Scary movies.

Here’s a piece of advice. If you really, REALLY like a film and its very dear to you and it kind of sums up amazing film making and has had a special place in your heart since you were a child, avoid showing it to close friends/significant others/people who’s opinion you value. The blank, unmoved expression on their face as the final credits role and the utterance of the words “Is that it?” can be slightly upsetting.

Anyways, at least I got my annual viewing of the immortal “Halloween”. Next year, think i’ll watch it alone tho. :/

The Burning Issue

For the attention of any politician hoping to win my vote.

Dear Sir/Madam
I am not interested in the prices of houses, stamp duty, hospitals, children’s education, crime, drugs, famine, war, the Unification of Ireland, immigration or the Irish Language. I don’t really care if you take brown envelopes, drugs, bungs or willys in your bum. I have but one issue that needs resolving and I will be forever in your debt. Could you have it passed into law that it is illegal (under the threat of death by stabbing, kicking then burning) to play aloud in public, the 2005 Daniel Powter song “You’ve Had A Bad Day”. This song, aside from being just shit, is so obnoxiously patronising and annoying that it may well have the potential to induce mass rage on a widespread scale. For instance, just today I was indeed having “a bad day” and I really didn’t need to be reminded ad nauseum by Mr. Powter in his whiny bitch voice. The effect being that I was almost driven to kicking to pieces the sound system which was polluting the air with this vile mess. I’m sure the good people at Burger King wouldn’t have appreciated that.

So, if you could make it your top priority to have this banned from our airwaves you will have a firm supporter.

Another year, another ordeal.

In a terrifying and frankly upsetting repeat of this very time last year, I’ve had to delve into the inner depths of my mind and come up with a topic to do a research paper on. Last year the debacle almost resulted in me spending more time thinking about what I was going to write about then actually writting about it. In the end I got there; producing an alright piece of work, which I even presented at a little conference type thingy, but not after a harrowing number of months of head scratching, brow-furrowing and general lazyness. This time, even more worryingly, the stakes have been multiplied by a factor of VERY HARD, seeing as though this one has to be 12,000 words and will be corrected by the no-shit-taking-from-Dundalk-based-chancers very important college people. Egads! This year however, I have what I believe to be a pretty interesting topic which will have the added bonus of involving some degree of watching films as research. Hooray! I’m wary to mention any more about it, given that there’s a high chance some being of an intellect much more powerful than mine (hard to imagine I know) may indeed shoot this fledgling idea to the ground in a flurry of logic bombs and shit on it. But for now, I am much more looking forward to this soul crushing ordeal than last years, so that’s good. I always feel its good to look forward to soul crushing ordeals. Another thing i’m looking forward to is next weeks graduation ceremony which will enable some much needed reunionising, reminising and most importantly heavy drinking. I fully intend to cover my mam’s wall in so many graduation photos that the very foundations of the house cannot support them. With the added bonus that I never leave college and enter *shudder* the real world. Well, its either that or run off to Australia where my fellow real-world-avoidees tend to go otherwise. Pah, i’ll take getting up at silly O’clock in the freezing cold and pitch dark to sit in traffic for two hours to make it to college in the heart of my most hated place on this very planet over living in sunny carefree paradise any day.

I also really will have to learn the correct use of commas once and for all.

Vanishing Point.

Today, I witnessed a man vanish into thin air.

Picture the scene; I have completed my mandatory 3 hours of college for the day and am high-tailing it back to my homestead as quickly as my legs and the good people at Matthew’s Coaches will permit me. As I walk down the street I notice a man approach me. Nothing untoward so far. Between me and this man is an entrance to a side street. As the man passes the entrance he turns and walks down aforementioned side street. Mere seconds later I reach the entrance and look down….and the man is gone. Now, there are two door ways on either side of the side-street leading into buildings but they are sufficiently far down the street that there is no possible way this man could have made it to either of them, open them, enter and close the door behind him. Thus, the only explanation for what I saw was that the man vanished. I stood there gobsmacked (not literally thankfully) and for a second actually looked upwards to see wether or not the man had actually taken flight. This last part I particularly like because it was a natural reaction and reminds me I still possess the illogical wonder-filled mind of child sometimes. Which may or may not be a bad thing, ask me again in 10 years.

