Sunday, November 27, 2005
Mazes, retail crack and the cardrat adventure
IKEA is a remarkable invention and the evolution of its advertising is an interesting, perhaps cautionary tale. A few years back there was this stuff produced by cultish Chiat/Day survivors or something involving motifs like Swedish gangsters admiring towels and a mysterious tattooed man who did things like lock staff away if they did not understand brand concepts properly. Amusing, well shot etc and made me less ashamed of going there despite the fact that it was more stressful than being forced to staple rabid rats to bits of card at gunpoint. Then the Nordic jokers rejected style in favour of day-glo inclusivity with a campaign based on a palette consisting of skittles and happy meal packaging, complete with non-threatening, non-aspirational gimps filling their living spaces and identities with generic plastic and particleboard tat. As the place is so far beyond needing conventional forms of Marcomms all that is about now are some feeble tube cards saying that if you pay less for your kitchen you can somehow work less. Never mind that most of us electric slaves are on some form of feeble salary and whether a kitchen costs a bit more is a question of marginal madness on the consumer debt front for all but the lucky. The difference between posting onesself a nail bomb filled with battery acid and one adding a few old pushpins and a desiccated mouse to the mix.
Not much can be said about pikea that has not been said elsewhere. I have noticed that I have not a single friend who has not said that a visit there is a last ditch, very stressful experience resulting in expenditure over £100 regardless of what they intended to purchase. The maze is well designed with cul de sacs maximising the chance for impulse purchases of redundant oven gloves and PRC frying pans en route to escape. The standard of design oscillates between passable faux modernism, post modern migraine and plain suburban beige ugh but appears to be going through one of its better phases, at least in the case of TV stands. I am dissenter who is helpless to resist, slumping around the place stewing in guilt for not finding a better way. Except when the proper shops have a seconds sale.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Jumping someone else's train
Christmas and the run up to it is a great time for yesterday’s peddlers of sonic dried candy floss residue for the charts to put together yet another ‘best of’ or ‘ultimate collection’ of some sort as a stocking filler for people whose cultural landscape is less evolved than that of a bit of plankton grooving along to the vibrations of defecating mackerel. The tunnels and pathways of commute Hades have received a plastering of related promotional announcements, most of which are so far beneath contempt as to breach the very limits of gravity. One very well promoted one deserves special recognition for odium as those responsible have somehow escaped sufficient critical censure throughout the years. I stared at the thing and noticed several periodicals pimping the same in between my periodic questioning as to whether the Northern Line’s signalling system is comprised of fag ends, chewing gum and a stolen ‘AAA’ battery. The no-so-recent revival of the electro sound and interest in 80s retro by those that crawled the carpet during its early days has offered a tardy commercial opportunity to a tired couple of chancers who made it far bigger than deserved.
Eurythmics. A name like that screams modernity, an international outlook or at least some kind of relevance. Not in this case. 1983- get anyone with passable musical nous into some London studio with some analogue synth gear, chemical inducement and some fucking time on their hands and you will get one notable single. ‘Sweet Dreams (are made of this).’ is one such record. Fine – credit there but lots of good electropop was made back then by duos of wankers who at least had the decency to go away after they had burned out their three minutes of possible creativity. The living cartoon that is Dave Stewart and faux soul foghorn Annie Lennox were too clever for that. Further hits came like a periodic hailstorm of frozen mucus, most notable being ‘There must be an Angel, playing with my heart as I spew predicable O-level couplets in a stupid wig, yeah, etc.’ the ‘arty’ video for which involved men arsing about in unicorn outfits. A maelstrom of artfully packaged MOR followed on. And on and on. Lennox even created a solo record that forever will be on ‘repeat’ for suburban emotional cripples and corporate events organisers.
In the same era, Soft Cell merged synths rather more convincingly with Motown (rather than Dusty Springfield, the sozzled sound of best avoided wedding receptions) and the queerer side of Soho. Yet this more artful and dangerous duo were painted as the one hit wonders that Stewart and Lennox should have been. The culture market is a strange place indeed.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Sleb-breeders and the ticking zeitgeist
The squares don’t know its all a fix. The received metaphwoars, the agenda and how what pops up when, where and how is determined elsewhere. From time to time a narrative appears in parts before dipping into mist, unresolved and undebated until the puppeteers get tired again and revive it like last weeks coffee in the microwave.
Breeding. All life does it in some form, some messier and more eccentric than others (marsupailness is not to be derided, but the scatological aspects need reform). For great apes like us it is a bigger challenge, of course. One often taken too lightly but that requires coping. The fact that Westerners are multiplying slower, not a new phenomenon, has been doing the rounds again, along with the rest of the metanarrative flotsam. The doctors have noticed that female fertility becomes problematic after 35. Maybe.
Yet the loss of freedom and installation of a hoover in one’s pocket for two decades before drifting towards to void is rather difficult, at least in London, before then, if not after, if not ever. Maybe I fetishise sleep at the moment, but there you go. Our systems are not family friendly anymore, but the attentions of the masses are too dilute to demand change – safe, clean state crèches or urban schools that are rather more than storage centres for the feral.
