Holiday

 

I’m off on holiday, so there’ll be nobody here to do the admin until September 11th. A significant day, and for that reason only.

In the meantime, if you’re bored, use the links on the right to find some good reads. Or do some work.

Back in a week…

Big Brother 8: Live Final

 

I’m going on holiday early on Friday morning, so fortunately I’ll not feel the shit-magnet force that is the Big Brother LIVE Final.

Yes – that’s right – LIVE. You get to catch every last tooth-grinding second AS IT HAPPENS. Gasp as Davina fluffs her lines and gurns at her own jokes. Nod in an amused fashion as Ziggy tells us how he’s actually a ‘preddy reasonable kinda guy’ and fall over as Brian pretends he’s thick.

If you’re foolish enough to waste your money on a vote for the winner, please bear the following in mind:

1.) Brian is a charlatan.

I presume Brian’s been to school for at least one English lesson per school year of his life. As a result, he must have heard of William Shakespeare. The entire syllabus of the English GCSE is distorted and warped so that Shakespeare is taken into account, term after endless term. Schools are always putting on productions of Shakespeare plays. A schoolboy can’t get through life without knowing who Shakespeare is. That means Brian’s a sneaky, lying sod.

2.) Imagine what the twins will spend £100k on.

It will be wasted in New Look on every single tiny item of tat that comes in pink. It’s a wasted vote to vote for the twins, so resist. Besides, what did they contribute besides falling over occasionally? They were basically just dumbells for that twat-lunk Liam to lift.

3.) Liam is an abominable twat.

Don’t give the money to Liam. He’s Sid the Sexist without the gut. He doesn’t deserve anything beyond complete ignorance.

4.) Ziggy is a self parody.

Cliff Richard mutated in a microwave face-off with Christian Bale and the lion-man off Beauty and the Beast, he looks like his face is made of play-doh. Lashing out every five days, he’ll spend the remaining time apologising and trying to prove how swell he is, which he isn’t. More annoyingly, if he sees something that he thinks the public will probably find amusing, he says ‘that’s very funny’ without any hint on his face that he is at least partially amused. Transparently trying to make out he’s in on every gag, popular with everyone and with a weak apology for any harsh words, he became dull very early on.

5.) Carole is irritating.

Imagine living with that monster. She may be a Commie in her politics, but she’s a Nazi in the kitchen. Only your actual Mum has any right to order you about the shop like that. She seemed to think that the minute she stepped foot in there she was halfway into a mortgage on the gaudy bungalow meaning she could tell everyone else what to do. Plus, her food looked shit.

This only leaves Jonty, the bizarre middle aged man with the Alain De Botton hairdo and the collection of national flag t-shirts. At first I thought his walking round with teddies would be tiresome, but he constantly farts which makes up for it. Let’s face it, farting is amusing.

Jonty should win on the strength of the fact that he always has a tommy squeak in the tank should there be a lull in the conversation. He also got his unimpressive member out for no reason, walking around bollock-naked whilst completely oblivious to the fact this might disturb other housemates. And whilst naked and in company, he farted. That alone deserves 100 big ones.

If you’re going to vote, I recommend you vote for the weird, pot-bellied, bespectacled, hairy, mentally-undeveloped, flatulent, naturist.

Long Way Round: Disc One

Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman embark on a round the world trip on their motorbikes…

Yes, this is rather old but having just got the whole lot on DVD I’m giving it another shot, I watched bits of it when it was aired initially and now is my chance to watch the bastard lot in one fell swoop.

What becomes immediately apparent after watching the start of disc one is that (first time round watching The Long Way Round, yeah) I’d missed the first four episodes in which McGregor and Boorman plan their ‘trip’. From the outset it’s not just a question of two mates going ‘we’ll go that way’, getting a map, sleeping bag and tent and just heading off. No, it’s more of a military-planned operation being overseen by an office of plum-mouthed toffos working for some massive fucking production company who are more concerned about appeasing insurance underwriters and McGregor’s agent should he bang his fizzog on a rock rendering him unable to play Particle Worbly in the new Star Wars: The Tinkle of Chelt, or something.

