I was feeling kinda down today. My visit to the dentist was depressing. I watched “An Inconvenient Truth” and realised our world is doomed. I cut myself shaving. Then I saw this, and everything seemed OK. Enjoy your weekend. I hope its Totally Awesome.
I’ve been disappointed by things far too much lately. Take Spider-Man 3 for example, disappointed. 28 Weeks Later? Disappointed. Thierry Henry pissing off? Disappointed. Prince Harry not going to get shot at daily in Iraq? Disappointed.
When I heard that the knew Beastie Boys (aka greatest band EVER) album was going to be all instrumental? I was disappointed. I mean, they can jam with the best of them, and their instrumental stuff is great, but I couldn’t see how an entire Beasties album without rhymes could be a classic like their other albums.
This week ,I finally got my hands on it. And the verdict? Well…you know what I hate? When wanky music journalists use the phrase “Soundtrack to the summer!” I must be honest here, when I first heard “The Mix-Up” my instant reaction was “Wow, its the soundtrack to the summer!”. Don’t worry, I immediately got a kettle and poured boiling hot water all over my genitals.
So, this collection of funky muzak is the perfect accompaniment to a Summer of BBQs (that is of course, if this apocalyptic rain would cease). But sadly, I suspect that’s all it is. Its a good record, but for some reason I don’t think its going to join its predecessors and become played billions of times by yours truly in the years too come. At its best, its great music, at its worst its forgettable. Beastie albums are never forgettable. So, ultimately, disappointed. Maybe I’ll be wrong and its instrumental grooves will burrow their way into my brain like some kind of musical parasite, or maybe it will stumble into a lonely alley way and die like an abandoned dog. Maybe its just a CD. Only time will tell.
Were you disappointed by this blog entry? Well, join the club.
I was in Eason’s today to purchase the new Beastie Boys album from Tower (long, incoherent, possibly contradictory review to follow shortly). Whilst I aimlessly wandered around I noticed in the music section a rather large, weighty book called “The Book of Albion” by a mister Peter Doherty. I picked up the thick, impressively bound volume to have a gawk inside. Peter is it now? Oh, had that smack-addled-over-rated-poser grown up and written a novel? An autobiography? Alas, I opened it to find that it was quite literally his hand written scribbled jibberish. “The Writings of Peter Doherty” the sub-title informed me. No, the scanned in copy pages of Pete Doherty is a more accurate description. They had just taken assorted refill pads of his nonsense and stuck it in a big fancy book, and then stuck an “R” to the end of his name. To be fair I couldn’t work out what he was on about such was shitness of his handwriting, but I can only assume it was pretentious twaddle, probably about Kate Moss and smack. Its bad enough he put his name to a book, but to force us to decipher your heroin infused scribblings is another. Is Microsoft Word not rock-n-roll enough? Twat.
He’s not the first to do it, mind. A few years back they published Kurt Cobain’s diaries. This was, presumably, without Kurt’s permission seeing as he had removed his own head some years before hand with a shotgun. I had a look at that too, but it just felt wrong. Its one thing to read someones innane jibberish if they want you too, but when its a dead man? Just wrong.
They’ll publish anything these days though. Wayne Rooney’s girlfriend (who had done nothing of note other than be Wayne Rooney’s girlfriend) was top of the book charts with our neighbours across the Irish sea. Which says more for the general public of the U.K. then it does anything else. Its bad enough that Wayne himself, just out of nappys, had an autobiography (one of 5 book deal, or something stupid like that). With the increasing amount of footballers barely into their twenties releasing books don’t be surprised to find the next generation of football whizzkids signing book deals whilst still in the womb, with volumes coming out yearly charting their rise from prepubescent shit, to postpubescent shit (with mega-millions contract). These will expand into giant library’s of books describing every aspect of their lives, from what shite R-n-B they listen to, to that time they nearly crashed their Jeep because their agent said they would only earn 5 million quid that week. Children in school will learn English via John Terry and Steven Gerrard, and an entire generation will thus be raised to be idiots. Human civilization as we know it will come to a halt and begin working backwards until we are ape-like in intelligence. Our troglodyte descendants, sifting through the rubble of our collapsed world, will then stumble upon the meaningless word-poo of Peter Doherty and scratch their heads in bewilderment at this relic of so-called more enlightened age.
Then, with any luck, they will tear the pages from within and wipe their hairy arses with it.
A big lump of filling and what I suspect is rotten tooth has just fallen out of my head, and where it once was is a gaping black hole.
This is not going to be good.