But if you can afford a scheduled Caesarean with a lipo chaser, an army of carers and piss shit spittle scream dealers-with the credit should not be forthcoming, in any form. The slebcrew breeds loudly, is getting knocked up younger and younger and never tires of expelling noise at its seminal achievements. Saw an Anna Friel junket photoshoot in the Sundays within which in between discussing the legacy of a film and tv credits list that sounds like an existential indictment, starting with a girlongirl snog in fucking Brookside, flitting in inconsequence and ending now with JD Sports: The Movie, she talks of the wonders of breeding as is if she was the first and last.
Not unique but the meat puppets that can afford to play at families without pain or sacrifice should find something else to talk about. Like gardening stratagems or the latest trends in sock design. Never mind.
Breeding. All life does it in some form, some messier and more eccentric than others (marsupailness is not to be derided, but the scatological aspects need reform). For great apes like us it is a bigger challenge, of course. One often taken too lightly but that requires coping. The fact that Westerners are multiplying slower, not a new phenomenon, has been doing the rounds again, along with the rest of the metanarrative flotsam. The doctors have noticed that female fertility becomes problematic after 35. Maybe.
Yet the loss of freedom and installation of a hoover in one’s pocket for two decades before drifting towards to void is rather difficult, at least in London, before then, if not after, if not ever. Maybe I fetishise sleep at the moment, but there you go. Our systems are not family friendly anymore, but the attentions of the masses are too dilute to demand change – safe, clean state crèches or urban schools that are rather more than storage centres for the feral.
But if you can afford a scheduled Caesarean with a lipo chaser, an army of carers and piss shit spittle scream dealers-with the credit should not be forthcoming, in any form. The slebcrew breeds loudly, is getting knocked up younger and younger and never tires of expelling noise at its seminal achievements. Saw an Anna Friel junket photoshoot in the Sundays within which in between discussing the legacy of a film and tv credits list that sounds like an existential indictment, starting with a girlongirl snog in fucking Brookside, flitting in inconsequence and ending now with JD Sports: The Movie, she talks of the wonders of breeding as is if she was the first and last.
Not unique but the meat puppets that can afford to play at families without pain or sacrifice should find something else to talk about. Like gardening stratagems or the latest trends in sock design. Never mind.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Fuselage sauna book club
Melting in a metal tube on a global warming enhanced summer’s day, I’ve been conjuring some non-insights. Mass market popular fiction has always been an easy target of bile, but at least it once was interesting. In every fog of automatic prose, on the back of the shelf one could find a ‘Dimestore Dostoevsky’ like Jim Thompson (who I never tire of advocating) – banging out genre tales at a speed more akin to typing than writing, but somehow managing to fuse in thematic and stylistic innovation along with psychological and societal insights. In a lurid style and on cheap paper.
Looking around, it seems that today the unstoppable zombie world of anti-feminist ‘chick lit’ remains in the ascendancy like a fart from the bottom of a bubble bath. Hitting every possible demographic with the icy precision of really, really good direct marketing. On the other side of the gender stereotype divide, its testosterone Parsons/Hornby doppelganger spews across Sunday supplements and into Smiths with unending energy. Looking over shoulders at the odd snippet, these things really could, and someday in the name of speed will be, written by software packages. Umberto Eco once wondered at the intricacies of Ian Fleming’s innovative nonsense and discovered that it was, in fact, an escape machine for an embittered, emasculated male bourgeoisie.
Yet in a time of smartphone and cheap flight plenty, what could there be to escape from but the endless march of convenience and pleasure? Well, some are more blessed with choice and capital than others but the last revenge of the departed proletariat is this: The horrible imbalance between work and leisure, the individual being the space between labour and its product, is not markedly different from that described by Orwell with horror in the Road to Wigan Pier when illustrating the plight of the industrial classes of the 30s. So little pieces of inky bubblegum are needed to speed the journey of the many – its just sad that the conditions of production today are more favourable to the vapid giltposh shit in his shuttered chateau than the likes of poor Jim.
Looking around, it seems that today the unstoppable zombie world of anti-feminist ‘chick lit’ remains in the ascendancy like a fart from the bottom of a bubble bath. Hitting every possible demographic with the icy precision of really, really good direct marketing. On the other side of the gender stereotype divide, its testosterone Parsons/Hornby doppelganger spews across Sunday supplements and into Smiths with unending energy. Looking over shoulders at the odd snippet, these things really could, and someday in the name of speed will be, written by software packages. Umberto Eco once wondered at the intricacies of Ian Fleming’s innovative nonsense and discovered that it was, in fact, an escape machine for an embittered, emasculated male bourgeoisie.
Yet in a time of smartphone and cheap flight plenty, what could there be to escape from but the endless march of convenience and pleasure? Well, some are more blessed with choice and capital than others but the last revenge of the departed proletariat is this: The horrible imbalance between work and leisure, the individual being the space between labour and its product, is not markedly different from that described by Orwell with horror in the Road to Wigan Pier when illustrating the plight of the industrial classes of the 30s. So little pieces of inky bubblegum are needed to speed the journey of the many – its just sad that the conditions of production today are more favourable to the vapid giltposh shit in his shuttered chateau than the likes of poor Jim.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Dispatched: An odorous delivery
I have long loved Dispatches. It’s one of the last pieces of mainstream terrestrial television I always look forward to. It informs and intrigues on important and esoteric issues.