After an entire episode where nothing happens save chatting and pointing, we see McGregor and Boorman undertake first aid training, motorcycle training, fitness training, what to do at borders training, toilet training and training. All of this is punctuated with ‘diary cams’ and family scenes where we are left wondering why they didn’t do this before they had wives and lots of children who may be affected by their respective daddies fucking off for five months on a jolly…

Anyway, fuck them, the boys are off. Just them, their machines, the open road, oh, and three 4×4 support vehicles each containing a variety of hand-wringing executives, producers and a fucking doctor if you please -should McGregor sprain his little toe on some nasty wind- and a Swiss cameraman on a motorbike like what our boys have to film them pootling about like brittle boned pensioners. By the time I was on episode three I wondering what the fucking point of this ‘motorcycle’ journey was and was reminded of David Cameron cycling to The Commons with two fully laden Lexus following him. I figure it has the same point as that.

The icing on the cake of this travesty is that Mr. McGregor and Boorman also ‘sing’ the theme tune. That should be ‘yell the theme tune tunelessly in order to drown out the other so that by the end of the first verse you can hear blood bouncing off the pop shield’. I’d rather listen to the desperate screams of an orphaned child being repeatedly stung on its eye by a wasp.

It’s bloody good in places though. Highly recommended.

The X Factor

My how things change with time. If I had reviewed this programme even a few months ago I would have condemned it as a crime against television – as a soulless and heartless exploitation of people’s gullibility, as a shameless rewriting of the talent show format and populated by the arrogant and egotistical who are involved solely to further their already bottomless bank accounts.

However, age has mellowed me, and when you compare it to the bottom-scraping conceptual rip-offs that followed, it now seems like a bastion of moral programming…

With the start of this, the fourth series, I have realised that it is actually a work of a genius. This 180º switch came with a simple and seemingly innocuous statement made by my girlfriend as we watched yet another wide shot of thousands of people claiming to have the requistite factor.

“My God” she said. “I can’t believe that there are still this many people who think they have talent.” And then it came to me. The X-Factor is a public service helping to rid us of the torrent of talentless fucktards who believe that they are destined to be famous.

Cowell, Osbourne, that Irish one – they’ve all seen the light. They’ve realised that the show they innocently kickstarted has spawned a monster, a deadly and all-consuming notion that anybody and everybody should have their shot at fame. The hundreds and thousands of guiless, tone-deaf, monosyllabic cock-juggling thundercunts who turn up to each audition are the direct result of the success of these talent shows.

Far from giving those with genuine ability a chance to shine, they have become a celebration of mediocrity and have helped cultivate this concept of amateur celebrity that is threatening to engulf us all.

Thus, the new series of X Factor has become about atonement; about apologising for what came in the original’s wake and helping to stem the tide before it’s too late. Sure, the occasional person with talent slips through and I gather that there is some sort of competition after the auditions that helps nuture them – but that is no longer the point. Now it is about the mission of four people to rid the ignorant fools of their delusions and to save us from their witless dreams. And they’re doing it one person at a time.

For each arrogant gimp who claims to be the next Robbie, or Madonna, or Boyzone, or Shane Ward, there is a tailor-made put down to stop them in their tracks. Each snidey comment by Simon Cowell is not about crushing the hopes and dreams of ordinary people like you and me, it’s about stopping these morons before they become pub-singers, or cover bands, or novelty acts. If just one of these witheringly sarcastic statements or honest criticisms get through to their intended targets then we could well be saved from another Cheeky Girl…

The X Factor is like killing Hitler before he has a chance to come to power. It’s about bitch-slapping the shelf-stackers and keeping them in their place, it’s about grabbing hold of those twats who stagger home from the Nags Head singing ‘Wonderwall’ and saying “shut up, you fucking dick”.