Thierry Henry has confirmed that pending a medical he will be signing with Barcelona next week. It’s going to be very strange not having him lead out the Gunners next season, and a wee bit sad. But not very sad at all because, frankly, the comings and goings of international football players shouldn’t upset anyone really. He’s probably been my favourite Arsenal player all in all, and its a shame he’s leaving, but life goes on. So basically to all the sneering “Thierrys going!!” twats who seem to solely support both Manchester United and Liverpool, its OK, it doesn’t bother me. Save your credit. And as for this “I TOLD you he’d go” nonsense; Yes, yes you did. And you did last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Well done on being right once in 4 years, what a record! Now lock yourselves away in a shed with a refill pad and a pen and work out every combination of Lotto number over the next 70 years, you are bound to be right at some stage, plus we don’t have to listen to your inane opinions on life.
The one thing that this raises is, why do football clubs who have players under long contracts give in to this? Is football the only sport in the world where contracts quite simply mean nothing? Why even bother with them? Arsenal got 16 million but had him contracted for another 4 years. I think 4 million a year would have been worth keeping him at the club. Oh, and, 16 million for a 31 year old LIVING GENIUS? Short-fucking-changed.
So farewell Thierry. I don’t think Arsenal fans will be bitter, he was a fine servant and leader. He claims the reason he left (and probably why Wenger will leave) is cause David Dein (a fella on the board) left. This has meant Wenger is refusing to commit beyond next season and Thierry doesn’t want to be at Arsenal without Wenger. Fair enough. But I wonder if Thierry is going to wake up in September and realise Wenger and Dein aren’t at Barcelona either and suddenly shit himself Macauly Culkin in Home Alone style. However he is getting on and no one can bedgrudge him a final change of scenery. Last summer he claimed he was staying for the rest of his career, and I believed it, but things change. Its quite funny that hes going to Barcelona considering the verbal smackdown he gave them after last years Champions League final. Oh well. Thierry is no longer an Arsenal player, Earth still goes round the sun, Irish weather is still shit and theres no peace in the Middle East.
To be honest, I think many rival fans of English clubs will simply be sighing with relief now that the best footballing footballer ever has moved on. I know alot of ye will know be sounding the death knell for Arsenal, but truth is the most significant departure from the Gunners in recent times still is Patrick Vieira. We havn’t won anything since he left, Thierry or no Thierry. But Arsenal, under Wenger still have a fine tradition of finding quality in the most unlikely of places, and theres no reason for this to stop now.
And finally lest we forget, Henry barely played last season and we finished level on points with the Pool. Once RVP is back? Its on like Donkey Kong.
I hope.
According to Wikipedia, Salinosporamide A is
a potent proteasome inhibitor used as an anticancer agent that recently entered phase I human clinical trials for the treatment of multiple myeloma only 3 years after its discovery.
Me? I think it looks like a lil’ fella havin’ a dance….
I hate it when you wind up liking something you really should hate. Take Coke Zero for example. On the surface I should despise it, because it’s more or less Diet Coke rebranded to make it acceptable to men. That’s all it is. You see, if a man purchases Diet Coke then they must be some kind of roaring queen, but Coke Zero? Well, it’s a new mans drink! The ad on telly has lots of shouty men shouting about how they are not held down by women or work or the world at large. Kind of like a very-safe, PC, corporate advertising wank stain version of Project Mayhem from Fight Club. So, with that kind of cynical thought process at work I shouldn’t go near this drink, but I like it.
I drink lots of Coke. Stupid amounts of Coke, so some time ago in an attempt to somehow combat the ill effects this would have, I started drinking Diet Coke. I figured if i’m going to drink Coke I might as well drink Slightly Less Bad Coke. This however had its drawbacks; friends would question my sexuality, randomers in the street would look at me like I was a feeble excuse of a man etc., but I also worked in a call-centre at the time, mainly with women, so at lunch time I felt right at home. Except when they started oogling builders next door who were taking off their shirts. Then I just felt weird. Anyhow, one day a scientist friend of mine showed me an article which more or less claimed that the chemical they used to make Diet Coke “Diet” was in fact formerly banned by the Pentagon as a CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGENT. If that wasn’t enough to (literally) turn my stomach, the reason it got unbanned? A well known arsehole by the name of Donald Rumsfeld was involved with the company that made the sweetener, and coincidence of coincidences, the chemical became unbanned. So now a chemical once used to make weapons of mass destruction was being used to make fizzy pop.