When I saw that the programme would be making the old Quixotic investigative case for higher quality food than is made available by the UK’s supermarket cartel (expensive limp salads, chickens raised on feathers, dung and concrete, etc etc) I was mildly intrigued. This has been done before, well, by the likes of Panorama, countless authors, worthies and TV chefs looking for a good bit of PR, to little effect. I try to rebel where I can, but shopping hours and availability are a bit of a sad block.
Looked at the listing and it admitted ‘Jane Moore’ was the presenter. My brain was puzzled but blocked the idea in the same sanity prevention reflex that means if I coughed up a small herd of New Zealand sheep I would just turn away and forget it forever, a shameful secret. Surely, certainly it was someone I had not heard of. Some erudite, intrepid woman of letters must share the same unhappy moniker as that slaggy scribbler I occasionally avoid when examining a bog-based Red Top on a Wednesday. No way that even in an era of Dumb that a programme long on the forefront of excellence would commission such a beast. It would be like Sadie Fucking Frost presenting Newsnight – a surreal interjection from a cruel and humorous alternative dimension. Only a co-incidence to share the name of the perpetrator of tomes such as ‘Dot.Homme’ and newsprint Big Brother breast analysis.
No. The phosphors lit up and there it was. A true joke with a fat cheque for a punchline. Aged and decidedly orange (the image helpers airbrush amusingly neglected all flesh below the chin) it began to squawk about the stress of being a ‘working’ mother with three loud fuckfruits and massive house – not to mention a personal shopper. This of course means sympathy for all of us time and cash poor proles out there, and she can really relate. The lady of the house left the room in incomprehending disgust after a couple of minutes. I soldiered on for another few – hypnotised, like a man seeing a dog’s egg put in blender with some rocks as she had the absurd cruelties of factory farming that a well read ten year old would assume amazingly revealed. Yet her expensive snot smears of copy often nestle next to adverts for two for one frozen colon burgers and chicken fat/intestine/skin based Fun Shapes. Not that her moist and knuckle dragging fan base could spell hypocrisy. I would have preferred to have the programme hijacked by laddish nightmare Jamie Oliver, his VW van filled with hooting idiocy and a gang of second rank Sanisbury’s purchasing managers. Fuck it.
No matter. There may or may not have been better times.
When I saw that the programme would be making the old Quixotic investigative case for higher quality food than is made available by the UK’s supermarket cartel (expensive limp salads, chickens raised on feathers, dung and concrete, etc etc) I was mildly intrigued. This has been done before, well, by the likes of Panorama, countless authors, worthies and TV chefs looking for a good bit of PR, to little effect. I try to rebel where I can, but shopping hours and availability are a bit of a sad block.
Looked at the listing and it admitted ‘Jane Moore’ was the presenter. My brain was puzzled but blocked the idea in the same sanity prevention reflex that means if I coughed up a small herd of New Zealand sheep I would just turn away and forget it forever, a shameful secret. Surely, certainly it was someone I had not heard of. Some erudite, intrepid woman of letters must share the same unhappy moniker as that slaggy scribbler I occasionally avoid when examining a bog-based Red Top on a Wednesday. No way that even in an era of Dumb that a programme long on the forefront of excellence would commission such a beast. It would be like Sadie Fucking Frost presenting Newsnight – a surreal interjection from a cruel and humorous alternative dimension. Only a co-incidence to share the name of the perpetrator of tomes such as ‘Dot.Homme’ and newsprint Big Brother breast analysis.
No. The phosphors lit up and there it was. A true joke with a fat cheque for a punchline. Aged and decidedly orange (the image helpers airbrush amusingly neglected all flesh below the chin) it began to squawk about the stress of being a ‘working’ mother with three loud fuckfruits and massive house – not to mention a personal shopper. This of course means sympathy for all of us time and cash poor proles out there, and she can really relate. The lady of the house left the room in incomprehending disgust after a couple of minutes. I soldiered on for another few – hypnotised, like a man seeing a dog’s egg put in blender with some rocks as she had the absurd cruelties of factory farming that a well read ten year old would assume amazingly revealed. Yet her expensive snot smears of copy often nestle next to adverts for two for one frozen colon burgers and chicken fat/intestine/skin based Fun Shapes. Not that her moist and knuckle dragging fan base could spell hypocrisy. I would have preferred to have the programme hijacked by laddish nightmare Jamie Oliver, his VW van filled with hooting idiocy and a gang of second rank Sanisbury’s purchasing managers. Fuck it.
No matter. There may or may not have been better times.
Monday, July 04, 2005
The many splendours of forbidden electric death
Communicating public safety messages to feral individuals is a marketing challenge of the highest order. Given the number of rootless, hooded individuals making their intimidating presence felt at every bus stop and kebab joint, to ensure that they have some concept of public safety is vital. Was using the alleged rail system the other day and noticed a poster recommending ‘No messin’. A model in a hoodie looked quite happy to have found new hobbies boasting in the copy that ‘I used to hang around the tracks. Now I have something better to do.’ Clearly a lifestyle breakthrough. When you think about it, there are many other things to do that are better than vandalising sidings, throwing bottles at commuter cattle cars or sticking gum on the tracks to see what happens. £264m is spent every year cleaning it up.