We should be thankful to Cowell et al for this form of artistic vigilantism, for doing us all a favour and severing any chance of these karaoke-insulting prickfucks trying any harder.

Sure the format hasn’t changed – it’s the same emotion-wringing montages, the same mix of staged confrontations, the same sad stories of self belief – but now it’s about cutting off the surge of socially inept optimists and halting any further damage that they might inflict upon our already fragile culture.

The most heartbreaking moments are when the rejected vow to carry on regardless, as if being told that singing like a diseased warthog is akin to overcoming some form of horrific disability. They should heed the advice of the ‘experts’ and quietly roll over and never threaten to darken our doorsteps again.

This series has the added bonus of a fourth ‘irrelevant’ judge in the form of Danni Minogue, a woman who is surely only still in the public eye because she shares a surname with the worlds most famous antipodean. On the offchance she gains some credibility from this reappearance on our screens I’d like to print the following picture. Just look at those half-moon tits, like Morph and his grey friend have curled up and died on them, and remember that she is now considered an authority on talent.

 

X Factor, I salute your noble intentions.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Jason Bourne is back in the years most action packed, high-octane, pulse quickening, genre defining, nerve-shredding, hyperbole-producing film of the summer…!

The critics have been falling over themselves to to hurl platitudes at the latest, and possibly final, instalment in the Matt Damon spy franchise – and the most recent of threequels to grace our screens in recent months. It’s not hard to see why they’ve been so nice to the movie, it’s certainly the best of a very bad bunch of high-profile summer releases and it treats it’s audience with respect and provides a satisfying conclusion as opposed to the usual openendedness bollocks you get these days. It’s also pretty bad in places, has a wafer-thin plot and has lost much of the freshness that makes the other two Bourne films so enjoyable.

Paddy Considine is a journalist writing a searing expose of undercover operations by the USA for the Guardian. We know he’s a good journalist because he says things like “he was telling the truth – he was scared” and circles conveniently abstract pieces of plot like ‘it all started with Jason Bourne’ in his notebook. The fact that he works for the Guardian made me laugh – I don’t quite know why but I suspect that it has something to with a newspaper that gladly publishes the work of Steve Bell and Jon Ronson being heroic conspiracy exposers…

Anyway, he meets Bourne and so begins another adventure of globe-trotting. A lot of globe-trotting in fact – so much globe-trotting that after a while you begin to wonder how seemingly the most wanted man in the world is able to travel to distant, ‘axis of evil’ countries and never once get caught up in a security system that ensnares thousands of innocent travellers everyday. I guess he’s that good a spy because we never see him once being fingerprinted when entering the US or being denied a Visa for having parents who once smoked pot.

So he moves like a ninja across the world, arriving at exactly the right time to advance his story a little and everyone he meets dies, but not before they can leave behind a fragment of burnt paper or a photograph to help him move to the next level.

It’s all a little silly. The earnestness of the film at times gives way to reveal the inherent implausibility of the story… That’s not to say though that the whole thing isn’t great fun, because it is. Paul Greengrass shoots the whole movie with such sincerity that for much of it you are swept away. The action scenes are extremely creative – both in their choreography and execution – and while the gullibility of his pursuers seems to have no end, they make very entertaining adversaries.

It’s also nice to see an action film where the bodycount isn’t glorified, deaths are regretted and the bad guy doesn’t go down in a hail of bullets. The Bourne movies deal with the moral complexities of being an invincible super-spy very well and this is possibly the most mature of the series.

Basically it’s an above average action movie that is a pretty decent end to a good trilogy of films… it’s not quite the year’s most action packed, high-octane, pulse-quickening, genre-defining, nerve-shredding, hyperbole-producing film of the summer, but it’ll do.

Neighbours

 

Have you watched Neighbours recently? Of course you haven’t! I have though, and I must say the quality of the birds on offer are, if anything, even better than the birds available from fine Norfolk turkey farmer Bernard Matthews (you might not know that Bernard Matthews offers three Chicken Kievs for £2).

