Ramblings. Not the kind where you go up hills.
Ignorance is Entertainment
It’s not so much that entertainment is dumbing down but fumbling its way through and passing off its disorganisation as an amiable trait, when did low-rent become high quality?
A growing trend has emerged that has irked me. Well, not so much as irked me, mainly because I don’t know what it means to be irked. It sounds like someone has grabbed you round the scruff of the neck as they run past...giggling. Anyway, more and more entertainment shows aren’t only exposing that they are poorly rehearsed or organised, they are doing so gleefully. Since when was that common practice?
Without sounding like all shows should run with metronome precision like thirty-minute instalments of the Nuremburg Rally but why are shows within the upper echelons of our lovely ‘telebox’ (another gripe, another time) schedule going out of their way to highlight their lack of guests, rubbish props or seemingly non-existent scripting as if we are supposed to turn out our pockets and fart along merrily?
Now I can easily accept that during this economic hardship the showbiz pound has to role a little bit further than previously. But, people were resoundingly talking up that they hadn’t prepared before somebody punched a magic number into a hall-in-the-wall which disintegrated all the banks and then that fella with the eyebrows held ctrl/alt/delete on his PC which dropped VAT by 2000% and magically sunk Iceland (as is my reading of it).
Echoing Chris Rock’s famous skit about how a certain variety of African-American prides itself on its lack of knowledge, radio shows are one of the biggest culprits for lack of preparation. Avoiding the sycophant-fest of Chris Moyles - which sounds like a perennial warm-up for a great show never coming - award-winning 6 Music afficianados Adam & Joe have jingles echoing the sentiment that their admittedly brilliant show is thrown together and mostly winged.
Case in point, an episode recently ended with bearded-child bearer Adam reading out what was on TV that night complete with summations of what he might watch, that’s hardly quality broadcasting as you could get it stood in a bus queue.
Likewise, Guardian Football Podcast - which today quoted along the lines of better researched material is out there - and Never Mind the Buzzcocks, in which mop-haired funnyman Simon Amstell delights in mocking the ineptitude of the show he rules over. Sort of like Gordon Brown having a chuckle about England turning into 1920s New York...that’s two political comments in one blog. Bloody hell I’m the next Ian Hislop.
That’s not to say I don’t like it, hell I bloody love my three examples, and by all accounts so does everyone else. Sure we can marvel at the finger-crippling expertise that went to constructing the Christmas caper encountered by Wallace and Gromit - which was actually a thoroughly enjoyable fare - but when it comes down to things being...well, a bit rubbish, there seems to be plenty of room in hearts for that.
A fumble, a gaffe, a shoddy feature neither thought-through nor executed with any sense of dynamism, it happens to us all. That’s why this brand of quasi-rubbish entertainment excels. Culture should shine a mirror up to society warts and all, and here we are. A bit rubbish but essentially doing alright. After all, look at Alan Partridge, a paragon of ineptitude but a hero to us all. Man, boy, woman, child, dog, anything.
Ain’t Misbehavin’
If you are ever at a loss about how old you are: just misbehave. I don’t mean ‘burn down a nunnery’ misbehave but just break decorum, do something roguish. In this super-nanny, politico state we live in somebody is sure to bring you down with a nasty bump and remind you that you are in fact a five foot nine child of man still seeped in immaturity.
However, there’s something about being made to feel stupid that is, in a weird way, quite reassuring. Now here me out. You feel like you have an impact; if someone is willing to go out there way to tell you that you are wrong take a bow. You sir are a full person.
Three incidents where I was reassured of my place as an active member of society instantly come to mind - two of them happening this week. The one outside the last seven days occurred while on a far-from-boisterous excursion to
However, in a busy Irish club this is somewhat frowned upon. Within seconds a burly man sporting a nifty looking piece of wiring evolving from his ear socket wrenched me by the arm and lifted me clean off the floor until me head damn near skimmed Jupiter and the passing stars. A gruff announcement of ‘you don’t do that here fella’ suddenly brought about the regular feeling: the reddening cheeks, the itchy neck, the averting eyes.
