Killers of the New Frontier

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is The Killers.

That's all I have to say really. Thanks for reading!

Fine, I'll elaborate. This came to my attention on Twitter yesterday (which was my birthday thanks) and the fact that Brandon Flowers (from off of The Killers) and Jimmy Carr (from off of not paying tax) are friends is simultaneously totally bizarre and completely logical. Of course they're friends, they probably sit around talking about themselves.

It's also interesting to learn where The Killers actually get their ideas from. I always assumed they scraped them from the bottom of a massive barrel. But it turns out they get them from Jimmy Carr. So in a way I was right. But what other bands are actually being fed ideas by television comedians? Are Muse songs based on Russell Howard routines? Does Michael McIntyre write for Kings of Leon? Is Frankie Boyle friends with Coldplay?

So Jimmy Carr looks up from his dinner and says: "It seems that humans get annoyed when you don't pay tax. It's as if they care about the economy more than they care about me. What's that all about? Anyway, you should write a song about the economy." At which point Brandon Flowers spits out a mouthful of... flowers, I guess, and exclaims: "The economy! Why didn't I think of that?!" These are all direct quotes by the way.

I can only assume that the resulting song, "Deadlines and Commitments", is as profound and important as we've come to expect from The Killers. No doubt it has already solved all the economic problems in the world, just through the power of music and Mormonism. 

But that's all fine; if Brandon Flowers and Jimmy Carr are having dinner together then at least they're not out in the world. What's not fine, however, is Brandon Flowers saying:

"Guitar bands aren't writing songs. Write a f**king song, get over yourself. There aren't any. Where are they? Dance music cannot compete with a really great rock and roll song ... There ain't no DJ that's gonna play something that can take 'Mr Brightside' or 'Don't Look Back In Anger'. Those songs are better than that."

What the fuck does Brandon Flowers know about rock and roll? I know it's hard to define, and in fact it's easier to say when things are definitely not rock and roll. So here are some things that are definitely not rock and roll:

Being a Mormon. Two things that we know go hand in hand with rock and roll are of course sex and drugs. But Mormonism prohibits both sex and drugs. Including coffee. Coffee! Admittedly, Mormonism is associated with polygamy which could be kind of rock and roll... but Brandon Flowers only has one wife, so he's not even rock and roll within the Mormon community. So no Brandon Flowers, being a Mormon - who, let's not forget, forbid sex and alcohol and coffee - is not rock and roll.

Being friends with Jimmy Carr. Being friends with comedians could be rock and roll; being friends with Bill Hicks, now that would be rock and roll. But you're not friends with Bill Hicks, you're friends with Jimmy Carr. And that's not rock and roll; it's just very, very boring.

The Killers. The Killers are not rock and roll. You mentioned "Mr Brightside", Brandon Flowers. In fact, you mentioned it as an example of one of the greatest songs ever, despite it being your own song. After using the phrase "get over yourself." But anyway, is "Mr Brightside" rock and roll? That song that plays in clubs to squeeze out every last drop of every young person's individuality? Is that rock and roll? Is that what Led Zeppelin fought for? I know they didn't fight, the point is, The Killers are not rock and roll. 

Thanks for reading, the title of this blog comes from the song Wind Below by Rage Against the Machine, who very much are rock and roll. Enjoy!

The Plan

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is Ben Drew.

In the latest instalment of the always brilliant Kermode & Mayo podcast, they interviewed Ray Winstone and Ben Drew about their upcoming film The Sweeney, which I won't prejudge, other than to say it looks shit.

But the worst bit of the interview came from Ben Drew (AKA Plan B), have a listen: 

I'm sorry I just made you listen to almost two minutes of Ben Drew talking. They're two minutes you won't get back, two minutes in which you could have done something more fun, like staring at a wall or eating a rusty nail.

The reason that clip made me so angry is because it's a classic example of one of the worst things ever: successful people complaining about their success. It's like the humblebrag, but without even the pretence of humbleness. A brag, I guess. 

Ben Drew complains about working without holidays, except for two holidays which "ain't enough." He complains about being in the immensely privileged position of being able to pursue whichever project he chooses. He complains about being successful.

He hates being famous, and I'm with him on that one; I hate that he's famous. He hates music and films, and again I sympathise, because I hate his music and his films. Maybe we have more in common than I thought. We should meet for a drink some time, if he ever gets a gap in his impossibly hectic schedule.

