As lame as I find football in real life, be it the viewing, playing and discussion, all those things in PES have driven me to post about the preparations made for my side of Olympique Marseilles. The side is still in it’s virtual infancy and while I wait for Ian and Josh to arrive, rather [...]

go and be more productive? Do mind if I do!?! Several projects in the mix. One of which has been there a while and he’s deservedly being given an airing. Can’t wait to put up the teaser when Ian’s slapped some grammar and consistency in the tenses. In the meantime, please pay attention to the [...]

An awesome little five track EP by Ben Folds. Wandering at the very end is a wonderful song, (mercifully) underused in movie soundtracks. (Ha, Ha! Foreshadowing.)

Overdue. Over 2 hours. Very much over the top.

Chris and Ian celebrate 2 years of laughter, excitement, and Simpsons references.

Childhood acting success, relationship counseling, Beatles Vs. Stones: Christophe and Ian laugh in the face of the sophomore slump with this, their second post-comeback episode.

For this, their first episode since August, the pair ease themselves back in by discussing exploitation movies, The Walking Dead, and, of course, what took them so darn long.

The exciting, absurd, and often obscene conclusion to our time-travels.

There’s no time machine like a magical packet of cigarettes.

The Back-Talk special over 40 episodes in the making… Christophe and Ian are joined by mutual friends/band-mates David “David Neild” Neild and Daniel “I hate Scousers” O’Connor!

In a turn of events best described as unsurprising, more stories about girls and nights out unfold.

Chris loves cougars and cougars love Chris. Literally.

Ian frames life through the prism of Swingers, casting himself as John Favreau and Christophe as Vince Vaughan.

Back-Talk’s position within the gay community is contextualized.

Probably, the most laughter-filled podcast ever.

Normal service is resumed. Christophe and Ian dive into the annals of French television and grasp every opportunity it presents them to tenderize Canadian accents.

What is the master-slave relationship in Back-Talk? The answer may surprise you.

The episode affectionately referred to as Crisis On Infinite Back-Talks!

Gotta love it: http://chud.com/articles/articles/23080/1/YES-WE-CAN-CHRIS-EVANS-IS-CAPTAIN-AMERICA/Page1.html

I started reviewing DVD’s for CHUD.com today – http://chud.com/articles/articles/23056/1/DVD-RACK-GOOD-DICK/Page1.html

Potential list of Back-Talk fantasy sponsors – Kellog’s, Capcom, Craig Bierko, Sony, Magners Irish Cider, any major tobacco manufacturer.

Note to Christophe: Twitter’s not a competition. And there’s no need for profanity.

GRANDILOQUENT TRIVIA: THE LAST THREE TWEETS WERE FROM IAN!

If I didn’t have such good self-control, there’d probably be a bizarre spate of injuries caused by computers being ejected through windows.

Just in case you’d like to read more on that – http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/8570837.stm

Sorry for keeping you. Been busy reveling in the glory of Manchester United’s 2-1 triumph over the forces of Darkne-, sorry, “Liverpool.”

Tweet monopoly smashed biatch! New special Back-Talk episode coming soon.

This wasn’t the send off Croke Park deserved: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/8578135.stm

We mustn’t forget how good packages arriving in the mail can be at cheering us up.

I could’ve kept playing and playing at football tonight. Scored 4 and justified those tongue-in-cheek “White Drogba” remarks from before…

@bryandwalt New T.E.S.D. is a reason to be seriously cheerful.

Hey, I felt like it was high time I properly introduced myself…

Christophe’s reign of sporadic Tweet terror is over. I, Ian, am the Sheriff here now. Have been for almost a week, as a matter of fact…

If you’ve been keeping an eye on our account since ought nine and wondered “what’s with the sudden rush of activity?” – there’s a reason…

The defunct blog poll may be gone, but the will remains. You WILL have my All-Time Top 25 Sexiest List by year’s end, at the latest. Honest.

http://lsfhf.blogspot.com/ If, for whatever reason, that link was broken for you too…

Almost a thousand words on nationality (http://lsfhf.blogspot.com/2010/03/29-here-and-back-again.html.) Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, indeed!

If you know a better way to spend an afternoon than critiquing Patrick Stewart’s career and fatsuiting Chris Morris into your sitcom…

Back-to-Back-Talked today.

Brown sauce is to ham and cheese toasties what Darren Fletcher is to Man United: the most valuable unsung hero.

@theelliesays Quarantine The Past. Definitely.

@theelliesays Aww, shucks! There are no replacements for Through Being Cool, y’know?