The move played out as if I had started the process intending to prove that I was indeed: a fool. Well done I thought I was a dick going to make the move and now you have confirmed it, a dieu. The second incident involved leaning over the plane of discussion in the House of Lords - oh la la Mr. fancy I hear you guffaw into your Pot Noodle. That wasn’t that bad, just had another stout bloke remind me of the Rules of the House.
That one I could shake off and even laugh off - despite the condescending glares of the Liberal Democrats but then I thought ‘I am here as a reporter, I may have made a tit of myself but I still have a job to do’ and banished it from my mind.
However, the latest incident is proving somewhat harder to shake. On the train home on Friday night I was chortling along to Russell Howard on my iPod, gazing out the window with mutterings of laughter and stifled glee when the woman opposite - a teen obliviously blighted by some skin complaint - removed her notepad and started scribing something.
Now, I thought nothing of it and just kept giggling at Howard regular Matt Forde insisting that the presenters had cheated him when a tiny slither of paper was thrust into my palm. ‘I am a very happy relationship, I don’t need to be seduced via note on public transport’ I thought but alas - castigation.
The tiny bit of paper read: 'We are all different that’s what makes the world a special place. If you feel the need to laugh at other’s misfortune why don’t you move seats'.
I was furious. No question mark! That’s surely a question, ‘why don’t you?’ indeed. No not wanting to compound the embarrassing circumstance of being seen to be laughing at another’s disfigurement - when I was in fact laughing at a northerner barking about jelly - by pointing out her grammatical error I proceeded to bicker with the woman until the next stop. Her unable to accept that I wasn’t laughing at her and me unable to explain exactly what I had found funny about a fat man’s obsession with jelly. So I sat in deflated silence until my stop, where I got off, feeling about an inch high.
But then I thought, poor woman. If she thinks that someone would be rude enough to laugh in her face about her problem then she is far worse off than I. So in fairness, doing something silly and being told off isn’t the worst thing in the world.
Rags to Ritchies
As Mrs. Ritchie returns to the fold with another groin-grabbingly gruesome attempt to manipulate current trends of music to stave off retirement for another year, little is being said about her erstwhile husband’s floundering film career.
Guy Ritchie shot to fame with his rough’n’tumble attempts to capture the caricature elements of London’s seedy underbelly but was quickly shunned when he dealt with existentialism and guns (Revolver) and his wife and...well his wife (Swept Away).
I am going to be honest and express a like of his early work but Revolver was so fucking convoluted that I rented it to watch it a second time as soon as it came out and still thought it was wank. Thank God, come October Ritchie will return to the formula that made him famous with London mob thriller RocknRolla and he seems to be ticking all the right boxes.
‘Street-smart’ actually features in the wikipedia description of lead One-Two (300’s scenery chewer Gerard Butler) and will be more of a return to Nick Moran (who, I hear you cry) and The Stath (Snatch). However, here is a negative for all you Ritchie long stays - no Statham. The seething, balding cocke-r-ney has got a clash of schedule and was unable to take up a role in his long-time collaborators next piece.
Never fear though, because Ritchie has tapped into the limitless potential being displayed in HBO’s award-winning, critics-baiting crime thriller The Wire and pulled out Idris Elba to play One-Two’s accomplice Mumbles.
If you are saying ‘who?’ log-out right bloody now, walk to HMV pick up Series 1-4 of The Wire, lock yourself in a cabinet with a DVD player and don’t come out until you are done. In the biting-crime series Elba plays gang leader Stringer Bell - an uncompromising, towering enforcer who could do a solid job in Ritchie’s character-laden setting.
Thandie Newton - who was good in Crash and Mission Imposs...well she was good in Crash - will play the obligatory love interest. Add to that Tom Wilkinson as declining mobster Lenny Cole, Matt King (Peep Show’s Super Hans) in a peripheral role and an as-yet-unnamed part for Jeremy Piven (Entourage’s Avi) and you’ve got one top cast.
