Do you enjoy watching “Kerry Katona: Crazy in Love”?

Congratulations! You’re an idiot!

Celebrity Banister

Photo owned by Editor B (cc)

I don’t think i’ve ever been as excited about a reality show. RTé’s latest celebrity mashup features well-known stars and follows them as they struggle to make it in the high pressured world of stair-railings. Each week the celebrity’s will battle it out to see who is the best banister, having to put up with such challenges as “The Teenager Who Slides Down On His Arse” and “Carrying the overweight granny in the stair-master”. The Judging panel will feature the usual fucking nonsense, some bit of eye candy, someone vaguely connected with the task at hand, and some grumpy square-headed cunt who thinks they are clever.

Contestants will include an Irish Model no-one outside the offices of the Sunday Independent has ever heard of, some vaguely well known chef and someone who once walked around in the background of one scene in Fair City.

27 Dresses is a load of absolute balls.

Of course I was accompanying my lady-friend, but naively I thought there’d be something in this for me to enjoy. Sadly not. Its actually like they focus grouped 1000 Bridget Jones’ fans after watching Desperate Housewives, got all the data fed it into a giant machine and this steaming turd of a film popped out. When the love interests, who are obviously going to get together from the very first nano-second, finally kissed people in the cinema wooped with joy. Wooped. Actually wooped. Some tried to start a round of applause, but thankfully that never kicked off as I’d like to think the shame of being in the same room would cause my brain to rupture and blood to gush out my nostrils.

Hip-Hop Video Friday #2

A Tribe Called Quest – “Oh My God” (feat. Busta Rhymes)

This is just classic. Tribe are one of the all time greats. The other day I listened to “The Low-End Theory” from start to finish for the first time in years and it hit me how good Tribe were. A genuine joyfulness to their music made them a great antidote to the thuggishness that pervades hip-hop (not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of ignorance, expect some of that on HHVF to come). “Oh My God” came from their third album “Midnight Marauders” which also heralded other Tribe classics like “Award Tour”. Q-Tip and Phife as always hold it down like tarpaulin and Ali Shaheed does his thing. Added bonus, a pre-Rap-n-bullshit pop Busta Rhymes in a bright yellow top-hat screaming “Oh My God” from the roof of a shop. Marvelous.

Tip really should have had a better post Tribe career, he’s a rapper the world needs. Apparently he has a new set on the way, so here’s hoping. Anyone looking to get into Tribe could do worse than to pick up their “Anthology” package, they had so many classics, but really you could just dive into anyone of their first four albums.

Apocalypse Soon

In anticipation of the collapse of Western industrial civilisation, brought on by the greedy fucking dickheads who run our banks, I am going to cease purchase of all luxury goods. I have successfully convinced myself I do not want an iPhone using a Pavlov’s dog style mental re-conditioning. I got my girlfriend to electrocute me every time I whined that I wanted an iPhone, with the result being that the mere sight of the product reduces me to a foetal positioned whimpering mess. That giant fucking banner on Henry Street really fucks with me. Plus, o2’s retarded pricing scheme helped. Alot. Retards.

I will now invest my money in drums of oil, canned goods and archery lessons. I’ll have to find space for all this stuff, half of my house is still filled with the ten thousand gas maks I purchased in the wake of SARS as I thought i’d be able to hawk them to Joe Public when the deadly virus finally hit our shores. When is that coming, by the way? I will spend my weekends fortifying my home with giant doors, trap doors and battlements from which I will pick off invaders. Once my fortress has been completed I will then begin a crash course in apocalypse training; essential viewing will be the Mad Max trilogy which is more or less a how-to for survival in the post-Oil crash world. The Thunderdome, I suspect, will be located somewhere in Cavan. Next up will be George A. Romero’s Living Dead quadrilogy. Although the onset of worldwide economic collapse probably won’t have the result of the recently deceased coming back to life, you may well see masses of newly unemployed people who own big stupid fucking jeeps despite the fact they live in a suburb wandering around in a daze looking for a latté in a zombie like state. Important notes: Remove their heads, try and hole up in a big shopping centre, recognise that humanity’s biggest enemy is humanity itself.

Finally, a dose of The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, just to remind you that in an end-of-world scenario there is still time for Scotch-swigging and sports-car rallying. On completion I will be ready for the impending terror that will follow the implosion of Western culture. Thank God for the media, who repeatedly on the hour, every hour remind us that this miserable state of affairs is imminent. Its coming. Just around the corner. Just you wait. I’ll be ready. Will you be?

Hip-Hop Video (Good) Friday Part The First

Wherein I will post some well known (and not so well known) hip-hop videos from back in the day on a Friday. Why? Why not.

To kick us off its Mos Def and Talib Kweli as “Black Star” with their seminal ‘98 Rawkus records classic “Definition” off the “Black Star” album. I’ve been strangely nostalgic for the old turn of the century Rawkus stuff this week. It really was a classic time. When I think back sometimes I wonder if Hip-hop is dead, nothing really hits like this at the moment. Oh well.

Word about this clip, inexplicably the YouTube’d version begins with a shot of two (clothed) female models. The video is certainly safe for work (assuming your boss is ok with you watching hip-hop videos). In fact, “Black Star” is the last act you’d associate with such ubiquitous ‘video-ho’ imagery. Just so you know.

(Blogging might be quiet for the next week, I’m moving gaff and needs to sort myself out with internets which is surprisingly hard and expensive to do in the capital city of an apparently leading Western economy. Argh).

Happy Good Friday y’all.

Imagine we had a leader like the Dalai Lama

From the BBC.

When asked if he might step down as political figurehead if the violence spiralled out of control, the Dalai Lama said the same question had been put to him during the 1987 uprising:

“If things are getting out of control, then the option is to completely resign,” he said.

And…

At the news conference, the Dalai Lama also rejected Chinese accusations that he has personally instigated the protests in Tibet, and repeated his call for an international inquiry into why they took place.

“If you want to start investigating from here you are most welcome,” he said. “Check our various offices.”

How refreshing. I hope this whole Tibet thing doesn’t spill out of control. If anything though its going to open up an interesting debate about our relations with the Chinese government coming up to the Olympics… Bock The Robber weighs in with this.

JC Skinner also reminds us that no one (yours truly included) is talking about Burma anymore. 

Is a boycott the answer? Who knows, i’m sure we’ll hear a lot of the arguments over the coming months.

Killer Willard, the fighting kangaroo

You know, I don’t want this blog to become an endless parade of youtube videos, but I just can’t help myself. Plus i’m mad lazy. Check this out.

Arsenity Now!

Via Arseblog, comes this great piece of wisdom from Arsene Wenger, in regards to Jose Mourinho’s desire to come back and “kill” Chelsea.

“Why should you always have to kill other people to exist yourself? If you do that, then somewhere, you feel you are not good enough,” Wenger said. “If you have to come out all the time to destroy people, what is life about? Winning and destroying people can never be everything.”

Very Zen. Hopefully Mourinho won’t return to the Premiership any time soon, with his brand of boring football and utter guff-talk.

When Busey Attacks

Oscar night. 2008. The beautiful people of Hollywood assemble on the red carpet to give themselves a giant collective pat on the back for being so brilliant. Into this sycophantic river of glam comes beacon of truth and man of all ages, Gareth Busey. At first he is there to threaten Ryan Seacrest, and to extend a warm congratulations to Laura Linney. But then, Busey casts his eye on Ms. Jennifer Garner. Watch the pure fear in Garner’s face as Busey circles. The presenter asks “Where’s Ben?” as if the mere mortal that is Ben Affleck could protect any woman from Busey. Little do they know. But Busey knows.