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Wednesday 26 January 2011
Monday 17 March 2008
Friday 14 March 2008
We Are Very Funny
I’ve always thought We Are Scientists are that rare thing - popstars who are actually funny, who don’t moan on all the time about ’art’, and who realise that having a laugh is just as important a part of the day job as having a way with a tune.
This video confirms that. It features them running riot at the recent NME awards, making utter fools of the ‘indie elite’. Hurrah!
Who’d have thought Kate Nash would turn out to be as humourless as Billy Bragg?
(“We would!” - The World)
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This Week's Loves
Two-word reviews of all the best shit this seven days...
[Album] Hercules and Love Affair - Smoothly moving.
[Book] Charlie Brooker’s ‘Dawn Of The Dumb’ - Consistently hilarious.
[Book] Markus Zusak’s ‘The Book Thief’ - Beguilingly confusing.
[TV] Skins - Emotionally charged.
[Food] Creme Eggs - Deliciously guilty.
[MySpace] Aux Raus - Ridiculously banging.
That’s your lot.
Word Of The Week
'Burnished'
As seen on stickers adorning the Hercules and Love Affair album.
It basically means shiny, polished or smooth.
Which, in relation to the album, makes it an adjectival masterstroke.
.
Wednesday 12 March 2008
Nicola Talks Jeans
You know that South African department store saleswoman that Arabella Weir played in The Fast Show? Well, it wasn’t a character. She’s alive and well, and hawking expensive body-measuring techniques to the world’s greatest popstar.
Yep, this YouTube Gold follows Nicola Roberts on her hunt for the perfect pair of jeans.
Gasp and marvel and literally be amazed as she:
:: Spends £450 on something that could have been done with a tape measure!
:: Confuses 3D rendering with nudity!
:: Uses the phrase “You can see what your bum’s doing”!
:: Goes spectacularly ‘off-message’ at the 07.16 mark!
Also note how, when the camera first joins ‘Cola’ in the department store, it actually looks as though she works there. Just think, but for a Popstars: The Rivals reprieve, that is how it could have been.
Isn’t it odd that they’re recommending jeans and outfits worth hundreds of pounds on a DVD that is aimed squarely at teenage girls?
.
Thursday 28 February 2008
Tuesday 26 February 2008
“I’m not man, I’m not dude; I’m OFFICER!”
1% of policemen join the force through an altruistic desire to help society and protect individuals. The other 99% are former bed-wetting bastards who were probably abused by their fathers and now feel the need to exact inadequacy-based ‘revenge’ on other, even weaker individuals. Like children.
Take this twat for example:
Pathetic little man.
Argue Barmies
Despite the lovey-dovey image propagated by most, famous people do not always get along.
Here are two of my favourite examples of prominent figures spectacularly failing to like each other; the first of which features Hollywood’s Midas-du-jour Judd Apatow responding to accusations of plagiarism and subsequent use of the flamer’s favourite “Get Cancer” with the immortal line, “I’ll wait ‘til you get it then steal it from you”.
Amazing.
Judd Apatow vs. Mark Brazill
Julie Burchill vs. Camille Paglia
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Sunday 10 February 2008
This goes on a bit
A friend of mine once went out with a girl who could not end a sentence. I’m not saying she was a blabbermouth (she actually seemed quite shy); her problem was one of punctuation. Not the sort of flagrant disregard for it that would see her hunted down and tasered silly by Lynn Truss, this was a more subtle - and yet quite profound - flaw.
Basically, texts would arrive on his mobile, posing fevered questions like “What time shall we meet!”, while follow-ups would see her claiming to be “really looking forward to it?”
It was bit confusing until we worked out what was going on. It seemed as though this poor girl was trapped in a state of flux, constantly flitting between feelings of extreme excitement and anguished confusion. And always at the least appropriate moments.
“You’re a really great guy?”, enquired one missive, followed by some things about phone bills which I won’t go into here. It got me thinking: isn’t it interesting how much a sentence’s meaning can be altered just by the shape of the squiggle you put at the end of it?
(NB. If you answered ‘No’ to that, STOP READING NOW. You have been warned).
