A Good Sport
2010's got off to a pretty awful start all things considered- Britain's been paralysed by some frozen water, those bankers who sent us to the brink of financial oblivion last year are getting gut-fuckingly huge bonuses for doing it, the Carribean has been ripped in two by an earthquake and Teddy Pendergrass has died.
So, I'm glad to report that I've got something pleasant and uplifting to tell you all. Finally, this year has something good going for it other than the fact than everyone ignoring Celebrity Big Brother.
The Doomsday Clock has gone back by a minute.
A quick sidebar for those who need it: The Doomsday Clock was set up in 1947 by a bunch of atomic scientists to both demonstrate how close they felt humanity was to smearing itself out of existence via auto-inflicted armageddon and to provide a neat narrative framing device for Alan Moore's 'Watchmen'. It was originally set at 7 minutes to midnight and has got as close as two minutes to when Russia and the US were indulging in one of their periodic Cold War atomic dick-swinging contests. By 1991 it had fallen back to 17 minutes to midnight but slowly crept up as close as 5 minutes to in 2007 thanks to the antics of North Korea's enjoyably unhinged Kim Jong Il.
However, owing to "leaders of nuclear weapons states cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material and for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable" it's been decided by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago- the chaps and ladies who run the clock- that we can all sleep a little easier, breathe deeper and get back to the noble pursuit of drinking till the screaming in our head stops- rather than because the planet outside the window is going to hell in a hovercraft. Accordingly the Doomsday Clock now reads 11:54.
With the threat of fiery nuclear destruction on the wane the World has needed something else to get all serious about and it seems that sport has decided to take up the mantle.
When you think about it, sport is very, very silly and we really shouldn't get all that bothered about it. Sport is of no real consequence. Sport should be a distraction. Sport shouldn't matter.
So why did the Togo football team find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun? Why do we care what Tiger Woods and John Terry do with their privates? Why is a 21 year old Georgian dead for misjudging a corner? Why have Canada, previously everyone's 2nd favourite nation, become so vilified for a few organisational issues at the Winter Olympics? Why am I sat up at 1am watching some women fling themselves face-first down an ice chute?
Clearly, sport is of some real consequence. Clearly, sport is more than a distraction. Clearly, sport matters.
Even curling- a activity which lies somewhere between bowls, shuffle-board, ice-skating and spring-cleaning. A game takes anything up to 2 and a half hours and, thanks to the BBC's brilliant compendium of delights on the Red Button, has filled most of my afternoons this week with more drama and tension than 'Diagnosis: Murder' and 'Doctors' could ever dream of. Quite an achievement for a sport which is, uniquely as far as I can figure out, mostly played with brushes.
Maybe, it's the fact that humans like a story and a competition; after all reality television works on the exact same principles and mechanisms as television sport coverage- only without the necessity for people who are actually good at something. In both we get to know competitors, we see them develop, we employ experts to analyse their performances and we dismantle them ourselves with forensic intensity. We shamelessly take sides and hope our favourites achieve the glory of a gold medal or winning the public vote.
And, for those sports or reality TV stars who survive in our conscience, we wait with relish for them to make the cock-up that proves their falability- such as being caught in a tawdry episode of adultery that threatens to detonate their career; or, even worse, recording and releasing '3 Words' featuring Will.I.Am.
Mind you, at least something which is genuinely serious such as causing the Doomsday Clock to move hasn't become the subject of a sport or a reality TV show.
Yet, that is. Yet.
HELP!
I was recently looking for something to read in the bookshop at Manchester University, which was a mistake really as it's a typical uni bookstore; i.e. the graphic novels section contains no Batman and 9 copies of fucking Maus. After fruitlessly trawling for something interesting I happened upon the self-help section and was quickly reminded of an anecdote borrowed from a friend of mine.
Four young men, for reasons known only to themselves, are sat in the front room of their shared house playing that old parlour game where someone has to hold the name of a celebrity up in front of their forehead for everyone else to see, then ask them questions to try to decipher who it is on the card.
On one particular turn, the questioner asks "Do I help people?"
"Yes", is the response.
"Do I have magical powers?"
"Yes" say the questionees.
"Am I often seen in the company of loyal followers?"
"YES!"
There's a contemplative pause
"Am I Jesus?" is the confident enquiry
"No." is the response. "You're Paul McKenna"
You can see the similarities though, can't you? After all, where people once turned to The Bible and Mr Christ's parables to guide them through their lives, now they've got the self-help missives of McKenna and co. In these books everything from losing weight, to quitting smoking, to getting a better job to becoming a more effective canoeist (probably) is explained to you in easy to understand (i.e. patronising), step-by-step (i.e. really patronising) guides by the World's leading experts (i.e. people who got their degrees by mail order from questionable institutions like The Guadalajara Institute of Food Sciences). This is the time of year when people are likely to take stock of their lives and recoil in horror at the sheer naked mess they've made of it and therefore it's boom time for the publishers who can lay off the pointless celebrity autobiographies for a few months (Justin Lee Collins? Really?) and set about helping people to help themselves.
Provided that help comes not from themselves but from the faintly creepy expert pictured on the cover, natch.
Here's a few of this year's biggest titles:
Joseph Stalin's Scorched Earth Diet
A team of military historians and dieticians at the University of Spartak Moscow have combined on this groundbreaking project to use Stalin's highly self-attritional tactics for halting the Nazi war machine to help shed those Christmas pounds and get you into that bikini this summer. By scoring different types of food according to 1940's German military hardware (1 tuna sandwich = 1 Panzer tank; 4 chocolate digestives = 2.3 Stuker dive bombers; 1 Dominos pizza = Colonel Walther von Reichenau) and suggesting different dietary techniques as 'Stalin's Orders' (only drink water today; make yourself sick, mash up all your food with a lethal dose of diuretic) you too can protect the Worker's Republic of You from fascist calories. WARNING: if diet is not strictly adhered to you will have to shoot yourself for the crime of cowardice.