The plot is essentially about oligarchic imposition on the British property-market - not your traditional gangster fare but an increasingly real undercurrent of modern crime drama. Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises gave a bleak view of the Russian mob in London and if Ritchie can save from the cartoon scenes, flip-flopping twists about whether or not Jason Statham is actually made up of part OutKast part Sopranos and we could be looking at a return to form. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself but this sounds like it could be good.
Hangman's News...And Other Terrible Puns
Kaplinsky’s move to Five has been greeted as a success, netting a cool million viewers and biting the other big boys before
There is a dressed down feel to the new
Trailer
Kaplinsky, who is just ‘hanging out’ in her casual clothes like you do when you’re a bloody news reader, promising to give things a great big kick and give Five news a more ‘human feel’.
This ‘human feel’ element is somewhat ironic against a script more flaccid than a Blackpool flasher’s stick of rock and so many robotic gestures by the primped and preened newscaster you can’t help but feel like she’s popping and locking rather than telling viewers about ‘big important’ news before giving them a bloody pat on the head and a lollipop.
The importance being placed on getting people (let’s call them ‘civilians’) to give their two cents is a murky debate about who should dictate the news but I think Five are the right people to be pushing it. Let’s face it, Five are the step-child of terrestrial TV, adopted (by those with aerials that could get Saturn TV if it existed) without much fanfare a decade ago and they have been tugging at the laces of the bigger channels for years now.
Amid the ‘documentaries’ about over-eaters, kids with three faces and enough porn ‘exposes’ to make Stringfellow blush, there isn’t much room for proper authoritative, fist-on-desk news and so open it up. More polls, more votes, less war and politics and all that malarkey that just gets in the way of sport anyway.
Have rotating hosts: Kaplinsky, Hangus the Monkey, Kilroy, David Dickinson, anyone who can read a telly prompter, all lounging about in their pants if we are going to make this thing as causal as possible. Have them fielding calls from all ends of the country on any sodding thing the person who paid the £1.50 to call in can be bothered to talk about. I don’t want a more ‘human feel’, I want my news to be a glorified Live & Kicking phone in.
I am sure that this will be a continued success – the existing news not my proposal – and so I am willing to admit that maybe people do have a place in news but if you greet me with ‘I’m Natasha’ when reading the news, all I am going to think is when ‘when’s the real news on?’
Stats, Damn Stats and Useless Statistics
I like sport. I
like statistics. Those two things can not be contested. Well, they can, but you will bloody lose. However, why has Sky decided that I need to know how many carries, and ‘successful carries’ to boot, Lee Mears has completed against Gloucester in the dour, mid-winter deluge of the West Country? Sky Sports News looks more like an intergalactic stock-market than a fluffy news channel and American Football has more numbers in it than a phone number of the entire bloody planet. Sure, somebody is taking time to jot these down, but who - apart from me - is even noticing?
There was a time when a well-implemented fact could get you going. ‘Arsenal haven’t lost in forty-nine’, ‘New England are the first team ever to complete a regulation season without loss’, these...my dear boy...are useful. Well not in the way you could take ‘em to the bank scribble them on a paying-in slip and be reimbursed with some solid sheets of bonny Queen Liz’s mug. But they mean something. A team that doesn’t lose is hard to find, the annual rainfall that the Westcountry derby experiences isn’t. Well I suppose it is...but who the fudge cares?
These things crop up everywhere not just sport, that’s for sure. People casually drop stats in to an argument to bolster it like buttresses to any otherwise contestable story. But where do we end? Everything is becoming unique, an accolade, a momentous occasion to be met with me rolling over and cart-wheeling down the street at the news that the
We are being stifled by stats, a flood of facts. There will soon be no room for the story as a stream of sequential factoids will sink the news like a less murky Exxon Valdez. Statistics are like swear words. Only use them when real words escape you or as a means of shocking those in your presence. Moderation is king, but then 14% of people know that.