Frankly, a nice spot of sock based paint huffing is a more commendable and interesting habit. The campaign is apparently aimed at the 9 to 16 year old demographic that is causing the most trouble and includes a handy URL. A wiser marketer would point out that visiting any URL is probably a better thing to do than arsing about in the sidings, spitting at passing carriages and include some helpful links to hardcore. When you get to the site, you are invited to ‘Get a real buzz, real respect and real skills’. Of course, tagging would seem a skill to some. You can turn up to a leisure centre in a dying city such as Eastbourne and learn about sports you should have learned about in school, including boules. Anyone who can organise themselves enough to register for one of these ‘live’ events is probably not the sort to be, uh, ‘messin’ in the first place.
TfL’s recent campaign with a similar purpose is far better. On the Underground there are adverts in a glossy, crass style for fictitious commodity records and film with a bar through the centre saying that the cultural pissbag involved has been cancelled because the star was killed at an early age trying to stare down a bus or something. They are genuinely striking, look real and probably work.
Which is more than can probably be said of this joke. Well meaning rail consultants trying to communicate with criminal larvae from Darwin’s Waiting Room are like confused civil servants trying to contact Martians with a bent coat hanger and a Walkman. Far better to lay it out: ‘If you are mutilated or killed you are even less likely to be of interest to the opposite sex and if you are sent to prison the chances of an enthusiastic and unexpected conjugal visit at the back door are profound. Therefore stay the fuck away from the tracks.’
Frankly, a nice spot of sock based paint huffing is a more commendable and interesting habit. The campaign is apparently aimed at the 9 to 16 year old demographic that is causing the most trouble and includes a handy URL. A wiser marketer would point out that visiting any URL is probably a better thing to do than arsing about in the sidings, spitting at passing carriages and include some helpful links to hardcore. When you get to the site, you are invited to ‘Get a real buzz, real respect and real skills’. Of course, tagging would seem a skill to some. You can turn up to a leisure centre in a dying city such as Eastbourne and learn about sports you should have learned about in school, including boules. Anyone who can organise themselves enough to register for one of these ‘live’ events is probably not the sort to be, uh, ‘messin’ in the first place.
TfL’s recent campaign with a similar purpose is far better. On the Underground there are adverts in a glossy, crass style for fictitious commodity records and film with a bar through the centre saying that the cultural pissbag involved has been cancelled because the star was killed at an early age trying to stare down a bus or something. They are genuinely striking, look real and probably work.
Which is more than can probably be said of this joke. Well meaning rail consultants trying to communicate with criminal larvae from Darwin’s Waiting Room are like confused civil servants trying to contact Martians with a bent coat hanger and a Walkman. Far better to lay it out: ‘If you are mutilated or killed you are even less likely to be of interest to the opposite sex and if you are sent to prison the chances of an enthusiastic and unexpected conjugal visit at the back door are profound. Therefore stay the fuck away from the tracks.’
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Lancing the Boyle
Underground adverts are not unlike aggressive beggars or flashers. Even more so when you come out of the station and are confronted with a poster pimping the same cultural excreta that has been saturating every wall and surface in the tunnels. Walkways and escalators are covered with colourful noise from Dewynters – the wise vertically integrated marketing people that have very successfully corned (or else cornered) the market in attracting philistine hordes to the latest cash in musical (I am waiting for more meritless back catalogues to be pilfered – maybe a musical based on Don Henley’s 1980s solo output set amongst witty, desirable American high school kids?) or turgid ‘new play’ starring someone who may have been in EastEnders around 1996 about divorcees with a long line in one liners. Emerging from a hailstorm of saccharine nonsense once again, I was confronted by a mass of freckles and slightly cheeky looking childness set against a blue sky with falling pound notes.
Millions ‘The Danny Boyle film you can take your kids to see!’
He was back – the man behind the celluloid methane bomb that was ‘The Beach’ has somehow taken advantage of the tax break slush fund nature of the UK’s film industry to make more product.
Boyle let me down and led me astray. As a youth, I was amused by Shallow Grave – a sub par thriller based around a formula more tired than a half remembered ‘knock knock’ joke. Then was I was completely enthralled by his magnum opus:
Trainfuckingspottingposterssayingchooselifeinevery
tediousstudenthallsforfuckingyears
I loved it and I was an oaf for doing so. It is a piece of grunge-y zeitgeist-y merchandise with a self consciously great soundtrack that has aged worse than a packet of special Irn Bru tie in edition ‘Lunchables’ left absent mindedly under a radiator for ten years. Oh, and if Irvine Welsh thinks he some kind of tartan Joyce for the ‘E’ generation than you can call me Will. I also had a copy of the ‘Reservoir Dogs’ screenplay at this time, sadly.