Richard Littlejohn's Bigoted Way to Happiness
Britain's very own cross between Ann Coulter and Jabba the Hut shows you how to be happy simply by blaming everyone else for anything that makes you miserable. Why mope around doing a job you don't like when you can cheerily convince yourself that a cabal of Muslim lesbian extremists are at fault for forcing you to do it in the first place? Suffering through the death of a loved one? No you're not! You're just the victim of political correctness gone mad- in the old days people would be dead and continue to live for another 200-300 years! And they wouldn't need a hi-vis vest to do it. Are you struggling to overcome a crippling addiction to alcohol or drugs? It's not your fault- not since the EU introduced all those nasty new addictive substances when Britain had once become the Greatest Nation on Earth (tm) by having alcohol which did no damage whatsoever and crack cocaine which acitvely repulsed the user after every toot of the crackpipe! You couldn't make it up! Although, for this to work, you'll probably have to.
Quit Smoking With Bisto
Using pioneering psychological research, this guide will help you quit cigarettes for good using the hitherto untapped nicotine supressing properties of gravy. Everytime you feel a craving for a smoke just drink 3 pints of piping hot Bisto gravy and feel those urges slip away. This is part of the upcoming Bisto Better Life range, due to include such titles as 'Career Success with Chicken Stock', 'Find Love with Yorkshire Puddings' and 'Quit Heroin the Vegetable Broth Way'.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming- Not As Interesting or Sinister As It Sounds
This vaguely controversial approach to psychology and self-improvement is clearly and simply explained as not actually an awesome mind-control art that allows those who master it to have terrifying levels of power over all those they come across. It will help you to alter your behaviour to help you achieve your goals via considerations of the effect of language on self-actualisation and not by teaching you to subtly program all those around you to submit to your every whim and fantasy so that your goals become less about getting a promotion and more about achieving one long round of delirious sexual pleasure amongst people who readily except you as their Earth-bound emperor.
Better Living Through Genocide
If all else fails in your life, fuck it. Kill everyone. A worrying sign of the modern world is that this is currently number 4 in the UK book charts. Even more worryingly, the top 3 places are all taken up with books 'written' by Jordan.
Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow…
It's something of a cliche to suggest that we Brits spend all our time talking about the weather, at least when we aren't dealing with our other favourite topics i.e. health & safety, snooker or sentences that begin "I don't mean to sound racist but...". The irony of this is that, while we may be conversant in weather, we're head-bogglingly rubbish at dealing with it when it turns in any way slightly beyond what would be considered 'mild'- if you believe the news anyway.
In other parts of the world, people live in places such as Tornado Alley in the US where a good day in August is one where you come home from work to find your house in the same street you left it, or there's the monsoon lashed regions of Asia which can experience as much rain in an afternoon as Somerset would in the average lifetime.
Meanwhile we live in possibly the most temperate country on the face of the Earth. Thus we're depicted as being prone to either all dying of sunstroke if the mercury climbs over 80 in July or, as the last few days have demonstrated, getting hopelessly befuddled and often caught completely unawares when water freezes into snow and starts lazily billowing out of the sky. I've allegedly been practically housebound for the last 48 hours because, despite us now being in a year with a funky futuristic name, we can't manage to put salt- one of the most abundant substances anywhere- onto our roads and pavements to prevent us having to deal with the minor inconvenience of driving or walking on snow that has been compacted down into unending sheets of ice which lie in wait ready to make us skid or tumble and snap our necks with no warning.
How the would-be Brittanic members of the human race managed to get through ice ages that lasted for millenia is anyone's guess when all we get now is news bulletins booming that the cold snap is due to last "a few more days" with so much portent they might as well be saying it'll last "till the absolute end of all time". Reporters have been stationed up and down the country to tell us that everywhere has become 'snow-bound' and 'inaccessible', despite the fact that they've managed to get several hundred kilos of broadcast equipment there in the first place to tell us this.
I don't know about you though but, for all the tooth-gnashing horrorbastardism of the news reports on the snow, all I've seen is people collectively taking time off work and school to joyously, for want of a better phrase, dick about. Everyone's found their Christmas/New Year break unexpectedly lengthened by a couple of days and, in the case of my neighbourhood, set about building ever increasingly massive snowmen (there's a 9 footer round the corner), have snowball fights, drag each other round on sledges and, in a couple of magnificent cases, build igloos and have a picnic in them. The 9ft snowman has even had a huge snow living room built for him. And a trumpet put in his mouth.
Clearly, far from being bewildered by snow, we're better at dealing with it than any other nation. In a few weeks the Winter Olympics get underway in Vancouver and, no matter what events you may end up watching through the Games, I guarantee you won't see one snowman, one snowball fight and certainly no snow living rooms constructed by either spectators or competitors. If the Winter Olympics were held on these isles there'd be a packed Wembley Stadium watching nations throw snowballs against nations, the whole of Dartmoor stripped of snow during a snowman building contest that'll end up with an army of massive 50ft high creations straddling the South Downs, and all the skiing events replaced by the infinitely more tense British pastime of crowding round the radio first thing in the morning and waiting to see if your school's been closed.
And, for another guaranteed British medal, the newsreader biathlon- where they have to travel to a snowy village, then file a report about how it's impossible to travel to the same snowy village.
Obviously, over the next few days the snow will freeze into ice and then it'll turn slushy and things might be a bit unpleasant for a bit but, for a while, let's just enjoy the snow. The world's all pretty and white and fluffy, every footstep makes that crunchy snow noise, many of us have an extended holiday and- this is a fact, by the way- sitting in a pub is for some reason infinitely more satisfying when there's snow on the ground outside.
All of these are good things because, at a time like this, there's really no reason to stay indoors. For one thing, there's bugger all on the telly. Unless you like panicking reporters.
Or Labour simply handing the election to the fucking Tories 5 months early. This snow might be the best news we get all year.
Welcome to now
So, that was the noughties. Did you enjoy it?
No, I'm not sure either. When you really think about it, lots and lots of stuff happened since the Millennium but all I can really remember of the previous decade is that everyone got an i-Phone and then Louis Walsh judged them. This is probably not a suitable eulogy for 10 years that, logically speaking, should represent the pinnacle of all human achievement and existence thus far.