Who Reads This Drivel?
Having just read an interesting article the nerdish part (read:all) of my brain wanted to tell someone. And I thought 'oh my blog'...then it dawned on me...who actually reads what I write? With the dearth of information at the fingertips of millions, why would mine, above anyone else's, be read?
Blogs have become the new 'drop in the ocean'. A fellow apsiring journalist, who shall remain nameless...cos I can't remember it...summed it up as 'written by the narcissist, read by the nosey'.
But in honesty, if you gave the world voice they would merely spittle rubbish at you on a range of topics from immigration policy to 'aw doesn't my two month old look cute in a bonnet'. Where is the line drawn? How is quality...if my blog even touches near that...pulled from the massive quantity without inventing some sort of trawler net based on likes and needs? What would make peepers read it?
Media demi-God Jeff Jarvis, on his site Buzz Machine, mentions a think tank he was involved in...if I have that right without bullshitting it up...at the BBC where they looked at blogs and graded them relating to...not quality...but on the posts and comments per blogger and the length of comments.
This means that it isn't about me telling you something you know in cold hard fact like private school latin dictation (I assume basing my ideas on archaic fantasy) but saying 'here you go, have a fiddle with that you wee jessie'. We have become a facilitator not a dictator of conversation. This isn't about me blowing you away, this is about me blowing open your mind.
Well that makes it a fuckload easier doesn't it?
Am I The Only One With a Nemsis?
Having moved locations to the Welsh captial it dawned on me: 'I have no nemesis here'. Now, that in itself is a sad thing to say. And no, I don't mean that I don't have my own Alton Towers ride here because frankly my lad, that would be preposterous. I mean someone who was put here merely to make the bits of skin on my body, that can do so, crawl. The person who I can channel my otherwise wayward hatred towards.
Then I back-tracked and realised a cavalcade of people who I had assigned as an 'enemy' over various stages of my life. Now, without sounding too psychotic, I believe that this is an entirely healthy practice as I have no intention of harming/insulting/wedgie-ing them. There are like executive stress balls, except I don't squeeze them out of shape. You hope they fail, you hope they get put in their place and (secretly) you hope they aren't a nice person and you are justified in your long-distance contempt. They fill an otherwise gaping hole that could see my hopes and fears or temprement unwittingly spent on people I care about it.
In studying American Culture at lovely Swansea Uni (thats Abertawe to you and me), we were met with the idea that America always needs 'an enemy' like Iraq/Bin Laden/Russia else they might look around at America and think 'shit, what the fuck is going on here Burt?'. NB. Yes I did imagine that scenario taking place between Burt and Ernie from Seasame Street can we move on? The same thing was used in 1984 in the war with the other countries.
Foreign policy overrides the concerns of domestic and thats what I am doing; rather than looking at my own problems I can sneer out at that scruffy prick in JCs slurping his Carling and cackling at the big screen. The way he boasts about fifty five million shots and bangs on about Chelsea. Hoping I am right. Hoping he doesn't read to the blind or help his mum by working extra shifts. Just that he is a cock and he annoys me. Maybe I should be nicer? But then maybe, I just need a nemesis in Cardiff and I can start cutting someone I have never met or spoken to down. Who knows, maybe I'm somebody's nemesis?
Reviewing the Reviewer: A Revue
The heart of reviewing is simply a two stage process (much like shampoo and conditioner) you watch it and then review it. Not saying that I watch shampoo and conditioner and then review it, you know what I mean.
Now, here's the rub: I have the attention span of a Goldfish watching a firework display while worrying about loan repayments. Which in maths calibrates at roughly .12 of a second before I go 'Oh...wonder what’s on Sky Sports'. As someone who takes pride in forcing my opinion on others what kind of elitist dick would I be if I didn’t even watch the films that I was harping on about? That kind of treachery would leave me languishing with ITV Phone-Ins and Chris Langham’s Babysitting company in terms of trust. And I can’t exactly start writing reviews that chronicle films up to the 36th minute 'when I got bored'.