I guess after reading all of that you’d expected a more satisfying and let’s be honest, interesting story. But that’s how it happened. Suppose this blog is like life; you invest your time and energy into seeing how it turns out and it ultimately dissapoints you.

What this blog does explain though is the eternal mystery of why I slow down blogging every summer then pick it up again (with varying results) in the Autumn. And the answer it seems is that there is a direct correlation between my blogging and my having college work to do. That’s that settled.

Free the Beijing Two

I know what you’re thinking. Yes, the world IS shit. Well, obviously I don’t mean Dundalk and it’s surrounding hinterland, but every part of the world outside of that is shit. North Korea has the bomb, encouraging a reckless arms race in the region which threatens to destablise Asia and potentialy arm the worlds most dangerous terrorists with the worlds most bangiest bombs. A think tank reckons 2% of the Iraqi population has been killed as a result of the recent conflict. The world continues to stand by whilst a major catastrophe continues in the troubled region of Darfur and Shane Ward’s career continues unchallenged. We are living in bleak times, and in times like these it is natural for us as human beings to embrace varieing forms of entertainment so as to distract ourselves from the foreboding pointlessness of our time on this earth. Once such form of distraction is Television.

The only problem is television is shit. I took one look at the listings for the tellybox tonight and couldn’t see a single thing which took my interest. But just before I could place my head in the oven and end it right there and then, I remembered that there is now a much better alternative for the telly, and that’s You Tube. You Tube you see, is like a time-travelling television that you control, much better than being at the mercy of the useless shits in RTE who seem to think people can tolerate Eddie Hobb’s voice, much less care about our financial troubles. We watch TV to get AWAY from our financial troubles. Fools! The beauty of You Tube is that you can watch more or less anything you want, when you want. So I can catch up on an old episode of the Simpson’s I recall or look at a woman being thumped in the face. The choice is yours. A friend of mine remarked that You Tube was “like Sky for poor people” but it’s much much better than Sky. Because Sky apart from football these days has nothing really of merit on it, and seem as far as I can tell to only show celebrity-based reality shows that have increasingly extravagent situations. Remember it began with simply two celebrities spending an evening in a flat? Well, last week it was a Celebrity football match, this week a Celebrity Circus. Hopefully next week it will be Celebrity Gas Chamber and we can finally get rid of Ralf Little and the So Solid Crew.

Now as you are probably aware You Tube was recently captured bought by Goooooogle, which may leave the future of this beautiful creature in the balance, but for the most part despite having the reputation of being an evil corporation (cuz they won’t let Chinese people look at boobs) Google tend to make the internet better, and so I have no beef with them. So, tonight having once again endured another day on this planet, I have found myself feasting my brain on the treats You Tube has to offer. The best thing I stumbled apon inbetween classic Alan Partridge moments and random acts of violence ,was “Heat Vision and Jack”, a little known pilot for a TV show made by Ben Stiller back in 1999 that never got optioned into a full series. Taking the premise of a fake science fiction action show, it starred Jack Black as “Jack Austin” an astronaut that was “exposed to inappropriate levels of solar energy” making him “three times smarter than the smartest man in the world” and Owen Wilson as his side-kick, Heat Vision. Heat Vision of course, is his motorbike which was fused with his ex-roommate when he was shot by an experimental ray fired by Ron Silver, some-time actor and head of the Nasa team trying to track down Jack and Heat-Vision. Kind of like a spoof Knight-Rider, A-Team, Incredible Hulk, 80s action type series it’s one of the funnier things i’ve seen. Sadly only one episode was ever made but thankfully this solitary gem has been preserved thanks to the invfinite power and compassion of You Tube. So, if you have broadband, 30 minutes to spare, and value my opinion you clearly need to re-assess your life…… but you should probably also check it out before you do so….by clicking HERE!