Actually, I do genuinely believe that humanity is constantly achieving greater and greater feats of excellence as time goes on but, unlike those who think this is represented by all those clever people and their big pipe in the ground at CERN, I reckon our species has thus far peaked with the Shea Stadium level of Beatles Rock Band played with the Rickenbacker controller.
Anyway, leaving the noughties behind us it's time to boldly embark on a new year and a new decade (technically, it actually isn't as pedants like to point out, the new decade starts with 2011 just as the Millennium actually started with 2001. Don't worry about it though, people who think like this are an evil on par with ethnic cleansing). However before we get down to it this upcoming year and decade need something really quite important.
They need naming.
First of all, are we in 2010 or 2010? I'd probably better do that in words rather than numbers. Are we in two-thousand-and-ten or is it twenty-ten? Personally, I favour twenty-ten, it sounds more futuristic and and while me might not all be whizzing around on hover-boards or watching Jenny Agutter undress while we run away from a chap called Francis and the ritual of Carrousel it's at least nice to pretend we could be by giving our years more sci-fi sounding monikers.
And it looks like the future might need all the help it can get as, not only has mankind peaked as I've already demonstrated, but the teenies (that's what I'm calling this decade till I can think of something better) have already got underway with the dis-spiriting news that we've already started hurtling down the other side of the evolutionary mountain. Because we've started getting uglier.
Yes, that's right- our old friends at BeautifulPeople.com have been at it again, this time turfing over 5,000 people off their dating website for the aesthetically pleasant and socially retarded as they have slipped below the appropriate standard of loveliness. The folks who have managed to get through the stringent selection process and get on the website have been doing a spot of internal policing and have complained about anyone who has posted a photo of themselves that suggests they've gained any weight over Christmas.
Now I don't want to pour scorn on anyone so early in a new decade but isn't this moving slightly from an endearingly self-absorbed form of sociopathy into full blown nutterdom? I can't decide if BeautifulPeople.com is now on the path to becoming either a new and terrifying cult or a breeding ground for worldwide network of slightly more attractive versions of the killer from 'Se7en'.
Judge for yourselves by reading this quote by BeautifulPeople.com's founder Robert Hintze from possibly the most chilling press release ever unleashed: "we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld; letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model".
Tough call isn't it? That talk of how they 'mourn the loss of any member' is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to hear some demented cult leader utter to comfort his followers after a few of their number had been at the mass suicide punchbowl a few days before 'The Ascension'; while the use of the word 'fatties' does hint at the sort of simmering anger and resentment that fuelled Kevin Spacey to get Gwyneth Paltrow's head Fed-Exed to the middle of nowhere.
So- BeautifulPeople.com; sinister cult or club for serial killers? Robert Hintze; the new David Koresh or the new Dennis Nielsen? Whatever it turns out to be- it's definitely an incredibly successful website and Robert Hintze is clearly a gifted entrepreneur and the sort of man who knows how to be a success and get some publicity in 2010.
Maybe that's what we could call this new decade then. Not the 'teenies' but 'the we-all-just-realised-that-to-be-successful-in-this-day-an-age-you've-got-to-be-a-cross-between-a-manipulative-control-freak-and-a-murderous-psychopath-ies'.
Here's to the future. Happy New Year to you all.
So Here It Is…
The Germans have a word: weltschmerz. Actually, the Germans have lots and lots of words but anyway, for now we're just focusing on weltschmerz. It means the feeling of realising that the real world will never live up to to the ideal of it that a person has in their head. There's also a word in English that means exactly the same thing.
Christmas.
Here's the image of Xmas that's sold to us every December: snow, carols, food, presents, friends, family, love, peace, Morecambe and Wise, enconsed by the fire in the snug of a beautiful old pub, Slade at number 1, Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses, James Bond, Chocolate, Boxing Day football, The Queen.
Here's the numbing reality: frost, ice, rain, indigestion, scrums in shops, crowded trains, A 'My Family' Christmas Special, drunken works parties stumbling around town centres, The X-Factor, people thinking they're annoying Simon Cowell by sending Rage Against The Machine to number 1 when he's actually just getting more publicity, Misteltoe and Wine, nuts, Boxing Day defeat, The Queen.
It is, in a word, cack. Your only hope for any joy is in the giving and recieving of presents (or drinking mulled wine till your tongue falls out). This, however, is invariably a minefield of desperately trying to second guess what various realtives want until you just give up and buy them something from Lush (for females) or a Mock the Week DVD (males). If only everyone was as easy to buy presents for as, say, me (size 11 Adidas trainers or single malt scotch whisky- Islay if possible. Thanks).
However, in the Christmas spirit and to help you along, I present to you the following cut-out-and-keep (if your monitor's made of paper) guide to 2009's ultimate Chrimble gift ideas:
Bulimia Barbie- for the teenage girl in your life who's fragile and still-developing sense of self has been battered to death by a constant stream of air-brushed images featuring unattainable perfection and stick thin celebrities who's diets probably make their breath smell like it should be rolling down the streets of Bophal. This new Barbie comes with a hearty selection of realistic lovely food to stick down her plastic gullet and her hand already moulded into the 'two-finger' shape familiar to seasoned regurgitators. Watch in wonder as Barbie eats every last morsel before spewing litres of authentic warm vomit down the Barbie Toilet (TM) (sold seperately) and, after every 25 pukes, a tooth falls out due to chronic bile erosion. Includes 2 AA batteries. Only £29.99.
iBreville- ultimate proof that bolting the letter 'i' onto the front of any product allows you to clog it up with pointless extras, this next generation sandwich toaster comes equipped with a spirit-level, dipstick, medieval witch dunker, alligator repellant kit, .pdf manual on jousting, hoover bag, DVD burner, rubber duck catapult and 3 different vibrate settings. All this technology has left it unable to make toasted sandwiches to any greater degree than any other sandwich toaster but the cool, crisp white design is guaranteed to make you not feel any shame in essentially paying £350 for a lump of gizmos that might as well be a neon sign saying "I Am A Shallow Tossrag".