For a start there’s the lovely Carmella, a husky Brunette full of eastern promise who brings to mind the mysterious and exotic contents of a Bernard Matthews Golden Drummer. Then there’s Elle, the evil Paul Robinson’s blonde daughter, who resembles Nicole Kidman but with a whiff of a Bernard Matthews Breaded Lemon and Pepper Chicken about her. I wouldn’t mind popping her in the oven for 25 minutes, by God I wouldn’t.

Next up there’s the lovely Pippa. Pippa’s blonde, has great tits, and brings to mind nothing short of the classic Bernard Matthews Turkey Breast Slices – succulent juicy breast meat in attractive packaging. If I had my way, I’d eat Pippa’s tits in a sandwich.

Perhaps the cream of the current crop of Neighbours dollies – the Bernard Matthews three for £2 Chicken Kievs deal, as it were – is Steff. She’s been around a bit, but like the delicious garlic butter that dribbles from a Bernard Matthews Chicken Kiev, she’s always welcome. Don’t get me wrong, I’m neither a serial killer nor a cannibal, but given the chance I’d love to slice Steff in half and eat her innards. Bootiful!

Crimewatch

 

Seen Crimewatch recently? Like all other TV, it’s gone mother-loving mental. The graphics as you enter their reconstructed world makes it seem like they’re parodying Brass Eye, which is quite a neat trick. They pip a parody at its own game by re-parodying it without shame. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, the BBC seem to be saying.
 
There’s no more Nick Ross these days, he retired recently. We haven’t got Jill Dando either, what with her getting shot by Freddie Mercury, so we’re left with a robot and a cockney giant.

Fiona Bruce was born in Singapore according to Wikipedia. Singapore is the home of electronic goods, which only confirms my suspicion that Bruce is a manufactured droid (product ID: FB2000) and not to be trusted. When she ‘does’ sincere she sounds like a terrifyingly stoic doctor confirming the fact that you only have two hours to live, at which point your genitals will eat your own anus. She delivers bad news like a newsreader that’s just risen from a 100-year sleep. She scares me silly.

We also have to deal with the bewildering absence of Jackie Haynes – the real copper who I used to have a crush on when I was a lad in the 80s. They’ve now got this chap called ‘Rav’ in, who I think is also a real life member of her Majesty’s fuzz. You wouldn’t want a ruck with Rav as he’s built like an armour-plated brick shitter. He’s also got this weird, matey, broad cockney way with words alongside a cocky manner which is immediately amiable. But then you remember he’s a peeler and it sort of ruins the chumminess. Not that all coppers are bastards.

Last night’s crimes were all far more disturbing than I remembered them being when I used to watch The ‘Watch. A taxi driver got garroted and then had his legs set fire to. We saw pictures of his flaking, pussy pins and watched him choking on his tears as he related his horror. His mate back at the taxi rank was gutted too. It made me bloody miserable and what’s more, I don’t live in the North so I can’t do a single thing to help. I considered calling up with the names of a few enemies from schooldays to stick them in the frame out of spite but didn’t bother in the end.

There was a sequence where some nasty Manc-lads went mental with a crowbar to ‘alf-inch some money-boxes from a couple of security oafs. In stark contrast to the taxi reconstruction, this was bloody well made stuff. It resonated like a Shane Meadows film, the dialogue echoed Ken Loach, the violence reminiscent of Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth. Shame it was only two minutes long.

The show lasts for an hour and I was forced to bow out early. A young asian man got blinded by a gunshot wound to the face and by that point I’d had about all I could stomach. It wasn’t the actual footage, reconstruction or the appeals that got to me, it was Fiona. Her attempt to put things into layman’s terms made me cringe more than the footage of the crispy legged taxi man. At one point she even said this:

‘Stranger rape is becoming common and, on average lasts, what? Twenty minutes?’