For example, I may wish to inform some people, via, say, my Facebook status update, that I am about to embark on a visit to the local convenience store. I have three options. If I am really not that bothered about my imminent shopward stroll, I may wish to impart news of it followed by a full-stop:
“Daniel is going to the shop.”
The full-stop is like a graphological shrug. Emotionless, it conveys nothing. That is left for the preceding words to take care of. Sometimes it might be used to transmit a deadpan sense of underwhelming, but not often, and only by sarcastic bastards.
If I am really looking forward to my upcoming journey, I could inform people of it with the aid of an exclamation mark:
“Daniel is going to the shop!”
Clearly, this would denote a level of mental instability on my part. It is impossible to get that excited about something so mundane. And yet, if Facebook is anything to go by (and it has to be said that it probably isn’t), people are routinely amazed by the most ordinary of occurrences, and choose to show this with a freethinking approach to exclamation marks.
This makes simple status updates like “…is going for lunch” seem either tragically overenthused or, as I like to imagine, more like impassioned, Braveheart-style cries for independence than fluffy bits of webinfo. You will never take away my right to Subway!
Other exclamofans include weekly TRUE!!! STORIESSSS!!!! magazines, which feature headlines like “Why I Married My Murderer!” or “Brutally Beaten By My Sexy Fitness Instructor!!!” Next time you‘re in a shop just look at them. I saw one that actually had more exclamation marks on it than it did words. Sorry, I mean, words!
(FYI exclamation marks, like full-stops, can also be used sarcastically - “I’m loving this Richard Dawkins lecture!” - but I might as well tell you right now that anyone who is enough of an arsehole to do that is really not worth bothering with as a person).
Anyway, back to the point. If my impending consumerist voyage fills me with existential angst and a profound confusion, I might like to express some of that via the use of a question mark:
“Daniel is going to the shop?”
This suggests that I can’t quite believe my actions. Maybe I’m an megarich celebrity who normally has other people to do that kind of thing for him, or a Sam Tyler-like time traveller who wakes up one day to find himself… on the way to the… shop? (But not in 1973).
There is a dark and mysterious fourth option. The comma. Often brought about as a result of a typo, this sits at the end of the sentence, hinting at further possibilities but, tantalisingly, not revealing them.
“Daniel is going to the shop,”
This is probably the most frustrating punctuation choice of them all. A reader of this sentence would be left wanting to know what I planned to do upon arrival at said shop, or where I was intending to go afterwards. Despite my cheeky hint at further bean-spilling, ultimately, they would be left unsatisfied.
I think the point I am trying - and, let’s face it, failing - to make is this: let’s hear it for the little guys. Punctuation marks can have as profound an effect on the meaning of a sentence as the words within it. They are the cornerstone of every utterance, the icing on the lexical cake. Quiet, dignified heroes. A world without punctuation would be like a jellyfish without an outer membrane: messy and unsettling. Let’s look after our membrane.
Basically, texts would arrive on his mobile, posing fevered questions like “What time shall we meet!”, while follow-ups would see her claiming to be “really looking forward to it?”
It was bit confusing until we worked out what was going on. It seemed as though this poor girl was trapped in a state of flux, constantly flitting between feelings of extreme excitement and anguished confusion. And always at the least appropriate moments.
“You’re a really great guy?”, enquired one missive, followed by some things about phone bills which I won’t go into here. It got me thinking: isn’t it interesting how much a sentence’s meaning can be altered just by the shape of the squiggle you put at the end of it?
(NB. If you answered ‘No’ to that, STOP READING NOW. You have been warned).
For example, I may wish to inform some people, via, say, my Facebook status update, that I am about to embark on a visit to the local convenience store. I have three options. If I am really not that bothered about my imminent shopward stroll, I may wish to impart news of it followed by a full-stop:
“Daniel is going to the shop.”
The full-stop is like a graphological shrug. Emotionless, it conveys nothing. That is left for the preceding words to take care of. Sometimes it might be used to transmit a deadpan sense of underwhelming, but not often, and only by sarcastic bastards.
If I am really looking forward to my upcoming journey, I could inform people of it with the aid of an exclamation mark:
“Daniel is going to the shop!”