Suicide Adventure Day- by the third day of Christmas you're probably happily contemplating a blissful, self-enforced end to your life but still clinging to the meagre hope that things might get a bit better next year. Why not, then, experience all the fun of suicide with none of the consequences with this exciting and informative adventure day?! You'll get to experience a number of different terminal scenarios with the guarantee that all injuries are none-life-threatening and that you'll be brought back round to consciousness within 20 minutes ready to try your next method of welcoming oblivion. From the sudden adrenaline thrill of the 'High-Rise Plunge' (simulated using a virtual reality machine and a mallet) to the tender and emotional final farewell of the 'Dignitas Experience' (simulated using sleeping pills and a room in a Travelodge) this is a day you'll never forget. Book early to avoid disappointment and to make sure you've got something to look forward to before you finally decide to end it all and take a train-carriage full of commuters with you.
Fuckwits- the brand new board game for all the family that allows YOU to stuff up the planet for everyone else in a variety of EXCITING WAYS!. Dads, why not play as the MERCHANT BANKERS who nearly sent Western civilisation to the wall and who cost you your job last year by forcing us all into a RECESSION that was none of our faults and for which they appear to have got off scot free while you're flung on the scrap heap 7 years shy of retirement but now with no employment prospects and a woefully underfunded pension! But look out! LITTLE Freddie's playing as the arbiters of a celebrity obsessed culture that makes him feel less and less worthwhile every day until he finally decides to DEBASE himself before a stern-faced group of producers for Britain's Got Talent in the hope that he can repeat the exact same 'Ventriloquism but with his own gaping anus' routine in FRONT of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and millions of viewers at home who'll make him feel justified only through their sheer naked hatred of him that masks the fact that they all wish they'd though of it first! But wait! Mum's GOT a gun! She says she can't take it anymore! That she can't live in world like this knowing what we're capable of and seeing what we ACTUALLY have to put up with! She's got the special 'weltschmerz' card! Hang on! That gun didn't even come with the game! Where'd she get that?! Put it down dear! Put it down! Oh, Dear God... No... NO....!
Merry Christmas everyone. And a Happy New Year.
Charity begins online
Hopefully I recently pumped a little entertainment into all your faces by detailling a harrowing night sat in front of Children in Need which, 5 minutes of jiggling newsreaders aside, basically amounted to nearly a third of day's worth of light entertainment attrocities scorching themselves on my retinas- a bit like the aversion therapy Alex undergoes in Clockwork Orange only with more John Barrowman.
Well, not content with that particular evening, charities all over the place have been going out of their ways to grind all the goodness and humanity out of my core and replace them with a yawning, gaping wound that wouldn't look out of place in the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan.
First of all, those new fangled charity collectors seem to be back in even greater numbers to clog up the streets of town and city centres and try to corner unsuspecting people into giving them their bank details for a £5 a month donation of which the collectors themselves probably take a good £4.50 home with them to spend on ridiculous haircuts (the male ones) or stupid facial jewellry (the female ones).
They've also got smarter too and started working in packs of three or more to shuttle oblivious members of the public down blind alleys until they have no choice but to make eye contact and engage these people in conversation. At which point they're hoping traditional British sensibilities kick in and instead of being nasty to someone's face the luckless prole will then stump up the number off their debit card and more tattoos (the male ones) and hair dye (the female ones) can be bought on the commission. They're like velociraptors in bibs.
At least we can say that in some respects charities are getting more cunning with their attempts at raising money because, in another way, they've got fantastically fucking dumb.
This weekend, if anyone plays recent X-Box 360 shoot-fest sensation 'Call of Duty- Modern Warfare 2'on X-Box Live (which is essentially Facebook for sociopaths) then the imaginatively monikered game shop 'Game' will make a donation to the charity Warchild which- clue in the title- aims to help children who's lives have been shattered by the grim realities of armed conflict in countries where it's a harrowing daily reality and not an excuse to fire up an X-Station Zebra and get some 'frags' or something.
Let's explore this in a little more detail making reference to evidence from which to deduce reasoned conclusions. A bit like a dissertation except with the word 'fannies' in the 7th paragraph. The money from this 'Game for Good' event is being raised for 'Warchild' who describe their noble mission as 'to support and strengthen the protective environment for children who, as a result of conflict, live with a combination of insecurity, poverty and exclusion'. The money is being raised by Game encouraging people to 'strap on the frags, pull on the kevlar and lock and load the M4'.
For those of you to whom this isn't clear- what is basically taking place this weekend is the equivalent of raising money for the Princess Diana Memorial Fund by having a virtual rally through Parisian underpasses. I don't want to pour scorn on what is obviously an attempt to raise much-needed money for a very worthy cause but wouldn't it be more fitting to do it by encouraging people not to run around cyberspace pretending to shoot their friend to death? Maybe donations can be accumulated by having gamers enter death match arenas and then just wandering around chatting to each other and handing each other small gifts like a Kinder Egg or something. Or change half the players into war orphans and half into desperate infertile parents and having them search for each other till everyone's paired up and living happily ever after. The best players on the planet could even get some power-ups and play as Madonna.
I honestly didn't mean this to turn into a cri de coeur against the idea of donating to charities but it's obviously how I feel right now. A student was recently telling me how they're i-Pod was a special 'anti AIDS' edition for which £50 of the purchase price was given to Aids charities. And guess how much more than the usual retail price for an i-Pod it cost.
Right.
It's much like 'Fairtrade' products in shops which aim to demonstrate how the company supplying it is being caring, sharing and humanitarian by offering more money to the original farmers and producers when in fact, all they do, is shunt up the retail price and get us to pay it instead. We can feel good about ourselves, the little people get more money and the company gets all the credit despite just labelling some of their produce 'Fairtrade' and instantly implying that everything else that they do is based on exploiting the people at the start of the supply chain and then flogging it to us as cheaply as possible. They'll be nice once in a while to the farmers, but only if we're the ones willing to pay for it.
Just as we're the ones being cornered on the high street by idiots in tabards because we can't be trusted to be nice without being tricked into it. Just as we're the ones who will happily give money to Warchild provided we can do it by pretending to wage war against our best friends. Just as we're the ones who can only make a concerted effort to raise money for children who need it if we're promised a night of Eastenders musical specials and John bloody Barrowman.