So now ‘Millions’ – a trivial moral fable about two kids who get into lots of obvious choices and fake peril with the aid of £229k in stolen cash. And they have to spend it in a few days as the UK is changing over to the Euro. This thing must have spent a very long time in development indeed, as the chances of that happening at all are rather low. One kid is a consumer, the other some kind of religious loser who talks to saints and wants to give it away in a random and inequitable fashion. Lots of innovation there. If either had any sense they would call one of the numbers in the back of in flight magazines and call some shifty buggers from Aruba to look after it for them. Of course I have not seen it as knowing my luck, I would be crushed and electrocuted by a falling projector – and would not want such a thing as my last memory. Hopefully when Gordon closes the loophole we will see less of this sort of refuse.
Millions ‘The Danny Boyle film you can take your kids to see!’
He was back – the man behind the celluloid methane bomb that was ‘The Beach’ has somehow taken advantage of the tax break slush fund nature of the UK’s film industry to make more product.
Boyle let me down and led me astray. As a youth, I was amused by Shallow Grave – a sub par thriller based around a formula more tired than a half remembered ‘knock knock’ joke. Then was I was completely enthralled by his magnum opus:
Trainfuckingspottingposterssayingchooselifeinevery
tediousstudenthallsforfuckingyears
I loved it and I was an oaf for doing so. It is a piece of grunge-y zeitgeist-y merchandise with a self consciously great soundtrack that has aged worse than a packet of special Irn Bru tie in edition ‘Lunchables’ left absent mindedly under a radiator for ten years. Oh, and if Irvine Welsh thinks he some kind of tartan Joyce for the ‘E’ generation than you can call me Will. I also had a copy of the ‘Reservoir Dogs’ screenplay at this time, sadly.
So now ‘Millions’ – a trivial moral fable about two kids who get into lots of obvious choices and fake peril with the aid of £229k in stolen cash. And they have to spend it in a few days as the UK is changing over to the Euro. This thing must have spent a very long time in development indeed, as the chances of that happening at all are rather low. One kid is a consumer, the other some kind of religious loser who talks to saints and wants to give it away in a random and inequitable fashion. Lots of innovation there. If either had any sense they would call one of the numbers in the back of in flight magazines and call some shifty buggers from Aruba to look after it for them. Of course I have not seen it as knowing my luck, I would be crushed and electrocuted by a falling projector – and would not want such a thing as my last memory. Hopefully when Gordon closes the loophole we will see less of this sort of refuse.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Holiday moments with bog brush haircuts
Holiday companies are clearly not as liable for the strictures of the Trade Description Act as other firms. Referring to Lido de Jesolo as the ‘Venetian Riviera’ is about as accurate as calling Hastings the London Riviera – at least Jesolo was sort of a German/Italianate version so light on taste but also missing new age English seaside pleasures such as the sight of DSS drug zombies shuffling along piers as the faded, green stains in the vague shape of a Bulldog gently peel on the be-sovereigned Dagenham Man nearby.
No matter how nice a trip is, if you make the mistake of going with package types there will be moments when one’s fear of mortality exits for a time. Listening to conversations that have less use than frog flatulence, the cackling of smug retirees (who really should be more sympathetic to those of us of a generation that will work for another fifteen years than them and retire on a pension smaller than the daily takings of a bad busker) and the loud antics of chav larvae makes one wish voiding for a moment, before seeing something beautiful again.
Italians, for all the dodgy accounting, do really have more casual style than Northern Europeans. The shaded driver is as impervious to the presence of this bog brushed creature as he should be.
No matter how nice a trip is, if you make the mistake of going with package types there will be moments when one’s fear of mortality exits for a time. Listening to conversations that have less use than frog flatulence, the cackling of smug retirees (who really should be more sympathetic to those of us of a generation that will work for another fifteen years than them and retire on a pension smaller than the daily takings of a bad busker) and the loud antics of chav larvae makes one wish voiding for a moment, before seeing something beautiful again.
Italians, for all the dodgy accounting, do really have more casual style than Northern Europeans. The shaded driver is as impervious to the presence of this bog brushed creature as he should be.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Noble ape surveys 'chavalanche'
Apes are better than people in many respects.
Gorillas do not get bad faux Celtic themed tats above the crack of their misshapen arse and squit out gangs of mewling, rowing thug larvae to blow whistles in the ‘Moonlight World’ home of remarkable prosiminans that can be stressed to death by loud sounds or use flash photography on noble beasts to the accompaniment of vulgar noises.
A trip to the Zoo is rare due to the expense and the stress of swimming through crowds often in possession of less knowledge of fauna and conservation concern than a lump of Tesco ‘Value’ range frozen mince. Brains seem to be in decline as well – with people shouting ‘look at the lion!’ in front of the enclosure of a sedate, and very obvious, tiger. Lions do not have stripes.
Bored and confined as they might be, its probably far better for the few remaining Gorillas on the planet to be behind glass in Regents Park, amusing their inferior cousins, than running from forests being burned down in ignorant attempts at agriculture and into the arms of virtual cannibals who would far rather turn them into a tragic, smoked culinary novelty than realise they could be the key to regional prosperity.
The regal ennui of the fellow pictured in the midst of all the tourist bustle is to be admired.