So where do I go? Do I impose 'Clockwork Orange' style eyelid retractors to keep me focused on the task at hand or watch the piece intermittently – going back for five minutes at a time like a particularly shabby Chinese buffet? There must be a better way. Maybe if I allot times like I was watching them at a cinema and at
All I know is that it took me eight days to watch 'The Hustler' and each time was followed by the thought: 'God this is good...where’d I put my phone/when’s the RWC start/if we all jumped at the same time would the earth squash down a bit?' Help me...so I can bring the top-level reviews you have come to brush over.
Blog #9 - Traffic Jam Doesn't Taste As Good As It Sounds
You know, somewhere, someone, for some reason, likes traffic jams.
There has to be one.
One lonely individual who revels in the slow grind, the cramping left knee caused by constant clutch application. The sheen of the licence plate ahead that has now become ingrained in your retina like some Orwellian iris scan number. The gawking children gurning at you through the clutter of 'Baby on Board' and Playboy stickers. The knowing nod to your fellow driver in the gloom of the shared experience that makes you think 'compared to this 'The Blitz' must have been fucking brilliant'.
The problem lies in the simple fact that we...are...sheep. The British are famed, lampooned and rivalled for their ability to queue and within the comfort of a car you can multiply this apptitude tend fold. No rocking on your haunches for added strength as the Post Office line thins, you can crank up the radio and recline your seat. Ah bliss!
The weekend just past my trip of 3hrs 59 mins (thanks google maps!) lasted 11 hrs 45 mins. Minus two hours for food thats still a fucking massive oversight. If someone told you that they would pick you up at 3 o'clock and turned up at 11 pm you wouldn't accept it. So why did we all proceed? Why didn't anyone look out their rearview and say ' fuck this' and go home. You know why? Because for every car willing to give up the ghost a myriad of indicators would flash on for the car in front/behind/on top to take their place and edge six and a half feet closer to their destination.
We are a nation trying to get where we are going nobody has the time to take in the flora and fauna when we can stay fixated on the slow dim of brake lights up ahead, the expectant drop of the handbrake, the slow trundle into second gear, the gasp of air escaping as the speedometer ascends to the heady heights of sixteen miles per hour then...stop.
My knees hurt.
Blog #8 - Room 101 - Part 2. Room 102 if you will.
Musicals
The lowest form of communication. Why do you have to burst into song every time you want to tell some idiot how you feel? Talk. Just fuckin' talk. The Sound of Music is a classic? Fuck off. Bunch of knob jocks singing like fairies and fending off the Nazis, not bloody likely. Have you seen The Producers movie? What a dog shite of a film. Everytime the characters turn, look, music kicks in...I feel a small shard of my heart disintergrate and stab me in the spleen. Fucking musicals.
Middle Lane Drivers
Even worse s when they decide not only to hog the middle lane but also when they decide that 65 is so fucking fast that if they were to go any faster perhaps their idiotbox would go back in time, which I wish it would so we could go back to when they were being born and drive in the middle lane blocking the ambulance carrying their hot and heaving mother. Wankers.
Blog #7 - Not Many Ideas Above Your Station
Its happened. I'm old.
Creeping up on me like a theif in the night are the slow spinning seeds of a disgruntled old man. Other people can't drive. Fast food is a waste. And Radio One is for lobotomized chavs.
Gone is the subversive nature of radio and in comes the welcome embrace of mainstream durge. Radio One has become a conveyor belt for praising itself, claiming both to be the teacher and then giving itself full marks. Moyles is still funny - if self-involved - and even sycophant Zane Lowe does his best to break new acts on his show. But that is two in an army of hundreds. What set off this particular outburst?