God this planet's fucked.
That Was The Year That Will Be
It's that time of the year again where every newspaper, website, magazine, pamphlet, TV show and idiot-with-a-keyboard in whatever field produce their end of year awards and lists. You know the sort of thing- '50 Best Albums of the Year', '25 Best Movie Scenes of 2009', 'The Top 10 Shows Which Are A Bit Like Flash-Forward, But Aren't Flash-Forward' and, being a decent sort, I'll sum them all up for you right now and save you the time of actually reading any of them.
The Resistance by Muse, Jade Goody R.I.P., Roger Federer's French Open Final, That Scene From 'Bruno' On The Talk Show, Roy Cropper in a Canal, Michael Jackson, Thierry Henry's Hand, Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Michael Jackson, The 4th Series of 30 Rock, House is in a Mental Asylum!, A Creeping Sense of Existentialist Dread, Michael McIntyre, Jedward, Jedward, Does Anyone Else Feeling This Gnawing Emptiness?, Fucking Bono.
There you go. Done. That was 2009 which, if it had a unifying theme, was essentially 2008 with more resonant celebrity deaths. And now that it's out of the way and I've summed it all up for you we can get on to job of dishing out next year's awards. Yes, just for you, I'm going to get the jump on absoultely everybody else on the planet and give you the highlights of 2010 before they even have a chance to happen. Doing this is a process rendered infinitely more fun than doing it for 2009 as it's based on a combination of idle speculation, crackpot brainstorming and desperately chased hunches. And so, ladies and gentleman, 13 months early, I present The ItSaysHere 2010 Awards...
Album of the Year- 'Susan Boyle's Second Album By Susan Boyle'- Susan Boyle: Boyle won 14 Grammys, 8 Brit Awards and sold 47 million copies of this, her 2nd album, on which she presents a stirring collection of touching but powerful cover versions of her favourite touching but powerful Leona Lewis cover versions. Bonus Track: Leona Lewis and Susan Boyle cover Will Young and Gareth Gates' cover of 'The Long And Winding Road'.
Film of the Year- 'Paedophil'- Sascha Baron Cohen trawls across America's deep south in the guise of a convicted child sex offender called Philip. Spends all his time making incredibly insensitive comments about any children in his vicinity and offering to buy an hour of delirious sexual pleasure with any passing kids by negotiating with their parents in a thick Belgian accent and outrageous hat, thereby making a point about the reactionary nature of many Americans but actually just proving that Baron Cohen can do funny voices and is happy to risk getting his head kicked in.
TV Show of the Year- 'The X Factor Election Special 2010'- Hosted by Dermot O'Leary and David Dimbleby, the nation goes to the polls to decide who will occupy 10 Downing Street next year with a mandate to ease Britain through difficult economic times and increasing European intergration as well as a 1 year record deal with Simon Cowell. The public vote and Peter Snow's 'Swing-o-meter' will decide the final two before they go before the judges panel (Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole, Diane Abbott MP, Ian Hislop) for a vote-off. They both get to make one final impassioned speech to the nation, highlight 3 manifesto policies of their choice and perform their favourite Rod Stewart song before the winner is announced and the Queen joins them onstage to plug her latest single and ask them to form a government.
Sportsman of the Year- Thierry Henry- Redeems himself for his handball against the Irish by not only guiding the French to World Cup glory but also winning Strictly Come Dancing- beating Greg Wallace from Masterchef in the final foxtrot round- and also starring in the greatest Gillette advert ever with Tiger Woods who everyone's been looking at a bit funny since that car crash. Not that anything happened in that car crash, you understand. I'm just saying; I mean, they don't crash themselves do they? And what was he doing out at that time of the night anyway? Two words- Geroge Michael. That's all I'm saying. Just that.
Fiction Book of the Year- 'Flags and Giraffes' by Eileen O'Murray- Utterly pretentious load of shit which features no discernable plot whatsoever, has hardly any interesting or likeable characters, is sprinkled with swear words and descriptions of drug taking to try to seem edgy, and is mostly told from the perspective of a narrator who is needlessly cryptic and moany and who you wouldn't piss on if they were on fire. Is easily battered in terms of originality, ideas, interest and sheer story-telling ability by every single comic produced this year but everyone on Newsnight Review is terrified that they'll be struck of the list of pretentious clever-clogs for even admitting they've heard of Superman. Throughout 2010 comics will remain so hopelessly uncool that not even Will Self will pretend to like them ironically to annoy The Guardian.
Non-Fiction Book of the Year- 'Battered in the Pants' by Jim Hell- A publishing milestone as, after years of misery memoirs clogging up the nations' bookshelves and being bought by an apparently multi-million strong population of unsettling voyeurs, this represents the first book to be written by someone who actively set out to get abused as a child knowing the lucrative career that would follow as a writer in later years. This particularly harrowing tale of constantly going to the vicar's house in tight shorts and a vest top to take showers while asking for help in finding the soap will move even the most hardened page-twitching psychopath to tears.
Celebrity of the Year- Robbie Williams- Scores a major hit in all the celebrity magazines and websites by finally reuniting on stage with Take That. His decision to patch things up with Gary Barlow was, he says, a really special moment and not in any way to do with the fact that they now sell more records than him and is entirely unconnected to the reality that he'll suddenly get a bit of an attention spike in a career that was rapidly plummeting downhill while his former bandmates about whom he'd not shown the slightest interest in the last near-decade were suddenly the biggest act in Britain again.
News Event of the Year- The End of the World As Gabriel's Trumpet Sounds, The Rivers Run With Blood and War, Famine, Pestilence and Death Stalk The Land. All in HD on Sky News!