Gorillas do not get bad faux Celtic themed tats above the crack of their misshapen arse and squit out gangs of mewling, rowing thug larvae to blow whistles in the ‘Moonlight World’ home of remarkable prosiminans that can be stressed to death by loud sounds or use flash photography on noble beasts to the accompaniment of vulgar noises.
A trip to the Zoo is rare due to the expense and the stress of swimming through crowds often in possession of less knowledge of fauna and conservation concern than a lump of Tesco ‘Value’ range frozen mince. Brains seem to be in decline as well – with people shouting ‘look at the lion!’ in front of the enclosure of a sedate, and very obvious, tiger. Lions do not have stripes.
Bored and confined as they might be, its probably far better for the few remaining Gorillas on the planet to be behind glass in Regents Park, amusing their inferior cousins, than running from forests being burned down in ignorant attempts at agriculture and into the arms of virtual cannibals who would far rather turn them into a tragic, smoked culinary novelty than realise they could be the key to regional prosperity.
The regal ennui of the fellow pictured in the midst of all the tourist bustle is to be admired.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
9 plastic noises of modern 'B'
Been noticing coyly sexy flyposters and hype for an example of where 'B' is today. Hey sex, drugs, bonking, rock and roll, gigs, fuckin, indieee, banging, drinking, sticky lager residue floors and fag ash, money shots, musing in a boho way has got to be aspirational and cool, yeah? No.
Michael Winterbottom. The name of a Nordic themed porn star. I've witnessed his product: The overwrought costumery of Jude, which barely rates five of ten as an adaptation of a classic novel and is most remarkable for that offensively over-regarded Kate Winslet's career enhancing nude appearance.
The next: Welcome to Sarajevo. Its first three minutes were brilliant before slipping into 'human interest' emotional pornography one might sadly expect from a director who cut his teeth on the tube. Yet the talent is there: ability to make something mainstream yet pretentious is to be commended. The IMDB marketing blurb says it well:
"For this celebrated, outrageous, adrenaline-loving bunch of reporters, home is the latest war zone. Now, one of them is about to do the unthinkable--get emotionally involved.€"
Its all guff but the second sentence is the real assault. Because, of course the only way for mainstream livestock to understand immense human tragedies is by shrinking the incomprehensible macro down into a bit of soap worthy cheese spread.
A few bits demonstrated Winterbottom is capable of more, namely the topping with a random sniper attack on likeable, ordinary victims and tailing with David Owen's dark instruction for the poor Bosnians not to 'dream' the West had some interest in granting them the right to live. Like using two bits of fine ciabatta to mask the odor of a fecal sandwich filling.
Budgets seem to have shrunk still further in 'independent' (no, I don't mean fucking Miramax) cinema and so now Wintery seems to be in a world of DV - because of course who would work in DV unless they were forced? Unless they are making installations or something.
Of course, audiences should be bored with money shots, rather than shocked by them. My calculations suggest that at current west end prices, its 89p per tepid derivative track (and presumably protein dose). The free publicity for putting out 'the most explicit spack drenched film ever!!' at an Odeon means there is little risk of not making the cash back.
The bands involved reveal the notions of a 44 year-old-man who thinks that the irrelevant bog roll of the NME is a taste arbiter. Michael Nyman - a few good soundtracks, Primal Scream - talent in spades, I once was a fan, etc - forgiven. Franz Ferdinand - Gang of Four tribute band. I don't fucking care. Dandy Warhols and the rest just fellate dead goat and are best left to tedious students, unaware of the metal postcard in the post when the fun ends and the incense gets stale.
So that's the best B can do today in the UK: A DV shot faux porn film with an NME connection that refuses to admit its true nature. By a brilliant exploitationist who is probably too pretentious and steeped in worthy mediocrity to admit it to himself.
All power to the exploitationist - hey, I'd be filming THE CAMDEN RIPPER if I could - but only if he has self-knowledge as thus and sneaks in some art. It is with fast food that the quality of the ingredients are most vital. Others did it better with less money and no acclaim. Why can't today be different?
Michael Winterbottom. The name of a Nordic themed porn star. I've witnessed his product: The overwrought costumery of Jude, which barely rates five of ten as an adaptation of a classic novel and is most remarkable for that offensively over-regarded Kate Winslet's career enhancing nude appearance.
The next: Welcome to Sarajevo. Its first three minutes were brilliant before slipping into 'human interest' emotional pornography one might sadly expect from a director who cut his teeth on the tube. Yet the talent is there: ability to make something mainstream yet pretentious is to be commended. The IMDB marketing blurb says it well:
"For this celebrated, outrageous, adrenaline-loving bunch of reporters, home is the latest war zone. Now, one of them is about to do the unthinkable--get emotionally involved.€"
Its all guff but the second sentence is the real assault. Because, of course the only way for mainstream livestock to understand immense human tragedies is by shrinking the incomprehensible macro down into a bit of soap worthy cheese spread.
A few bits demonstrated Winterbottom is capable of more, namely the topping with a random sniper attack on likeable, ordinary victims and tailing with David Owen's dark instruction for the poor Bosnians not to 'dream' the West had some interest in granting them the right to live. Like using two bits of fine ciabatta to mask the odor of a fecal sandwich filling.