Glatonbury...oh sorry...Glasto. The 'aren't we cool? Arctic Monkeys just used our toilet' indulgence ground down like a cheese grater raking across my head. Was the music good? Yes. Was it good that they gave away free coverage of an overtly exclusive event? Yes. Did they have to keep ramming it down our fucking throats? No. No they did not. This coming months after hearing the most self-indulgent promo in years where a Jo Whiley advert reeled off bands that had been 'Played First' on her show ranging from Joss Stone to The Killers, which does show an eye for talent, but it must be attested that they make as much as they break acts and, in NME style, can easily convince enough people that a band is good by playing it enough. If you hear something six times you'll remember it. You know who said that? Goebbels.
So why did I just not listen to that? And why don't I just not listen full stop? Well that is my own fault I suppose. I mean who can resist the urge to have the inane bounce of some generic trance song reverberate around your head on every DJs set playlist. A playlist which shows as much variation as the set menu at a motorway services. But I suppose it must be tough at the top, Radio One has to pander to everyone's needs - the rap fans, the rock fans, the two-step garage fans - but I can't help but feel incredibly old as every single song is either done to death or already over-cooked. So what have I done to combat this? I now listen to Radio Two.
Slippers are in the mail and I'm sorting through night gowns on the internet.
Blog #6 - Two Wrongs Don't Make a Write
"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead"
- Gene Fowler
Writers' block is the literary equivalent of a traffic jam. Undoubtedly you will get past it: crawling at a snail's pace, honking your horn and making faces at the kids sitting facing towards you...who wave every six fucking seconds. But it isn’t a quick, bish-bash-bosh and move on. For the time that this period exists it seems that it will be ever lasting. The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off to lessen your carbon footprint. And no boring-as-a-Sunday, mindless babble by quasi-retards like Just Jack can help what with his mockney idiocy.
In years to come your relatives will come and visit you as you sit hunched over your laptop with the fixed expression of a zombie who trod on a pin (and before you say "hey! Zombies can’t feel!, I realise this is what's called a 'metaphor' and I'm not exactly Keats). You are left eeking out primitive groans as you are scared a thought could motivate you at any time and put your life back on track.
For those of you that do write...for pleasure, pain or profit...hopefully this sums up a known process to you and you can relate to this feeling. The worst case scenario can be when the work you are actually penning, or attempting to at least, has no deadline. Gone is the potential to just scribble down your shopping list somewhere in the middle hoping to jack up the work count as the clock in the bottom right ticks over to '02:55' and your bed has suddenly taken on the allure of a winning lottery ticket fluttering in the middle of an empty street. Without a deadline, you are a boat being gradually sucked into the Bermuda Triangle somewhat relying on the fact that no lecturer will kick down your door the next day to throttle you. So you check Facebook again and scroll through the list of DVDs you have before reopening Solitaire.
And if you are wondering where this train of thought sprang from, it was this column itself. With no intention of being 'oh so post-modern it hurts' by writing about not having anything to write about is actually bizarrely therapeutic. Although, it hasn't helped one iota with what still sits mocking me from the bottom bar as if to say 'Hey! I'm still here...we’re not done!'. This is not hugely productive come to think about it as I tune my radio and stare out the window as the cars going the other way in my mental traffic jam speed past gawping at 'My god! Look how far back these cars are lined up!'.
Blog #5 - "I'll Be In My Trailer"
With the advent of film festival season and the hoards already sunning themselves on the south coast of
There is a lost art to creating a truly riveting trailer: something that makes your palms sweaty, the hairs on your neck tingle and your mind momentarily retract from reality and make you believe that whatever you had planned is now subservient to seeing the film that has just been beamed straight into your brain.
The trailer has to make you want it without showing you the whole thing. It's a morsel. An appetizer. It's foreplay.
Countless trailers fail in that you they give either: a) the whole film but in condensed version, as if it has been commissioned for ultra busy business types who do want to see the film but NOW! NOW DAMMIT! I'VE GOT THREE MINUTES SHOW ME A MOVIE! Or b) the twist is given away; a character dies and reappears in the trailer or a wedding scene...any of that bollocks is £5.20 staying in my pocket.
