Spurious Awards

It’s Friday again… so who will win our weekly daftly-monickered gongs this time?

PROTEST PLACARDS OF THE WEEK
Heard of the Westboro Baptist Church? They’re the American anti-gay protesters who picket the funerals of US servicemen waving “God Hates Fags” placards on the grounds that.. well, quite frankly we struggle to articulate why, because we’re sane. This week, these loathsome nutjobs turned up at Comic-Con (on the grounds that superheroes are “false idols”, or something), where they were met by a counter-protest of extraordinary style and humour by the good people of the Comics Alliance – see more pics here and here. Ladies and gentlemen, we doff our hats to you.

SITH LORD CRIMINALITY OF THE WEEK
Goes to this crook in New York, who thought he’d be nice and inconspicuous if he robbed a bank while dressed as Darth Vader, cloak and all. We find your lack of morals disturbing.

SPOOKY CYBER-SIMULACRA OF THE WEEK
Have Cybus Industries started a stealth takeover of Britain’s electricity supply? You’d be forgiven for thinking so after seeing this photo (sent in by Tom Fenn) which shows some kind of electrical substation-thing across the road from his daughter’s school in Birmingham. Uncanny, isn’t it? We’re surprised no-one’s spraypainted a Cyber-face on it yet (psst: get to it, Brummie graffiti artists!)

UNWANTED FREEBIE OF THE WEEK
You lot probably think that every time a DVD comes out we get sent a nice shiny boxed copy, right? Wrong. Instead we get a bland, box-less “check disc” and, if the PR people have too much time on their hands are feeling creative, a tenuously-related bit of tat. These can be somewhat underwhelming – none more so than this revolting plastic heart (see below), which came with our disc of organ transplant-actioner Repo Men. Ew. Thanks guys, but next time, just stick the cash you were going to spend down the joke shop in the envelope instead, okay?

INTRIGUING MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEEK
Goes to American indie-rockers Vampire Weekend, whose lead singer Ezra announced the other day that, “I’ve just started watching the new TV show True Blood, so maybe we’ll go down to Louisiana and record it all there.” Expect less Peter Gabriel-style afropop on the third album then, and more sounds of frenetic humping…

And finally…

WORRYINGLY ILLITERATE PRESS RELEASE OF THE WEEK
We’re card-carrying grammar fascists here at SFX, so we were rather alarmed when a press release arrived that commenced with the sentence, “Looks what coming to DVD. Something the set your eyes bulging”. Had our PR friend’s email been hacked by a Lithuanian Viagra spammer? All became clear as we read on: “THE BIG TITS ZOMBIE in 3D!!!! Deadly DD Cups!!!!” Clearly, our PR chum had temporarily lost the ability to write gud English like wot we rite after a sudden downwards rush of blood… You can experience one yourself when the DVD is released on 11 October. Hang on – have they just suckered us into giving it a plug? Maybe that was the plan all along. Cunning.