Ker-Plow! Thump! Bash! Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
If you were to catalogue my obsessions in to some sort of, well, catalogue and then flip to the 'B' section you'd find 'Beatles, The' and 'Batman' snuggled in comfortably together (seperated by 'Bears' and 'Bay, Car Chases in the Films of Michael;') How thrilled I was then to hear that, back in the mists of time, these two iconic forces had collided in the pages of a comic book. Sort of. The Beatles, in this particular story, are re-interpreted as 'The Oliver Twists' but it's pretty obvious what the writers are getting at. It's also clear that the writers were, for want of a more succinct phrase, mad as a flannel of badgers. Tonight (or whatever time of day you're reading this), I present this, possibly the most extraordinary comic, nay piece of literature, ever written, to you.
Now before we get cracking on the issue itself, I think I'd better put this piece of work into some sort of context. In 1970, a rumour circulated that not only was Paul 'Thumbs Up' McCartney dead, but that he'd popped his clogs in 1966 when he'd been decapitated in a car crash and been replaced in The Beatles by a lookalike in order to keep the lucrative business of the band going. However, those myschievious Scouse band-mates of his had subsequently managed to place a number of clues in their music and artwork to let dedicated fans know the truth about their deceased songwriter and the conspiracy to replace him. This is what lunacy looks like when it's Olympic standard.
Some people have, however, spent the last few decades mercilessly trawling through the Beatles work to find these hidden messages. The full list of 'clues' they've come up with is far too lengthy and, frankly, bizarre to go into here but- as a taster, let's have a look at the cover of 'Abbey Road'.
At first glance, it's the Beatles wandering over a zebra crossing but, for believers in this sort of thing, it's actually a dazzling cavalcade of signs and signifiers that makes Dan Brown's 'interprative' 'work' in 'The Da Vinci Code' seem like he simply wasn't looking hard enough. You'll notice that Macca himself has no shoes on despite wearing a suit- a situation that can be easily explained when one considers his twin ports of wacky old hippy and rampaging commercialist. But the death theorists claim that he's barefoot because, in Italy, dead people are buried without shoes. And, just to prove the point, the rest of the Beatles are lined up in the order of a funeral procession- Lennon all in white representing God/The Chruch, Starr in black as the mourner, the dead body of McCartney and Harrison in denim as the grave digger. And the numberplate on the Volkswagen Beetle reads '28IF' because McCartney would have been 28 if he'd lived.
Quite impressive bit of deduction, isn't it? Well it is till you realise that pretty much every Beatles photo of the era has Harrison dressed like a Russian farm-hand and Starr in the suit of a working-class man who was never entirely comfortable in the group that had become the leading lights of psychedelia. Lennon's Daz-white garb, meanwhile, is explained by the fact that his LSD intake at this point was so prodigious he had become genuinely convinced that he was Jesus. And McCartney was 27 at the time, not 28.
Every other 'clue' to this mystery can be easily explained away with basic rationality or the slenderest grip on reality but if you want to head over to http://homepages.tesco.net/harbfamily/opd/index.html and check out such phenomena as the backwards message before 'Blackbird' on The White Album or what happens when you put a mirror horizontally through the text 'Lonely Hearts' on the front cover of Sgt. Pepper then be my guest (also, take a trip to the site's forum for some genuine weapons-grade insanity). However, to get back to the story, the rumour of McCartney's demise soon spread around the world until Paul himself had to give an interview to Time Magazine under the headline "I'm Not Dead". Evidently the rumour also eventually found it's way round to DC Comics and issue #222 of Batman was born.
As I'm not as avid a comic reader as some, I'm going to assume that the images of Batman and Robin appearing behind Bruce and Dick when they think about what they could do to solve the mystery as their respective alter-egos are to be taken figuratively and not as actual occurances, otherwise they'd be something of a giveaway.
Well it would appear that Frank Robbins has decided that, so we don't swerve too close to real life, the Paul character should be re-named Saul and, if his facial hair and dress-sense are anything to go by, changed from a cheery mop-top to an evil magician. There definitely appears to be an obvious George Harrison clone, and a Lennon lookalike who also looks like he's a good three decades older than anyone else in the band whilst the artist seems to have forgotten all of Ringo's distinguishing features like his massive nose and sad eyes and instead decided to base his character on 1972 Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz. (Also, the car Wayne sends to pick them up appears to be chauffered by M. Bison from Streetfighter II. Or Cheryl Cole.)
Do Superheroes regularly go pinching stuff from celebrities bedrooms as they sleep just on a hunch? Don't they have to get warrants? It must be hard enough being famous and coping with all the attention without Wonder Woman flying through your window at all hours trying to swipe your toiletry bag in case it's got blueprints in it or something. Frankly Robin deserves to be clattered in the back of the head for snooping around like Raffles in latex. And he's not much cop as a crime fighter if he get's taken out by someone as fey as a pop star. The only musicians who it's acceptable to take a leathering from are the notoriously 'handy' Roger Daltrey, Ted Nugent or all 35 members of Earth, Wind and Fire at once.
Now they're bugging the Twists' calls! Even ignoring the fact that they've apparently got dressed up as Batman and Robin just to sit around in private listening to other people on the phone this is some seriously unethical behaviour. No wonder America comes up with Camp X-Ray and friendly fire if they all grow up reading their heroes pissing all over the UN Human Rights Charter with gay abandon.
"They call this a mike- BOOM!", "Lets make this in STEREO! I've balanced the LEFT channel... now for the RIGHT!", I can't help reading lines like that and picturing Robin sat alone at night trying to think of every possible arena for him to have a scrap and then trying to think of things he'd find there to attack people with and then an appropriate one-liner to accompany it- something akin to a cross between Jackie Chan and Emo Phillips. I like to think that similar lines to these spoken by Robin were uttered by Phil Spector when he attacked the various musicians who've had the opportunity to work with him through the years. But not when he shot that woman as that would be in extraordinarily bad taste.
That tape recorder must be made of kevlar or something! That's the second person it's been used to batter and there's not a scratch on it. Try that with an I-pod and you'll be picking bits of white plastic out of the carpet for months.
Let me get this straight- Saul has perpetrated fraud on a massive scale and get's adulation-a-plenty on the final page whilst Glennan/Chumley, who's only apparent crime was smacking Robin over the head whilst the Boy Wonder was in the middle of robbing a sleeping house guest is last seen being man-handled out of the door- no doubt en-route to a life in solitary! Can't help but think the writer of this particular comic was more a McCartney fan than a Lennon one. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if Mark Chapman had a copy of this issue stuck in his bag between the gun and Catcher in the Rye...