Budgets seem to have shrunk still further in 'independent' (no, I don't mean fucking Miramax) cinema and so now Wintery seems to be in a world of DV - because of course who would work in DV unless they were forced? Unless they are making installations or something.
Of course, audiences should be bored with money shots, rather than shocked by them. My calculations suggest that at current west end prices, its 89p per tepid derivative track (and presumably protein dose). The free publicity for putting out 'the most explicit spack drenched film ever!!' at an Odeon means there is little risk of not making the cash back.
The bands involved reveal the notions of a 44 year-old-man who thinks that the irrelevant bog roll of the NME is a taste arbiter. Michael Nyman - a few good soundtracks, Primal Scream - talent in spades, I once was a fan, etc - forgiven. Franz Ferdinand - Gang of Four tribute band. I don't fucking care. Dandy Warhols and the rest just fellate dead goat and are best left to tedious students, unaware of the metal postcard in the post when the fun ends and the incense gets stale.
So that's the best B can do today in the UK: A DV shot faux porn film with an NME connection that refuses to admit its true nature. By a brilliant exploitationist who is probably too pretentious and steeped in worthy mediocrity to admit it to himself.
All power to the exploitationist - hey, I'd be filming THE CAMDEN RIPPER if I could - but only if he has self-knowledge as thus and sneaks in some art. It is with fast food that the quality of the ingredients are most vital. Others did it better with less money and no acclaim. Why can't today be different?
Sunday, March 13, 2005
'For customer use only'
One of the many inconveniences of being an animal is the need to expel waste. Now, facilities for doing so in a heavy traffic shopping area are usually poor, biohazardous bogs lacking loo roll or any sign of cleanliness which are inevitably abused in ways sexual and gastrointestinal beyond the ken of California's most methed up porn product disseminators. Nonetheless, chain cafes and (at a push) chain pubs can sometimes be passable to a man in need.
However, too many people are too ashamed to pop into a Cafe Nero or brave the Sheryl Crow™ 'Best' of blare in Starbucks to make stink with no intention of buying beverages. The key is to go in like you belong, look around for a phantom person you are meeting and, not seeing them as they do not exist, look at your watch, before confidently striding to the white telephone.
However, too many people are too ashamed to pop into a Cafe Nero or brave the Sheryl Crow™ 'Best' of blare in Starbucks to make stink with no intention of buying beverages. The key is to go in like you belong, look around for a phantom person you are meeting and, not seeing them as they do not exist, look at your watch, before confidently striding to the white telephone.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Abuses of electricity
Thursday night we were kept up by the people who live in the adjacent compartment of this butchered Victorian villa - again. They are special people. It is not clear if they work or at what - one may be Antipodean but the residents change so quickly you cannot be sure. There are several abuses of electricity and our ears that they commonly subject us to. Firstly, there may be some kind of keyboard in there that one of them plays, though their repertoire seems to consist solely of a poorly interpreted Imagine™. Practice, though skill levels have yet to approach that of a second rate pub bore, often occurs as late as midnight on a weeknight. Imagine has always been bad enough to contaminate the memory of the Beatles proper work - like being served a bowl of nasal mucus for a pudding after a passable meal.
This can be accompanied by maximum volume viewing of ITV - the channel for people who find the candy floss of BBC1 too challenging, the proper trash of Five too worrying and the other two terrestrials an alien experience. Or else the reprehensible sound of DFS adverts - Katie Melua: the music of middle-aged compulsive female masturbators, again at the wattage one associates with an improvised rave.
This night I was treated to the sounds of Jerry Show me the Money Fucking Maguire. I have encountered this vehicle for that sexually ambiguous militant Scientologist before - in intoxicated captivity. On a long haul flight and worn down with low-grade free spirits, it was thrust into my face on the tiny LCD seatback screen. As always, I did not choose to listen except for a few minutes I caught with sound by choice. Such as the moment pointless helium voiced Renee Zellweger, who really does look slightly better fattened, 'playing' the single mum of a kid so cutely annoying as to make a sensible man self administer a vasectomy with a teaspoon, blubs 'You had me at hello' to her rich, handsome suburban conquest. I'd rather watch a documentary on diseases of the foot or something.
As I listened to the cliches abounding at 1am, dreading a busy day, wondering what self defence aspects of the law had been tested aggressively, I wished I could have ripped the carpet in the hallway up and chewed out the electrics going into their flat like a wronged rodent to make the noise stop.
A better use of electricity was found by the operators of the American Bar in Prague, who have some very nice lights and a giant brass coffee machine dating from the 1890s: Here are the lights¦
This can be accompanied by maximum volume viewing of ITV - the channel for people who find the candy floss of BBC1 too challenging, the proper trash of Five too worrying and the other two terrestrials an alien experience. Or else the reprehensible sound of DFS adverts - Katie Melua: the music of middle-aged compulsive female masturbators, again at the wattage one associates with an improvised rave.
