leper; the neighbourhood reject, cast out of decent society into a hellish solitude of eternal archipod-loss-induced squalor, damnation, misery and…sorry, I digress. Anyway, that the floor is flat is probably a good thing as the archipod will always be where you left it. The rest of it is round, which means that, unlike conventional offices, you can’t have a notice-board covered with dreary “motivational” posters on the wall and no one can put a half-dead pot plant in the corner, because there aren’t any. Corners that is. I have loads of half-dead pot plants if anyone needs one,

6. Foil. The archipod is insulated with foil and to many crazy people, this foil-lining would be seen as a desirable feature that would stop the gamma-rays affecting their brains. It may currently appear that I am one of them but I can assure you that the only things affecting my brain at the moment are the archipod and an espresso – a double archipod with sugar and a biscotti.

7. Inspiration. Here at 7 Reasons we know that there are always seven reasons for everything, but I can’t think of a seventh reason to get an archipod. This is because I’m writing this in a rectangular room full of books and a cat. If I were writing in cooler and more inspirational environs such as…let me see…an archipod, for example, I’d be able to think of one easily. Oh, there you go, that’s the seventh reason to get one. That’s the wondrous power of the archipod: Even thinking of one provides inspiration. Right, I’m off to put my family on ebay now* and to have a lie down.**

*Details on how you can contribute to the Buy The 7 Reasons Team An Archipod Fund will be available soon.

**There’s no particular reason to mark that, I just don’t feel that I’ve said archipod enough yet. Archipod. Archipod! IT’S THE ARCHIPOD! There, that’s better.

May 28, 2010