NEXT WEEK: Iron Man meets The Bee Gees
Children In Need 2009
3 years ago I wrote a blow-by-low account of a night watching Children in Need but, since none of you read it, I'm doing it again this evening because I'm light on ideas at the best of times and it's an effort to bring some much needed verisimilitude (look it up) to this site. I also failed to make it all the way to 2am last time out and on this occasion- I promise you- that will not happen again. I'm going to stare 7 solid hours of light entertainment in the face and it will blink before I do. Here goes...
7.05- Five minutes gone and Terry Wogan's already been introduced twice either side of a performance from 'thinking-man's Cheryl Cole' Alesha Dixon- whose head appears to be far too small for her body. It turns out she'll also be co-hosting the show tonight with Wogan and Tess Daly. It all seems a long way from the days when the lady hosting duties were undertaken by stern crimestopper Sue Cook accepting massive cheques for a few thousand pounds from the staff at Littlewoods. In other news the crowd is strangely subdued, though that might only be an illusion due to my exposure to the X-Factor which seemingly gives it's audience an order to impersonate a holocaust in a screaming factory at every opportunity. We also get our first trip to see members of the Eastenders cast taking telephone donations at the top of BT Tower while being interviewed by Peter Andre. In turn we get our first thigh-slapping moment of the evening when Andre attempts to hijack a call from a generous donor who promptly hangs up the moment he speaks. Even if the former Mr Jordan is hosting for free he's actually lost the charity money just by being there which must be about as low as a career gets in British television- and lest we forget this is a man who married a woman he met while on a gameshow based around eating kangaroo arses in some shrubbery.
7.30- We've had our first 'Why we're here' clip which was hosted by the three principal actors from Harry Potter who are about as far from the idea of being Children in Need as it's possible to get. This is followed by Peter Kay's contribution- a video of literally hundreds of classic animated characters singing a medley that builds to a combination of 'Hey Jude' and 'One Day Like This'. Already seems destined to be the highlight of the night which, with 6 and a half hours to go, is a little depressing. This is thrown into sharp relief with the subsequent 'special' episode of Merlin- merely the first of what I don't doubt will be countless TV shows sullying themselves in the name of charity by shoe-horning Pudsey Bear into a five minute scene that was written by whoever lost a bet. There's also been a band on called JLS who achieve the impossible by being Boyz II Men with less charisma.
7.50- First regional bit- in the North West it's being beamed, inexplicably, from an aquarium which seems slightly tasteless with half of Cumbria currently submerged by a 'once-in-a-thousand-year' flood. Back in London, John Barrowman turns up and recreates Tom Cruise's famous dance number in Risky Business wearing a pair of boxers which he subsequently promises to autograph and auction without offering to wash them first. Doesn't he know there's a flu pandemic on?
8.10- Four members of the Hollyoaks cast do a Queen medley, notable only for the microphone of one of them malfunctioning which creates more tension, drama and emotional resonance than any episode of their show ever. This could be a way forward for Hollyoaks where, let's be honest, the actors are picked more on looks and willingness to do everything in their underwear than acting ability. If they populate the studio with malfunctioning equipment such as lights which intermittently explode it'd at least add a nervy, jumpy, Giovanni Ribisi (look him up) quality to their performances.
8.30- Now it's Casualty's turn for a C.I.N. special- featuring Pudsey being treated on a secret teddy-bear ward in Holby General which is easily the most disturbing sight of the evening so far. I reckon that these downright bizarre charity versions shouldn't be shown on the night of Children In Need itself but should just be slotted into the show's normal run elsewhere in the year without telling anyone. It'd get everyone talking. Plus I reckon it'd have more impact if the Pudsey storyline in Casualty had to intertwine with that of a man who drove a lorry full of fireworks into a warehouse storing matches and tar.
9.30- In the last hour we've had the people from The One Show recreating 'Fame' in the BBC Television Centre car park, Dragons Den doing an episode of Challenge Anneka, Westlife (who I thought had just, sort of, vanished), and four blokes from The Bill singing 'Mack the Knife'. Read that sentence back and consider the production meeting that led to each of those ideas getting the green-light. I can only think it took place at gunpoint and involved a tombola and several industrial strength hallucinogens
9.55- Eastenders' annual karaoke car crash this year took the music of Motown and stamped on its neck with terrifying efficiency while the latest trip to the North West's broadcast featured a bunch of kids dressed as zombies shuffling through a tunnel at the aquarium FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. 3 hours in and this is all starting to feel like an experiment in how far the goodwill of the British people can be pushed. I know it's all for a good cause but just how in need are these children? I'll be honest, it's going to take some pretty spectacular hardship to justify me having to watch Minty and Daniella Westbrook bum-raping some of the finest pop music ever made. Never mind- here come the newsreaders...
10.00- The newsreaders' performance is one of the highlights of ever year and they don't disappoint on this outing. First the ladies give it some Beyonce, which opens up the tantilising possibility of George Aligaiyah turning up to perfrom Jay-Z's rap from 'Crazy in Love'. In the end, he doesn't and we have to make do with Bill Turnbull and Nick Owen breakdancing to Run DMC's 'It's Like That'. The bit with the ladies looks like this:
And, more importantly, like this...
It really is like the office Christmas party at the end of the world. A special mention must go to Sophie Raworth whose exploits in this number lead to a highly-charged text exchange between me and a friend about newsreader fantasies that finishes with a description of Raworth, Emily Mathis and Natasha Kaplinsky getting flooded out of a neglige testing factory and taking shelter in a paddling pool warehouse until thousands of packets of jelly burst all over them due to high humidity. Still, it's all for charity...
10.30- The traditional switch over to BBC2 during the news features a comedians' version of Mastermind and the frankly bizarre spectacle of John Humphrys discussing Five Star with Steven K. Amos and quoting 'My Humps' by the Black Eyed Peas while asking a question. This is staring to feel less like a telethon and more like a psychotic episode by the minute.