If you only see one movie this year, you need to get out more often.

This Friday I had the pleasure of seeing Martin Scorcese’s new film “The Departed” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Marky Mark and the fat fella from “Hang Time”. I’ve seen plenty of excellent films this year in the cinema from “Nacho Libre” (Better than Napolean Dynamite), to “Children of Men” to “Right at your door” (We won’t dwell on “Beerfest”), but this maybe the best i’ve seen so far, and one of the most entertaining films i’ve seen in a long time. It’s the tale of an undercover cop infiltrating an Irish American gang whilst they themselves place an inside man in the same force and features over two and a half hours of powerhouse acting, heads being shot and then exploding, plot twists and turns, people calling each other cunts and making lewd remarks about each others mothers and more people’s heads exploding. Probably one of the strongest parts of the movie was the dialogue, which in parts is laugh out loud funny. With a cast that strong you’d expect the acting to be top notch, and it is, but the best thrills are in the lesser names like Baldwin and Wahlberg who steal the show with their one liners. Of course, Dundalk being the outpost of non-culture it is I had to take in this cinematic feast in our nations capital where I continue my soul and brain destroying commute to college, but I urge you all to check this out if you can, you won’t be dissapointed. Unless your a brainless moron who thinks “Will and Grace” is funny, then you’ll probably be dissapointed and hopefully will be hit by a plane. Good day.

My Saturday in Pictures. With one picture from Sunday. Which describes things on Saturday. What?

So…now that I have a shiney new phone which has the cameras, and the bluetooth and the whatnots, I can do some picture blogging. It also helps that I have run out of things to say. So here we go, my day in pictures.

So on Saturday, having endured 8 hours looking at this with a hangover…

I felt my soul was in need of a boost, so I, with some chums, went to see the mighty Dublin Gospel Choir, who as usual put on a great show. Praise the Lord. Note, this picture makes the choir look either supernatural and/or radioactive. Im reliably informed they are neither.

Suppose I should help them spread the word and say that they have a CD out! Stroll on over to their website for details.
Aaaaanyways….
Here’s where the chronology of this little photo epic becomes confused, but I have a picture which could technically be placed in a number of places. BEFORE the DGC, I like many of you, endured the horror that was Ireland’s game against Cyprus. Enough has been said about that. On Sunday (we’re in the future now, try and stick with me on this) I saw this gem of a headline….nothing to out of the ordinary you say?

Well, If we travel BACK to my Saturday night story, after we saw the Choir; me and my merry band of travellers made our way to deepest Ardee to worship at a very different alter…that of the Giant White Man who stands tall over the good ravers in Europe’s Finest Nightclub, club SHAMBLES!

He is quite scary. Next day, I awoke bleary eyed and made my way back to work. Then I saw the news paper. Now do you see? How that newspaper picture referenced all the things in a confusing time travelling sort of way? No?

Damn.

In other news I have now joined the grumpy masses who commute from rural Ireland into our nation’s capital every morning at silly O’clock. Expect something equally nonsensical and probably even less interesting about that in a few days.

I get there in the end…

Yeah, so Arrested Development. This is a show which I was aware of for some time now and had been recommended to me by numerous peoples on numerous occasions but for one reason or another I never took the time to properly sample. Then recently the praise began to rise about my ears, with my brother for one, declaring it “the best sit-com ever”. This comment then got me to my battle stations with my usual deployment of “better than Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiam?..NEVER!!” Then it occured to me that until I properly watched an episode I couldn’t really say that. So this week as I browsed the television listings I noted a double bill of said programme one night, and I decided to settle this debate once and for all. Well…it may not be better, but it’s certainly as good as. Seriously, I can’t believe I slept on this all this time, its top notch stuff. First show in a long time (Well, since Curb..) that made me laugh out loud alot..its probably got the highest laugh-per-minute ratio of anything since…oh…Airplane? Since then i’ve been raiding the deepest darkest confines of the interweb to get up to date on this gem, and re-educating my brain on it. Sadly, like many things which are good, it was unappreciated by the larger masses and has been cancelled, but i’ve got plenty of it to catch up on for now.