Ellie is my friend and, no matter what she says, she’s far from THROUGH BEING COOL. Follow! Follow, I say! http://stywtur.tumblr.com/

Ireland’s #13 celebrating his 100th cap with a victory over Wales – on the 13th – is more fitting than a Mötley Crüe comdom.

I could get behind Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull almost as easily as I could get behind Winona Ryder in general.

It’s not complicated. He or she is either with someone else or they aren’t. Same goes for you. Semantic redundancy fixed. Next.

Education. Health Care. Gay marriage. Irish Nationalism. It’s all change for Back-Talk in this U.S. special.

Roses are red, violets are blue. She making with it, so why don’t you too?

As in “bad”, not the slang for the body-part. Ian attempts to dissuade everyone on the planet from watching The Persuasionists.

Ian is fed up with Snow Patrol. If he found himself at Rekall, which religion would he choose?

Some recent re-watches of Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno stimulate further Smithian discussion.

Happy holidays folks, thanks for listening and have a happy new year! C & I

Hi everyone, not usual that I post on here (or at all) I know but I just wanted to assure everyone that the holiday special will be available online very soon for your perusal. It also has come to my attention that people are still using the old twitter feed. I would ask that you [...]

Starring a morally suspect lady, Alderaanian architecture, and ambiguous buttock contact. We also confuse Argyle with someone called Ardell, speculate over potential celebrity pugilism, and say “hate-tank” a lot.

Ian lambastes the quality of his work Christmas dinner. Chris follows suit with the Kaiser Chiefs.

The conclusion to last week’s “cliff-hanger” is lithe, informal, and characteristically high on Simpsons references.

The road back to Christophe and Ian’s earliest moments is long, winding, and littered with profanities.

Christophe goes to France, Germany, and Switzerland for the weekend. He tells Ian all about it.

More Star Wars, girls, and observational chatings. Scandal.

I’m in zurich

The definitive Star Wars first-person shooter is conceived, followed by the longest Jedi-oriented “what if?” session in Back-Talk (if not world) history.

Christophe drafts in cheap Irish and Korean labour to further his Pro Evolution Soccer Master League endeavours.

And Twitter now works…apparently.

23 coming soon.

A new game – tentatively titled “Triple Bounce” – comes yelping into existence, in this most sports-friendly of episodes.

Back-Talk finally gets its first guest in the form of the funny, erudite Joshua Fein! In the show’s first half, notions of love, sex, and singledom dominate. Your hosts, then, discuss some notable political differences on their respective sides of the Atlantic.

No sandwiches were made by Chris during the recording of this episode, to Ian’s knowledge.

A variety of fears are discussed and dissected for this, the ultimate in podcast terror!

Ian informs Christophe and, by extension, the audience (if, indeed, there is one) about a recent series of sexually suggestive advertisements around Belfast. Andy Parsons gets his feathers thoroughly ruffled by a Christophe/Ian tag-team. Virgin Media, the stupefying of Joey Tribbiani, and 3-D film-making also meet the business end of Chris’s ire. If you thought [...]

Hindsight, as boring conversationalists often say, is a wonderful thing. Until now, they were right. (500) Days of Summer is an enjoyable distraction while it’s on and just another movie when it’s over. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the girl – or boy, we at Low Standards are a progressive people [...]

DISCLAIMER: There is an episode here… a long one; it just takes a while for the lengthy silence preceding it to vacate itself. The gentle white noise, however, makes itself comfortable. As a result, this installment sounds like it was recorded while boarding an aircraft. This time, the rant baton passes to Ian for an [...]

In which our heroes take meta a step further. After months of references and recommendations from Ian, Chris gives SModcast a try and promptly calls out Kevin Smith (with whom he shares a fondness for wet-wipes) and Simon Pegg (whose stand-up and recent film appearances displease him.) An unprecedented sexual revelation inspires much debate, taking [...]

Ian has a change of heart regarding Land of the Dead. Chris doesn’t.  A brace of bot comments on Low Standards’ site prompts a mixture of laughter and lamentation. Chris takes on LucasArts. Ian attempts to permanently dissuade Chris from witnessing Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Rampant capitalism menaces the eclectic games fan and the [...]

Ian’s post-mortem of a recent night out leads Chris to proclaim his co-host “gay Spanish Fly.” Ian questions that assessment. Distractions of the week: Chris’s washing machine (which sounds curiously like a cybernetic water tap/blender) and Chris’s phone.

The Back-Talk Mailbag makes a welcome return, allowing Ian to side-step a culinary mishap and compliment Control.