Clearly, this would denote a level of mental instability on my part. It is impossible to get that excited about something so mundane. And yet, if Facebook is anything to go by (and it has to be said that it probably isn’t), people are routinely amazed by the most ordinary of occurrences, and choose to show this with a freethinking approach to exclamation marks.
This makes simple status updates like “…is going for lunch” seem either tragically overenthused or, as I like to imagine, more like impassioned, Braveheart-style cries for independence than fluffy bits of webinfo. You will never take away my right to Subway!
Other exclamofans include weekly TRUE!!! STORIESSSS!!!! magazines, which feature headlines like “Why I Married My Murderer!” or “Brutally Beaten By My Sexy Fitness Instructor!!!” Next time you‘re in a shop just look at them. I saw one that actually had more exclamation marks on it than it did words. Sorry, I mean, words!
(FYI exclamation marks, like full-stops, can also be used sarcastically - “I’m loving this Richard Dawkins lecture!” - but I might as well tell you right now that anyone who is enough of an arsehole to do that is really not worth bothering with as a person).
Anyway, back to the point. If my impending consumerist voyage fills me with existential angst and a profound confusion, I might like to express some of that via the use of a question mark:
“Daniel is going to the shop?”
This suggests that I can’t quite believe my actions. Maybe I’m an megarich celebrity who normally has other people to do that kind of thing for him, or a Sam Tyler-like time traveller who wakes up one day to find himself… on the way to the… shop? (But not in 1973).
There is a dark and mysterious fourth option. The comma. Often brought about as a result of a typo, this sits at the end of the sentence, hinting at further possibilities but, tantalisingly, not revealing them.
“Daniel is going to the shop,”
This is probably the most frustrating punctuation choice of them all. A reader of this sentence would be left wanting to know what I planned to do upon arrival at said shop, or where I was intending to go afterwards. Despite my cheeky hint at further bean-spilling, ultimately, they would be left unsatisfied.
I think the point I am trying - and, let’s face it, failing - to make is this: let’s hear it for the little guys. Punctuation marks can have as profound an effect on the meaning of a sentence as the words within it. They are the cornerstone of every utterance, the icing on the lexical cake. Quiet, dignified heroes. A world without punctuation would be like a jellyfish without an outer membrane: messy and unsettling. Let’s look after our membrane.
Wednesday 30 January 2008
"If I had a knife I'd stick it right through you"
So, Jeremy Beadle’s body has gone the same way as his hand and withered away. It was a bout of pneumonia that finally saw off the famed television prankster.
What better way to mark his passing than by remembering him at his best: out there on the streets, ridiculing, humiliating and terrifying members of the public as he saw fit.
In this clip, Jeremy and his team of unemployed actors conspire hilariously to convince a woman her home and its contents are up for repossession, leading to rib-tickling threats of domestic violence, cruel mocking of the woman’s prized memorabilia and quite possibly the worst fake beard ever seen on British television (if it is indeed fake, that is).
I wonder if ‘Husband Ken’ ever escaped that loveless little death pact?
Prison Bake
Staff and inmates at HMP Manchester, formerly Strangeways Prison, were left hot - and very bothered - when a massive fire broke out. The fire, believed to be serving 25 years for arson and manslaughter, broke out at around 5pm on Tuesday evening. No one was said to be hurt in the incident.
Police say the fire is extremely dangerous and should not be approached by anyone. Members of the public who see the fire are advised to contact Crimestoppers or their local police station.
Saturday 26 January 2008
You tube, I tube, everybody tubes
The downside to being such a hard-partying disco nightmare is that often, I forget things. Not important things like my name (unless I am utterly twatted), but stuff like when a programme is on telly, or when to write about amazing things I have seen on YouTube.
There now follows two YouTube videos that I meant to blog (and fuck off is that ever a verb) aaaaaaages ago. The first - either an impassioned anti-racism track or an account of an explosion round at Willy Wonka’s, however you choose to look at it - is a Stateside smash that has seen its mercurial star, the entirely amazing Tay Zonday, perform on Letterman and various other gosh-aren‘t-I-famous American talk shows.
The second is just a clever music video.
Enjoy.
Friday 23 November 2007
Amazing
The CSA should have done stuff like this, it would have been fun.
Next time you go into HMV, look for the Hannah Montana calendar and check out Miley Ray Cyrus'es's' MASSIVE WEIRD MOUTH. Scary.