The ‘what’ in there is desperately uncomfortable. When someone says ‘what’ in the middle of a sentence like that they’re usually trawling their brain for the last experience they have of doing the thing they’re describing. ‘Go left at the traffic lights and then carry on for, what, 20 minutes?’.

It doesn’t work in a description of rape. It’s like saying ‘his scorched legs were left with 90% burns, give or take a couple of scabs’. So cut the colloquialisms Bruce – you’re a newsreader, not a brickie.

Still, Crimewatch is great, it’s an overblown, sensationalist load of hogwash and you’re more likely to win the lottery than help them nab a thief, but I still love it. Even better, since the dawn of CCTV the photfits are not only blurry and freaky, they now move. Don’t have nightmares. I am ordering you to not have nightmares.

BT Broadband

 

Ahahaha – his Dad’s embarrassing goal celebration. Honestly, how charming, the display of affection between son and dad enjoying the ‘footie’…

Just to take you through this cradle of filth, the advert commences with Dad and his lanky twat of a son who was the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family (I’ve seen him being ‘craaazzzy’ on it prior to turning the TV off/over with my forehead) watching a football match on the telly.

But let’s not run away with ourselves, let’s take a step back. Sadly this series of BT adverts has been running like a soap opera for months, the premise is that the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family has wound up shacked up with a bird who has two teenage kids. FROM A PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIP. ITZ SEW MODERNED.

So, there they are watching telly, Dad, son (the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family) AND, we notice, the teenage son of the bird that the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family is currently being ‘craaazzzy’ with. (We know he’s ‘craaazzzy’ because he turns his shirt collar up and his hair is a little ruffled. WILD).

During the match on the telly the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family looks over at his dad in a manner that I presume the BT Producers intended to be portrayed as affectionate, though in reality it looks more like his sizing him up for a raping. We are then treated to a flashback, Dad and son (a younger version of the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family) on the terraces watching a match.

Dad too has been made up to look younger by plastering a huge black wig over his beach ball sized head and having his glasses changed for a pair of jam jar bottoms. He resembles a cross between a henchmen of The Krays and the bloke who is referred to as a ‘twisted old prune’ in Spinal Tap.

During the nostalgia scene the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family reminisces about the footie with Dad, dodgy meat pie at half time (I notice he doesn’t then go on to reminisce about being sick on his lap on the journey home, a temperature of 103° and vicious diarrhoea for the following week which loses him a week of school and over a stone in weight) and Dad’s embarrassing goal celebrations, or in my opinion, paydirt.

Said ‘celebration’ consists of grabbing one’s child by the head and, bafflingly, pouting ones lips prior to thrusting ones face into the victims hair and vigorously shaking ones head from side-to-side. Two things here, firstly its clear that this was the best the ad agency could muster when given the brief for an ‘embarrassing goal celebration’, it’s a fucking shit one, unbelievable actually, secondly, if it was remotely believable the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family should’ve been taken into care.

We then cut back to the present day just as ‘United’ have scored. Christ bled, dad jumps up and performs his embarrassing goal celebration on the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family, and attempts to perform the same manoeuvre on the teenage son of the bird that the ‘craaazzzy’ one in My Family is currently being ‘craaazzzy’ with.

The thing about these fucking BT adverts is that I’ve no idea what the fuck they’re trying to actually sell me. I think its phones, and I only think that because they’re BT adverts. Why on earth then is the catalyst for the selling of phones process a turdy little soap seen predominantly through the eyes of some cunt getting used to his ready-made family?

Oh, great idea for the Honda Civic, a pixie dressed as a Beefeater throwing bathroom taps at a copy of Ian McEwan’s Atonement. I don’t know about you but that screams Four-cylinder 1590cc engine, with 108bhp @ 5600rpm and 111 lb ft @ 4300rpm Torque, five-speed manual, front-wheel drive with (front) MacPherson struts (rear) multilink suspension to me.