So between this and Lost, i’ve been reapraising things which I until now had simply been dismissing without giving proper thought, so I figured i’d reconsider someother things that people I know like. For instance, a number of people I know speak highly of the band “Razorlight”. To me they’ve always sounded like cats being raped by dogs. (Razorlight, not the people I know). Then last week I came across their brand new song “America”…… And was pleasantly surprised to learn…that I was dead right. Haha, this sounds like the bastard offspring of McFly and Tom Petty. One step above a Busted song. Trash. Must remember to make fun of these people.

From what I hear, the jury’s still out on science..

Those crazy scientist types are at it again! Not content with having systematically failed to develop a butter that spreads straight from the fridge, or robots that would do our work for us… they are now attempting to OPEN A DOOR WAY TO A NEW DIMENSION in an experiment that has a a 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance of DESTROYING THE PLANET.

Boffins working underneath Europe are attempting to recreate the BIG BANG on a miniature scale by smashing little particles at each other in a big particle accelerator. This experiment has the potential to create tiny black holes that evaporate and possibly even find particles that offer evidence that the three dimensions known to mankind are just a fraction of those that exist. Holy shit! These egg-heads can’t work out a way to cure the common hangover, but will be able to open little portals to OTHER DIMENSIONS? One of the wild-eyed God-wannabe’s even says “It could be that there is a whole new universe a millimetre away from our heads but at right-angles to the three dimensions that are here” Right Angles? Universes Next To Our Heads??? Wow Wee.

I hope these fellas know what their doing, or at least have heeded the warnings of respected scientician and paranormal investigator Egon Spengler who warned us that crossing the streams to open up dimensional doorways has the possible side-effect of “all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light” or Total Protonic Reversal. Better yet, I hope they’ve seen Star Gate and know not to get involved in pan-dimensional wars with Egyptian Folk. But then again Star Gate is shit, so they should just stick with Ghostbusters.

Either way I will be watching out for an exact commencement date so I can prepare for the potential destruction of our planet by taking heroin, killing my enemies and telling you people what I really think of you.

Lost in Lost.

When I first saw Lost I didn’t like it. I don’t know why exactly, but it just seemed like contrived nonsense which was being made up as it went along, each twist not an attempt at great storytelling but simply to keep people confused enough that they’d keep watching in the vain hope of finding out what the hell was going on.

But somehow I found myself watching a few episodes and like a weird televisual virus it began to grow on me (or is that a fungus?) and I gained not the compulsive obsession some people have in it, but a mild interest in what was going on. But, I seem to suffer from mild television attention deficit disorder and I struggle to hold interest in there long-story-arc TV series. The exception has always been the Sopranos, but even this last series I drifted away. Some of this though, had to do with the series coinciding with the end of college and my contractual obligations to a local nite club and their cheap cheap booze. As such, I drifted away from Lost until I watched the last episode of the first series, and like someone had injected heroin into my eyeballs, I was hooked again. I dove head first into the second series and properly followed it for a bit, but like Sopranos, the distractions of college, boozing and my inability to pay attention from week to week meant yet again I wandered from the flock. I’ve been dipping in and out ever since, everytime I see an episode I am hooked for the full hour, and properly entertained yet somehow manage not to be so enthralled that I went out of my way to keep up with it.

In the end I kept myself up to date by reading online accounts and wrecking my friends and families heads for updates. But tonight, just as happened a year ago, I saw the final episode of series two and am completely hooked again. I am genuinely intrigued now..and I can’t wait to see what happens. I’m almost as interested to find out wether or not i’ll stay watching as much as what the fuck the story is about. I’ll keep you posted.

I still think it’s contrived nonsense which is being made up as it goes along, each twist not an attempt at great storytelling but simply to keep people confused enough that they’ll keep watching in the vain hope of finding out what the hell is going on.