Wednesday 14 November 2007
Lessons in Speech Presentation #2
This time courtesy of the News Of The World.
BIG SAM REFUSES TO CONDEMN BAD BOY BARTON
Actual quote: "It is wrong and he should not have done it".
Good work chaps.
BIG SAM REFUSES TO CONDEMN BAD BOY BARTON
Actual quote: "It is wrong and he should not have done it".
Good work chaps.
The TV Times
A Cut Below
Hair is amazing. It keeps your head warm. It stops your ears looking massive. It prevents people calling you names like ‘baldy’ or ‘shiny-fodded fuckface’ on the bus. All in all, it’s pretty bloody special.
Which makes it all the more surprising that anyone should go within a light year of the Celebrity Scissorhands (weeknights, BBC3) salon, let alone head there for a haircut. But wait - get the yellow buckets out - it’s all for Children In Need. These people are bleeding for Pudsey, so that makes everything okay.
In fairness, the most shocking thing about CSssh is that not all of the celebrities have been completely rubbish. Despite starting out like the proverbial bull in a china shop, miniscule popster Lil’ Chris - they use lights and mirrors to make him appear taller than Warwick Davies - has found that through a combination of charm, ambition and, y’know, actually trying, he is able to produce markedly unterrible results.
The same goes for Aled Haydn Jones, who can now place ‘learnt to cut hair quite well on BBC3’ alongside ‘publicly outed by Chris Moyles’ on his CV. Innocuous mini-slebs doing inoffensive haircuts does not, however, make good television.
Neither does George Lamb, a former music manager with such dazzling successes as the Audiobullys and a distinctly pre-fame Lily Allen to his name; a presenter barely able to contain his mocking scorn for the more adventurous celebs’ disastrous attempts at shear-wielding. George, here’s a tip: don’t praise someone’s new do to the skies before thanking them for being ‘a good sport’. It comes across as insincere.
The real story here though is the blossoming romance between two of the show’s stars. From frosty but mutually-respectful beginnings, these two have developed a beautiful friendship, based on flirtatious disses and get-it-over-with playfighting, which must surely culminate in them following Chantelle and Preston up the aisle (and then down to the divorce courts) as the next reality celeb pairing. I’m talking, of course, about Lee and Steve.
And what a pair they are. Assistant Dodderer Steve ‘Increasingly’ Strange (who would have to change his surname to ‘Fuckingstupid’ were his creations to live up to it) stumbles around the salon offering ’direction’ to his fellow contestants, which varies from “let’s shave the back off”, to “let’s shave the side off”, all the way through to, “let’s shave it all off”.
The presumably self-styled old romantic started the show with gusto, gleefully hacking away at hair like a drunk gardener going at a hedge, but a crisis of confidence, brought on by a bout of “seriously runny eyes”, saw his creative pipe trickle dry. One eager (read: woefully misadvised) patron sought Steve out for a ‘creative cut’, only to be sent away with a boring biddy bob. He didn’t even clipper her neck. The disappointment of it all, not to mention the resultant self-doubt, saw him hide in a cupboard, shaking, for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile, outside Steve’s cupboard of despair, ‘Hairdresser to the Stars’ Lee Stafford - a proud graduate of the David E. Cocksure School Of Strutting - prowls the salon like an inordinately smug panther, offering nothing more helpful than a sly smirk every time the celebrities fuck things up.
Luckily, this isn’t often, because Lee is a good and thorough teacher. Except, wait, he isn’t. He speeds through demonstrations with all the usefulness of Gordon Ramsay explaining the Theory of Relativity (“Light. Speed. Space. Bends. Relativity - Done”.), leaving the contestants entirely nonplussed about what it is they are supposed to do.
And that is where the TV Gold lies: clueless people attempting to do things they are totally unqualified to do. On Hell’s Kitchen, it’s cooking. On Big Brother, it’s having a grown-up conversation. Here, it is cutting hair. I hope, if there is to be a winner, that it is Lil’ Chris. But most of all, I hope that Lee and Steve get married, and adopt millions of hairy children to practise hairdressing on. That would be brilliant.