This week, Chris and Ian take Steve Jones, the work of Martin Lawrence, and poor TV censorship to task.  What do they praise? Once, Anne Hathaway, Resident Evil 5, and, yes, Megan Fox. Distractions include: Chris’s dog, Billy, Chris’s microwave (name unknown), and miscellaneous white noise (Skynet?)

In a move sure to surprise no-one, matters of a romantic nature captivate Chris and Ian. DISCLAIMER: this is not Episode Ten. Any reference suggesting otherwise should be ignored.

The arrival of Low Standards’ new site is contextualized and celebrated in customarily verbose fashion. Your hosts’ recent Manchester meet-cute is recounted, lending further weight to the question marks already hanging over the pair’s relationship. The notion of truth pops up here and there, and Chris and Ian sock it to Geraldo Rivera and Bill [...]

Two years ago, I wrote a summer movie retrospective (“Autopsy”) for the first issue of Low Standards for High Fives’ Grandiloquent Vagaries & Other Miscellany. The print magazine, not the blog. The blog came after the magazine (bone up on your Grandiloquent history here.) The centerpiece of that feature was a review of Michael Bay’s [...]

Since May, I’ve been committing the writerly equivalent of leaving my leg in Piranha-infested waters. Instead of writing reviews of movies shortly after viewing them, I’ve procrastinated. I’ve procrastinated so much, in fact, that my memories of these films are now fun-size. It’s up to you to let me know if anything good comes of [...]

That’s a fact. We do it. In the name of freedom, in this country in the name of national security. If we don’t do it directly, we permit it by allowing planes carrying out extraordinary rendition to land and refuel in our country. Failing that, we send people (sorry ‘enemy combatants’) to other countries that [...]

We’re talking about the press. A societal unit, responsible for providing people with information and developments around the globe, in a country or a local area. Information and development essential for our understanding of the currents and eddies of human existence at any given moment. Some of it good, some of it terrible and a [...]

If there’s any doubt that this blog moonlights as an advertising outlet for CHUD.com then this post should do to that uncertainty what reality did to TV. Noel Gallagher once sang “true perfection has to be imperfect.” Whether you agree or not, there’s no denying he’s in the majority. One need only look at movie [...]

An entire discussion of retail elapses without a single mention of Clerks. Enter the title homage. Chris and Ian do, however, have time to discuss WWE style security guards, a “toy-fight” gone knifey involving an old acquaintance, and Chewbacca’s Bandolier Strap action figure carry case. Chris also evidences (Judd) Nelsonian harshness with a recollection of [...]

Howdy everyone and welcome to Low Standards, this is the first in a series of admin updates relating to the functioning of the website and our other subsidiaries such as facebook groups and twitter accounts. I’ve finally settled on a new template as you’ll no doubt have noticed and I’m still in the process of [...]

Low Standards for High Fives now lives @ lsfhf.co.uk

Today, the U.V.F. (Ulster Volunteer Force) and Red Hand Commandos (different name for the same thing) are said to have totally decommissioned their arms. The U.D.A. (see Red Hand Commandos) also claim to have begun following suit. You can read all about it here. I never thought I’d see the day, but the same went [...]

Hello, and welcome to the official home of Low Standards for High Fives! If you’re familiar with us, thanks for checking out our new digs; if you’re not (see About) and brace yourself for more erratic leaps, stops, and sudden starts than that time Peter Parker ran the trampoline marathon on Class-A narcotics. Remember that? [...]

This week, beauty (Chris) and the beast (Ian) set out to discuss the Buffy re-boot news that was topical at the time of recording, before enjoying an extended Sarah Michelle Gellar tangent, possibly incurring the ire of Freddie Prinze Jr. in the process. Scott Pilgrim draws long-winded praise for its artistic prowess; Leprechaun 4: In [...]

How do Chris and Ian celebrate the arrival of J.J. Abrams’ refitted Enterprise? Why, with a wholly predictable Star Trek discussion, of course!

After discussing Aliens, Predatorm and what happens when they entwine, Chris and Ian reflect on music and the changing role it plays in their lives.

Against the odds, your gracious hosts make good on their endeavour for shorter Back-Talking.

To atone for Episode Threes delay, here comes a blast of irreverence so sharp its best served now.

Christophe and Ian follow up last month’s sensitive, romantically inclined episode with the conversational equivalent of Kurt Russell.

Why talk about love baby, when you can listen to Christophe and Ian talk about it?

The episode formerly known as This Charming Man and the Barely Audible Boy. DISCLAIMER: Techcnical difficulties abound in this, the non-historic first podcast from Christophe (charming, erudtie) and Ian (the other one.) Starting as they mean to go on, the disgruntled duo tackle topics as diverse as Kevin Smith, religion in most of its many [...]