Therefore I made an informed decision not to drink Diet Coke anymore and it was back to regular Coke, and the terrible effects it would have on my figure. Now, I know blah blah I shouldn’t be drinking Coke at all, I should be drinking smoothys, and going jogging, and shoving Special K up my hole..but what are you going to do? As I am not a coffee drinker I need an alternative source of caffeine to help me deal with the rigors of our hectic world. So here I was, stuck back with regular Coke, and then an angel appeared. A black, sticky angel. Coke Zero. You see Coke Zero is more or less Diet Coke, but without the cancer causing chemical death spray in it AND more importantly it doesn’t taste like piss. It’s quite nice. But most importantly it was edgy, and modern, and FOR MEN. The label is black, and it has the word Zero on it, instead of the horrid “Diet” which might as well be a flashing luminous pink triangle. To be honest, it may have the cancer causing chemical death spray, I didn’t research it at all. All I knew was I could finally buy a Slight-Less-Bad Coke without someone assuming I was of the gay persuasion. Or was a woman.
So it was a win all round; I wasn’t drinking Sarin Gas or being labeled a gaylord AND I could keep my wonderful figure. THANKS COKE ZERO! My stomach is still gonna rot itself inside out and my teeth will crumble from my skull, but that’s modern living for you.
So, I walked into our family’s living room the other night looking for this week’s Observer Music Monthly magazine. As I’m flicking through the thousands of papers, magazines, pullouts and supplements that we amass each Sunday I heard my Dad, who was by himself, talking from the next room. And this is what he said:
“I’m a pretty Russian girl. I’m lonely and I want to chat to you tonight.”
I froze. WHAT. THE. FUCK. IS. GOING. ON. He’s lost it. He’s finally gone and lost it. I turned slowly, expecting to peer into the next room and see him sitting on the ground in a nappy wrapping tin foil around his head, grinning inanely.
He wasn’t, but he was sitting at his computer. Oh lord. What’s happening? Is he in a chat room? Is he talking to a lonely Russian girl? Is he pretending to be a lonely Russian girl? Is he talking to an FBI agent pretending to be a lonely Russian girl?
He burst out laughing, then spoke again. What madness would I hear now?
“Having problems with your database?”
This was just strange now. As I contemplated ringing the men in the white coats, he turned to me and said “Jesus, they send you some shite, don’t they?” and finally it made sense. It appeared that my dad had found the delights of the Spam folder in his email, which were amusing him no end. I sighed with relief. He is not bat-shit insane, or entangled in some kind of international internet sting. All was right with the world.
It’s times like these I don’t regret living at home during my college days.
Isn’t it great it when you discover new things that are good and not shit? Well, I didn’t discover this directly, I found it via Graham Linehan’s blog, but hey I discovered it for myself. Let’s face it, I’m usually about 2 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to most things. Anyways, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, Clark and Michael. It’s an “internet show” made by Clark Duke and Michael Cera about two actors struggling to make it in Hollywood. You may know Cera as George Michael from Arrested Development, so that should be reason enough to check it out. It’s an almost perfect show, from the sit-com piss take opening credits to all the other stuff that’s in it, what more can I say? Well, episode 2 more or less steals its entire plot from an episode of Seinfeld, but hey, its still funny.
Speaking of Michael Cera, he might just be a genius. Check out his video resume from YouTube. It’s very funny! And I do mean check it out, I can tell who’s clicking my links and who isn’t. You have been warned.
People sometimes ask me why I appear to be on the internet so much. Well, its mainly because of things like this. From what I can see normal telly is now completely shit, the good stuff has already been made and can be watched when ever you like on the web freeing you from the tyranny of the schedulers who feel it necessary to put good shows on at 2 in the morning, and fill normal waking hours with endless reality TV drivel and shows about property. And then you have new stuff like Clark and Michael which is only on the web. So when you are plonked on the couch watching the seventh police procedural drama in a row or Trinny and Susannah being bastards, I’m watching things like this. AND NOTHING ELSE.
So, yeah, that’s my excuse. What’s yours?
Oh, and in the real world sometimes good things also happen, tonight I saw David Fincher’s Zodiac, a film about the real life Zodiac Killer who terrorized California in the late ’60s, early ’70s. Its excellently made, and not only captures the sights and sounds of the era, but actually feels like a 70s movie; slow-paced, without any hyper-kinetic post-MTV epilepsy inducing slash-cut scenes but utterly gripping throughout. Being a David Fincher movie there are flashes of his trademark visual flair, but mostly this is an old school cop-psycho thriller. This is one of the best films I have seen in a long time and I urge you all to rush out and see it as soon as possible. If it is late at night may I suggest you break into the cinema, or break into the home of the cinema manager, wake him or her up and ask them to go down and show the film.
Additionally, if you have enjoyed any of the things I have suggested here, it is only fitting that you reward me by sending me some kind of cash donation.
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