Thursday 25 October 2007
Busier than Barlow in a Brothel
Phew! It has been a busy time for me ‘of late’.
A few weeks ago I was asked to interview a popstar for Popjustice. He was a very nice man. We talked about what the weather is like in LA and where he likes to go on holiday. You can read the results of my interview here.
A couple of days after that I went to Clique, where I once again danced and drank far too much. Confirming most people’s view that I am indeed A Bloody Mess, I nevertheless fell in love that night, with a record I have played every day since.
(The beginning of the next sentence might rhyme depending on how you say it). The week after Clique (see?) I went to Keys Money Lipstick with my good friend John. We drank. We danced. We went fucking crazy over a pinball machine. John didn’t know whether Martin out of the Tigerpicks was a boy or a girl (he is a boy). We went to Burger King at 2am and got into anargument minor discussion on the way home. Good times.
In between all this I was busy conducting an email interview with hot young girl group The Real Heat, who always took ages to reply to anything, but were also always polite in their tardiness. The eventual results of my interview can be found in this article here.
With one eye on my inbox I headed out two weeks ago to the fashionable The Ting Tings’ launch party for their second single, ’Fruit Machine’, at Salford’s Islington Mill (literally an old mill). Once again I danced and drank too much, but I did manage to write a mini article about it, which you can read by clicking here.
The week after that I took it easy, heading to a private party to see everyone’s favourite power rockers JOON do their stuff in aid of somebody’s birthday. I don’t know whose birthday it was, but by the end of the night it felt like mine all over again :(
While all this was going on, I dutifully maintained updates on the world’s greatest indiepopelectro blog - which, as you know by now - is here. I also carried on going to work in the world’s greatest shithole - which, as you know by now - is here. On top of everything, I even found the time to get beaten up and robbed. What a busy bastard I have been.
I am not sure what I will do this weekend yet, but given that I currently feel as though I’ve been run over several times by the flu wagon - and have the most nagging cough OF ALL TIME - I might ‘do the sofa thing’. But, then again, it is Clique time again…
Nick Carter interview
The Real Heat interview
The Ting Tings article
hip young gunslinger
x
A few weeks ago I was asked to interview a popstar for Popjustice. He was a very nice man. We talked about what the weather is like in LA and where he likes to go on holiday. You can read the results of my interview here.
A couple of days after that I went to Clique, where I once again danced and drank far too much. Confirming most people’s view that I am indeed A Bloody Mess, I nevertheless fell in love that night, with a record I have played every day since.
(The beginning of the next sentence might rhyme depending on how you say it). The week after Clique (see?) I went to Keys Money Lipstick with my good friend John. We drank. We danced. We went fucking crazy over a pinball machine. John didn’t know whether Martin out of the Tigerpicks was a boy or a girl (he is a boy). We went to Burger King at 2am and got into an
In between all this I was busy conducting an email interview with hot young girl group The Real Heat, who always took ages to reply to anything, but were also always polite in their tardiness. The eventual results of my interview can be found in this article here.
With one eye on my inbox I headed out two weeks ago to the fashionable The Ting Tings’ launch party for their second single, ’Fruit Machine’, at Salford’s Islington Mill (literally an old mill). Once again I danced and drank too much, but I did manage to write a mini article about it, which you can read by clicking here.
The week after that I took it easy, heading to a private party to see everyone’s favourite power rockers JOON do their stuff in aid of somebody’s birthday. I don’t know whose birthday it was, but by the end of the night it felt like mine all over again :(
While all this was going on, I dutifully maintained updates on the world’s greatest indiepopelectro blog - which, as you know by now - is here. I also carried on going to work in the world’s greatest shithole - which, as you know by now - is here. On top of everything, I even found the time to get beaten up and robbed. What a busy bastard I have been.
I am not sure what I will do this weekend yet, but given that I currently feel as though I’ve been run over several times by the flu wagon - and have the most nagging cough OF ALL TIME - I might ‘do the sofa thing’. But, then again, it is Clique time again…
Nick Carter interview
The Real Heat interview
The Ting Tings article
hip young gunslinger
x
Joke Of The Year
Q: Why is it all over for Facebook?
A: Because the writing is on the wall.
Thank you, I am here FOREVER.
Thursday 18 October 2007
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