This night I was treated to the sounds of Jerry Show me the Money Fucking Maguire. I have encountered this vehicle for that sexually ambiguous militant Scientologist before - in intoxicated captivity. On a long haul flight and worn down with low-grade free spirits, it was thrust into my face on the tiny LCD seatback screen. As always, I did not choose to listen except for a few minutes I caught with sound by choice. Such as the moment pointless helium voiced Renee Zellweger, who really does look slightly better fattened, 'playing' the single mum of a kid so cutely annoying as to make a sensible man self administer a vasectomy with a teaspoon, blubs 'You had me at hello' to her rich, handsome suburban conquest. I'd rather watch a documentary on diseases of the foot or something.
As I listened to the cliches abounding at 1am, dreading a busy day, wondering what self defence aspects of the law had been tested aggressively, I wished I could have ripped the carpet in the hallway up and chewed out the electrics going into their flat like a wronged rodent to make the noise stop.
A better use of electricity was found by the operators of the American Bar in Prague, who have some very nice lights and a giant brass coffee machine dating from the 1890s: Here are the lights¦
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Why can't I touch it?
As I was in the midst of another pointless, hellish commute and as a very, very insane man paced up and down the carriage, performing a remarkable paranoid monologue, I noticed a headline in the bubblegummy Metro spread on the 'BRITS':
Joss Stone – The new queen of the streets
Its absurdity and obscenity struck me dumb. Well, not really as nothing surprises me that is spewed out of a mass culture so ignorant and worthless as to be beyond irony. Nonetheless, the notion of some shagtastic pixie from Devon being the new hope of soul is less believable than the Care in the Community entertainer on the tube being the next Serge Gainsbourg. This meat puppet is being compared to Aretha Franklin, yet you could find far better vocalisations than her attempts on the b-sides of the most hopeless looking, forgotten cash in disco records of the early 80s.
At least the awful Brummie bra model Jamelia, who is imitating an utterly worthless tradition, namely the overproduced, nasal ‘R and B’ that has wrecked African American music in a way even the worst disco could not, came away gongless. Not that it matters as I am sure MasterCard or whomever sews it up beforehand on the basis of a focus group.
Affable Scotsmen ripping off Gang of Four, Robbie Williams being lauded as the best songwriter of the last 25 years, lithe American popsters with obvious little designer implants to accentuate their genius in way years of spouting a plasticated shadow of ska could not, disguised Christian rockers singing a duet…
I longed in vain for a horrible accident involving defective pyrotechnics and a burst sewage pipe. And that’s just from being subjected to the media miasma on it all – much of which mentioned that ‘real’ music was back as the industry grinned and sued a few more downloaders. Hopefully Charles and Camilla will block the front pages tomorrow….
Joss Stone – The new queen of the streets
Its absurdity and obscenity struck me dumb. Well, not really as nothing surprises me that is spewed out of a mass culture so ignorant and worthless as to be beyond irony. Nonetheless, the notion of some shagtastic pixie from Devon being the new hope of soul is less believable than the Care in the Community entertainer on the tube being the next Serge Gainsbourg. This meat puppet is being compared to Aretha Franklin, yet you could find far better vocalisations than her attempts on the b-sides of the most hopeless looking, forgotten cash in disco records of the early 80s.
At least the awful Brummie bra model Jamelia, who is imitating an utterly worthless tradition, namely the overproduced, nasal ‘R and B’ that has wrecked African American music in a way even the worst disco could not, came away gongless. Not that it matters as I am sure MasterCard or whomever sews it up beforehand on the basis of a focus group.
Affable Scotsmen ripping off Gang of Four, Robbie Williams being lauded as the best songwriter of the last 25 years, lithe American popsters with obvious little designer implants to accentuate their genius in way years of spouting a plasticated shadow of ska could not, disguised Christian rockers singing a duet…
I longed in vain for a horrible accident involving defective pyrotechnics and a burst sewage pipe. And that’s just from being subjected to the media miasma on it all – much of which mentioned that ‘real’ music was back as the industry grinned and sued a few more downloaders. Hopefully Charles and Camilla will block the front pages tomorrow….
Monday, January 03, 2005
mole mission
My, my - the holidays do come and go as quickly as a glue huffing pickpocket plying his trade on the hordes of gothkidz in Camden. Been busy with nothing.
A while back, I noticed this new Kinder Surprise display in a shop in Hammersmith near my workplace whose only other positive attribute is a good price on large bottles of proper Nigerian Guinness and realised that it was an instructive example of the everyday obscenity that the world needs more of. This Mole Mission™ is clearly pornographic in intent - the gleeful rodent wielding an impossibly violent electric phallus of some sort. I have since seen it elsewhere and can only congratulate the designers and product planners who unleashed this little Teutonic jape into the retail landscape.
A while back, I noticed this new Kinder Surprise display in a shop in Hammersmith near my workplace whose only other positive attribute is a good price on large bottles of proper Nigerian Guinness and realised that it was an instructive example of the everyday obscenity that the world needs more of. This Mole Mission™ is clearly pornographic in intent - the gleeful rodent wielding an impossibly violent electric phallus of some sort. I have since seen it elsewhere and can only congratulate the designers and product planners who unleashed this little Teutonic jape into the retail landscape.
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