12.00- Since we've returned to BBC1 there's been a 'special' episode of Poirot which marks an even deeper career nadir for David Suchet than 'Executive Decision', a performance from Harry Connick Jr who hasn't been seen since he got killed to death by an alien in 'Independence Day' and songs by Spandau Ballet and Madness when the whole show suddenly seems to arrive in 1983 without any warning. In fact, there's been more and more stuff repeated from earlier in the show which gives a worrying sense of deja vu and of time slipping it's moorings and floating off into the distance leaving us trapped in a loop of the last 5 hours. I've just found out that CERN is back online as of 3 hours ago. This can't be a coincidence.
12.30- The latest 'special' is billed as 'Rebus meets Taggart' even though 50% of those people are dead. Still, it's probably the funniest thing on all night so far though whether this is due to quality on the show's behalf or creeping insanity on mine is, at this late hour, hard to judge. It does portray Pudsey as a potential murderer for the second time tonight after Poirot did it earlier. This is a bizarre trend which does at least open the way for a 'The Wire' Children in Need special next year.
12.45- The Nolans are on. In terms of tests of stamina, this is now the telly-watching equivalent of doing a triathlon while suffering from M.E. 75 minutes to go. Fading fast. No-one's even trying anymore. Least of all me.
2.00- Made it. Barely. The last hour was a punishing mixture of musical performances (Ronan Keating, Stereophonics, The New Original Sugababe Experience) and more 'Why We're Here' films. The only personal highlight came during Paloma Faith's song and was basically centred around remembering that I know someone who knows her drummer. That's the most exciting thing that's happened to me since I was hypnotised by Fiona Bruce's jiggling bottom over 4 hours ago.
This is how I spent my Friday night.
And I didn't even think of a punchline.
No Sex Please, We’re Reading
"This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be. There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze."
And that bit doesn't even mention the huge green dildo...
The above passage is Philip Roth's entry (no pun inteded) in this year's Literary Review Bad Sex Award- a trinket designed to "draw attention to the cruse, tasteless... passages of sexual description in the modern novel". It's also the one award that usually affords new up-and-coming novellists the chance to take on the true heavyweights of their field. A chap called Anthony Quinn, for instance, is on this year's list for his debut novel which means he's gone from writing film reviews for The Independent to duking it out with both a legend like Roth and Australian doom-monger/Droopy impersonator Nick Cave for an award which only 2 years ago was posthumously scooped by Norman Mailer.
The sheer breadth of talent and experience on display in the list (Richard Milward's 'Ten Storey Love Song'- another nominee- might be the worst book ever written) just goes to prove one thing for certain- nobody, no matter who they are, should ever attempt to write about the sexual act.
Ever.
Returning to Roth as an example, he's had half a century to nail (no pun intended) a decent description of sex since he wrote "her breasts swam towards me like two pink-nosed fish and she let me hold them" in 'Goodbye, Columbus' but as his most recent attempt demonstrates, all he's really been able to do in 50 years is ramp up the deranged imagery and filter everything through what appears to be either a compound nervous breakdown or a major psychotic episode.
The basic problem appears to be this: the author wishing to describe the act of physical sex-doing is going to have to confront some intense physical and mental sensations achieved via some frankly ludicrous bodily actions by the participants. Removed from the pleasure of involvement or the onanistic joys of watching attractive people enjoying it, sex is a mostly preposterous activity involving thrusting, odd primal noises and face pulling that wouldn't look out of place in a documentary about people having their feet run over by heavy machinery.
A writer is therefore faced with a stark choice. Option 1 is to write about sex with brutal frankness and simplicity. This would make a novel feel like a school biology textbook and therefore be about as erotic as the instructions for assembling a piece of flat-pack furniture that begin with 'insert rod A into slot B and secure with nuts provided' (no pun intended)
Option 2 meanwhile involves cloaking the description with similes, metaphors and symbolism until it resembles less an erotically charged missive from Planet Orgasm and more the demented ramblings of a couped-up prisoner of war who's spent 4 solid decades thinking constantly about a shag but has had nothing but a dusty hole in the ground and a potato sack on which to take out his frenzied yearnings. This is the approached favoured by most writers and of which Roth's earlier passage is a particularly fine example.
Neither of these options seems particularly viable or attractive and that's why I feel that, while the bad sex award is a step in the right direction, it doesn't go nearly far enough. Any description of sex in novels should henceforth be banned before any other truly great writer like Philip Roth shags up their reputation (no pun intended) by claiming that women involved in sex acts with huge green dildoes are also wearing masks on their fannies.
In defence of the art of writing about sex, Richard Milward (he of the appalling 'Ten Storey Love Song') said that "some authors spend five pages describing a walk in the park but when it comes to sex they'll just do two sentences- 'she rolled off him'. Sex is exciting stuff- it can be very dirty and smelly. But you've got to get stuck in".
No pun intended.
Leaving aside his descrpition of sex as 'smelly' in the folder marked 'Too Much Information', Milward totally misses the point about what should and shouldn't be described. If a couple in a novel actually have sex the reader's imagination should be able to fill in the blanks, as it were, rather than the author ruining everything with a combination of cack-handed imagery and punishing detail. To illustrate my point, let's turn to the world of film.
It might be a cliche to say it, but cinema doesn't get any more erotic and powerful that the image of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr rolling around on the beach in From Here to Eternity. They are utterly consumed with each other and, let's be frank here, it's clearly the prelude to the best shag in the world. Lancaster is about to do things to Kerr that none of us would be proud of but which will live with both of them forever. It's gonna get nasty. There'll be animal noises. It might hurt. Your imaginations can fill in the rest (provided their like mine that is)
But does the film show us this? No. We just get the kiss in the sand, not the eye-watering fuck-fest that inevitably follows. And that's why it's such an erotically charged moment. Fast forward 40 years and cinema's desperate attempts to be erotic involved filming right up Sharon Stone's skirt so you could see her lady regions. Even without the fat bloke from Seinfeld and Jurassic Park sweating away it wasn't in the slightest bit erotic or arousing. It was just a fanny.
But at least it wasn't wearing a mask.