A good trailer should blind you and make you believe for its 180 second run time that this is all you ever wanted from film. Everything you need will be unveiled to you if you go from this trailer to the full length feature. However, as it stands the majority of trailers are actually better than the films themselves - Spiderman 2 looked like it would be the rebirth of cinema through the form of a sticky wristed teenager but alas, twas not to be. And I realize the overtly disgusting connotations of my description of Spiderman, a'thank you.
And for the modern, Goldfish-memory masses a bright flash of light is better than the film. I have no intention of seeing Pirates of the Caribbean 3 or Fantastic Four 2 but I will gladly be gripped for a matter of minutes while you do your fucking damndest to get my money off me.
It is a noble art that stems from old cinema style trailers where a posh upstanding gent would blurt the names of the characters over the seen 'STARRING CLARK GABLE AS MR. MOTIVATOR' and the like to the deep-croak of the chronic smoker that resonates over modern trailers. Either way the gap between relentless advertisements and the actual film you've just taken out a mortgage to see is brilliant. Its like a whole session of X Factor auditions as the you know the entire cinema is passing the same judgement as you in a delightful murmur in the breathy gap between trailers, which is usually...
"How does Adam Sandler keep getting work?"
Trailers to check out:
-
- Romanzo Criminale - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klbq3j6A_UY
- *The Comedian* - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXbFuNQwTbs
Blog #4 - Room 101
You know what blog means? 'Weblog'.
Wrong.
It is an acronym for 'Bitch Lots or Get Out'. Now I know that would technically make it 'Blogo' but that sounds too much like Lego and these freaky Danish, interlocking block bastards wouldn't have that would they?
I while away days/hours/weeks/eternity discussing this with people - what would you put into Room 101? Simple question, although on occassion I have had to explain to people what Room 101 actually is but then I don't mean the Room 101 from George Orwell's shit-scary cyber distopia of 1984 (he looks a fool now 1984 happened and the only bad thing to come out of it was my sister). But the one that Brit-whit Paul Merton hosts where gaggles of celebrities (and Davina McCall) remove their biggest pet peeves to the depths of hell. Why am I explaining this so much? I am petty, exceptionally so but anyway I have decided to list some of my personal bug-bears...wait there's one right there...the word 'bug-bear' dunno why just fucks me off...anywho. Here, for the few and bored, are a few of my personal aches and pains.
Now the art of the piece is to not be too obvious: everyone hates chavs that's a given. That's why they are called 'chavs' and not 'matey-boys' or something cheekier like 'scamps'. They are 'chavs'. The same goes for war, murder, American foreign policy, Davina McCall and The Holocaust. They are all taken as a given. What you need is something to divide opinion, something that some people won't know fucks them off until they think about...something unique.
- Elongating Name to Start a Sentence
There has never been a time in human history when someone effeminently elongated my name to 'Chrrriiissss' (insert own name to personalize) that they didn't immediately want something from me - a DVD, money, a kidney, whatever. It sends my red blood snaking back down my veins coated in fire. The needy pathetic edge to a question - if you want something ask, if not...um...thats cool.
-Songs that fade out
Where the fuck do they go? Is there some magical land at the end of space and time where songs reach their final resting place and the chords cease? The answer to that is no. No there is not. There are just self-indulgent musicians.
- "I'm mad me"
Now you're not. You are a deluded, insercure, attention-seeking twat. I am not afraid of clowns but I tried to search 'twat' in google images and forgot that I had safe search off....that was an unwanted lesson in anatomy.
Blog #3 - The Good Movie Guide
Anyone...anyone...can be a reviewer of films. Watching them, that bit's easy but when it comes to working out if it was good (think Schindler's List) or bad (think Eragon) all it takes it a simple formula.
