This Week's Spam

Things are looking UP

The leaves are falling from the trees, the nights are starting sooner, and politicians are making even more noise than usual. But are we downhearted? Well, yes, obviously. But there's always this week's Venue to cheer you UP with: 

UP  - Animation giants Pixar follow on from 'WALL•E' with the triumphant 'Up'. Meet the brains (director Pete Docter) behind the story of the elderly widower who decides to live out his childhood travelling dream by tying balloons to his house. AND you get the chance to win 'Up' tickets and goodies!     

FREE MUSIC - We've got seven free downloads for ya, all from acts performing at this week's Bristol Acoustic Roots Singer Songwriter fest.

PLUS - New wildlife spectacular from BBC Bristol ... Joy Division's Peter Hook ... Adrian Edmondson interviewed ... The West's best Indian restaurants ... Metropolis: Bristol's new super venue ... Job ads ... ... And loads more, including your complete ten-day local entertainment guide. 

* Or subscribe for only £4.99 a month! More details here: http://www.venue.co.uk/subs/index.html

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Beetle avoids boiling its bum

There are a number of insects which can produce nasty chemicals for various reasons, but the bombardier beetle is pretty much the daddy. Inside its body it's got three chambers. There are two front chambers each holding an inert chemical and if the bombardier gets attacked, it squeezes these together into a third chamber, and they react at boiling point. The resultant stuff - a mixture of gas and boiling liquid - explodes out of the back of this beetle at whatever's attacking it. It's a nasty, caustic mix, absolutely foul stuff. One of the most amazing things about that, apart from just what it actually does, is that it's coming out of the beetle at 100ºC, so the beetle's in real danger of cooking itself. But when you film it in extreme slow motion, as we did, you see that the boiling jet of liquid and gas is pulsing about 500 times a second, which gives just enough time between each pulse for the back end of the beetle to cool just below the level at which it would burn.

- BBC producer Rupert Barrington on 'Life', the BBC's latest wildlife series, this issue.

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Ungracious cow

The strangest punter was a girl who used to come in and set up a train set in the cocktail bar. She was definitely the wackiest regular. The club gave a platform to my mad mates and the Haçienda was a place where a lot of these people proved how mad they were. They seemed to really let themselves go. We had a lot of surreal happenings, like when Martin Hannett's girlfriend -  you'd think butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - was chasing Martin around with a knife trying to kill him in about '84. It was just before then that Madonna did her first UK performance at the club. She was an ungracious cow then and she's still an ungracious cow now. Not a very likable woman.

- Joy Divisionist and Hacienda head honcho Peter Hook, interviewed this issue.

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Lonely Russian Chick

"Hello. I am Irina. I like countryside and very like to marry older man..."

Fall for this and "Irina" will keep on asking for money because of what she claims are all the expensive bureaucratic obstacles that keep getting in the way of her travelling over for the dream wedding at Midsomer Norton registry office.

Also, she's not a gorgeous grey-eyed willowy blonde Russian chick at all, but a fat sweaty Nigerian bloke sitting at a computer in a high-rise flat in Amsterdam wearing only a pair of Simpsons boxer-shorts. Bear this image in mind at all times if you want to stay safe on the internet.

- Stay streetwise on the web, only with this week's Venue.

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Jokes

A wife says to her husband, "what would you do if I won the Lottery?"

He says, "I'd take half, then leave you."

"Excellent," she replies, "I won 10 quid, here's a fiver, now sod off!"

(Thanks Jack)

Father O'Malley was the Catholic priest in a small town in Northern Ireland . The Reverend McDonald was the Presbyterian minister at the church across the road. Despite Ulster 's history, the two men of God got on pretty well. So well in fact that they both decided to put up a sign at the edge of the town. It read:

THE END IS NEAR!

TURN YERSELF AROUND NOW!

FOLLOW ANOTHER ROAD

BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!

They were standing by the sign, admiring their handywork when some English tourists on a fishing trip roared past in a 4x4. One of the men in the car leaned out of the window and yelled: "You stupid religious nuts!"

O'Malley turned to McDonald and said, "Ye know, it might have been better if the sign had just said the bridge is down."

(Thanks Maura)

I proposed to my girlfriend on an escalator yesterday.

It was moving.

(Thanks Ellie, you win this week's star prize, a big book by Vic Reeves. Mail us an address if you want it.)

Please send us jokes. Best one each week wins some stuff.

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Websites

Bath Spa Uni's student soap opera. Goes live @ noon on Oct 12. http://www.bathspampa.com/view-example.php

Bristol's world cup bid http://www.bristol2018.net

Frank the Postman and his funny local videos http://www.frankthepostman.com

Stephen Fry and that weird parroty thing. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8281382.stm

Old English village petrol stations http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1215779

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Competitions

Win Arnolfini film passes

ARNOLFINI FILM PASSES

We've got a pair of passes to all eight of the movies being shown in The Arnolfini's season of works by Japanese director Shohei Imamura. We also have ...

'UP' TICKETS & GOODIES

But to be in with a chance of getting either, you have to see this week's Venue. Strict, but fair, we're sure you'll agree.

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The mists of Time

Let's swallow a couple of pages of an exactly 10-year-old Venue. This is from issue 453, 1 Oct 1999.

 "Two years ago there was a realisation among Holland 's pill manufacturers that clubbers were losing interest in Ecstasy as a result of poor quality. As a response, the Dutch invented the Mitsubishi. Conor McNicholas from Mixmag explains: 'People who tried Mitsubishis thought, f**k, that's a serious pill, and everyone started taking them. That revolutionised the scene, and at the beginning of '98 it created a resurgence in the appreciation of house music."...

 Millionaire music publisher Margarita Hamilton, owner of Walton Castle in Clevedon, was irritating the hell out of the neighbours by holding parties and charity events at the 16th-century hunting lodge, pulling in sleb guests like Paul Weller and Jamiroquai's Jay Kay (this was back when he was cool). Her application for a Public Entertainment Licence for a one-off event in aid of AIDS orphans was blocked, and all hell broke loose in the local and national meejah: "My licence hearing took so much longer than it should have because of 35 elderly people who turned up, worried I'd start holding raves at the Castle," she told Venue. "My lawyer was sitting three feet away from them, yet they complained that they couldn't hear him. At one stage one of the members of the court muttered: 'If they can't hear someone from three feet away, how can they possibly hear anything two miles away?'"...

"I note from an article in the Daily Telegraph that a fireman at Bristol Airport is set to retire after 29 years' service having never actually been called on to put out a fire (which is just as well). This set me to wondering how many of your journalists will be hoping to retire without ever having done any journalism. There, I've said it. This means I don't get the record token, doesn't it?" (Reader's letter.)

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Subscribe

Don't miss out - place a regular order with your newsagent now or we'll tell your boss that you've agreed to have your retirement age raised to 98 . Alternatively, call us on 0117 942 8491 or email s.butler@bepp.co.uk to subscribe to Venue for just £4.99 a month!  

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Please remember...

To buy Venue. The management will have to increase the rent we pay for our desks if you don't.

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Cheers then.
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