Right so start with the basics, everything is done out of one hundred: metres, centuries, polls done on Family Fortunes, so that is the best place to start. You are eventually trying to get your film as close to 100 as possible starting from 0. A film rated 50 would be 'average', a film rated '100' is 'tres magnifique' which is French for 'the bollocks'. And anything '0', is the celluloid equivalent of being shot by a gun that fires bullets of boredom. Still with me? Good.
For every helicopter shown deduct five points. The poor-man's fighter jet is an over-used icon of machismo and really tends to hurt and hinder the performance of film’s show-casing it. See Black Hawk Down and the helicopter orgy that is Rambo II. Not an actual helicopter orgy that would be mind-boggling with propellers everywhere...uh.
Now for every monkey add five points. For nature's clown does enhance any cinematic experience that has been tested. Now I know what you’re thinking: "My God! Planet of the Apes must be the greatest film of all time!". Wrong ape-lover Planet of the Monkeys would be the greatest film of all time; apes are merely monkey-esque wannabes who should know their place. The one monkey in Ace Ventura is proof enough that monkeys can make anything better!
Does it have Orlando Bloom in it? Now here we hit gender politics. Men deduct ten points, women add ten. This maybe a sexist point but the foppish young thesp is the acting's own walking-talking Gap model cut-out with the same screen presence. Although I am sure many a female would disagree. To stop myself from being branded a 21st century bastard, women can deduct ten points for Jessica Alba. As I am unaware that she has much acting ability but she’s quite easy on the eyes. Fair? Thought so.
Eye candy aside does the film feature any of the following themes:
- A race against the clock to find one million pounds in the desert?
- A mix-matched cast of odd-couples, loners and weirdos?
- Whoopi Goldberg?
If so then you are watching Rat Race and you should be stripped of your eyes for you are not using them correctly. Hopefully you will take into account this easy to use formula when you next watch a film.
Monkeys = good. Helicopters = bad.
Orlando Bloom = good/bad* (dependent on persuasion)
Rat Race = bad.
N.B May not be applicable to all films.
Blog #2 - Picture Moans
You are sat, blissfully watching your favourite programme when the dreaded words are uttered 'we'll be right back' or a suitable point is reached to end on and it happens. A flicker of the screen and amidst the barrage of Coke Zero and Foster Twist the dreaded words are uttered.
"Hello...is that Picture, I was after a loan".
Your heart stops.
What ad body decided that they would construct the most painfully transparent image of modern Britain in the past decade with a happy home life, functioning active kids and then throw in absolutely retarded dialogue over the top. Not only is the crux of the message that the drones operating the call centre in Middlesbrough give a flying fuck about your day or whether they are going to cancel football, as the first knob-heaed advert professed, but that you wouldn't have the amount you wanted to borrow prepared before hand. 25 grand was it? Fuck it make it 200 if you're making it up on the spot.
Now advertising is often assessed as the most souless and degrading organisation to be a part of. Like joining a Satanic Cult and having to work the reception desk but they could have stopped national blood boiling by constructing something a little less...how do I put this...wank.
The checklist must have gone:
1 x beautiful semi-detached house.
1 x married couple
1 x children.
How do we make it a bit more 'down to earth'? Well have the kid constantly interrupt asking for their fucking 'scootah'...oh and make the woman Geordie. Yeah now she's one of us! Like the one before where they talked about football! Everyone loves football...so everyone loves Picture because they love football too! Got it, good.
A transparent attempt to connect with an exceptionally narrow client base set on a bed of false pretences....wow that was a pretentious sentence.
Blog #1 - Sunday Showdown...But There's No Sun.
The radio chimes and chirps, countless voices echo and bounce around across the country uniting over a canvass of muffled chants. The crowd hums expectedly, waiting for the action to pour forth. Manical-toned dignitaries talk of the year past and the connotations that various results have upon one another. Clubs hold other's lives in their hands. No mercy will be shown.
Who gives a fuck Charlton went down Monday.