Poor Ben Drew, he doesn't even get the weekend off, like "normal people" do, and what a lovely phrase that is too. The "normal people" have it so easy, not like the supernormal Ben Drew, with his tireless work, without which we'd all die.

Sarcasm aside, Ben Drew just sounds churlish and ungrateful by claiming that he's somehow worse off than "normal people". Hearing him complaining about having to spend two years promoting an album like it's the hardest thing in the world is just painful. The reality is that any one of those "normal people" would swap lives with Ben Drew in a heartbeat. Well actually, they wouldn't, because then they'd have to be Ben Drew. 

Also, if he works so very hard, then why is everything he does so shit? I think that's actually my main problem here; Ben Drew is fucking shit. I probably wouldn't mind him complaining about how successful he is, if he wasn't so absolutely fucking shit. I've not seen him in anything, nor have I seen the film he directed, or heard much of his music beyond the total fucking shit that's always playing everywhere, but still, he is shit.

Thanks for reading, I'll leave you with the Poets of Rhythm song that this blog is named after. Enjoy!

Purrfection

As you know, I love everything in the world, with the exception of three things. Two of those things that I love the most are horror films, and cats.

When the two meet, it tends to end badly for the cat. There are some famous exceptions; Jones from Alien survives, as does Claude in Black Christmas (presumably) and of course the stray cat who Patrick Bateman almost feeds to the ATM in American Psycho. Presumably those cat actors are in a strong union.

I can't be the only one who breathes a sigh of relief when he only kills the human, rather than the cat. It's odd, but I care more when animals die in films than when humans do. Well, it's not that odd, it's perfectly explainable; I hate humans and I like animals, especially cats. So here are my top 5 cat deaths in horror films: (WARNING: Contains spoilers and dead cats.)

5. Straw Dogs 

Sam Peckinpah's classic should be called Straw Dogs and Dead Cats, thanks to this scene in which Dustin Hoffman finds his cat hanged in a wardrobe. As in the case of most cinematic cat murders, this is a warning; "To prove to you that they could get into your bedroom." It seems a bit extreme though, they could just as easily have hidden his jeans or something.

4. Kill List

In what is probably an homage to Straw Dogs, the cat in the incredible Kill List meets the same grizzly end. Killing animals is famously a sign of psychopathy. Let's face it, you'd have to be a monster to murder an adorable cat. Unless it was really annoying.

3. Scream

Okay, so this isn't strictly speaking a cat death; if you're going to be all pedantic about it then yes, Rose McGowan is technically a human. But she is killed in a cat flap and it turns out I haven't done enough research, so it counts.

2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I won't use a picture for this one, because if you've seen David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then you'll probably remember the horrifically mutilated cat, and if you haven't then I don't want to spoil it. Basically, it's one of the most horrible things ever. Let's move on.

1. Drag Me to Hell

My favourite horror film cat death comes in Sam Raimi's brilliant Drag Me to Hell, in which a girl denies a mortgage extension to an old gypsy woman who, in revenge, puts a curse on the girl which will send her to hell in three days. At one point, in a desperate bid to send an animal sacrifice in her place, the girl kills her own cat. Long story short, it doesn't work, and the cat comes out of someone's mouth at the end. You don't get that in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films...

Thanks for reading this blog, which will presumably be all over the tabloids when I'm inevitably admitted to an institution of some sort. Next time - dog deaths! 

I'll leave you with the excellent Submotion Orchestra song on which the title of this blog so innovatively puns. Enjoy!

Shut Up

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is Boris Johnson.

It's bad enough that we're meant to love having a funny mayor, the word "funny" here meaning "racially insensitive" and "unfunny". Call me boring, but I think the requirements for representing London, with all its vibrant diversity, should be more than just a few appearances on an increasingly terrible TV panel show with silly hair and a posh voice. "But he chased away those people that time!" Fuck off. He's a right-wing self-publicist who can't open his mouth without being inappropriate, or sexist, or otherwise offensive. So no, I don't find him funny, because I'm not a child or a racist.


So imagine my absolute delight when this happened. I know that complaining about the content of The Sun is akin to criticising a child's drawing, but it seems that Boris Johnson's comments are part of a serious problem. He's telling us to "cut out the whining" about the Olympics, which is awful enough because you can hear it in his stupid voice. But what's really troublesome is that by "whining" he means criticising. There's something genuinely worrying about members of the government effectively telling us to shut the fuck up. 


It would be too easy to dismiss these comments as a light-hearted bit of fun from Boris Johnson, or "Boris" as he's vomit-inducingly known. That's how he gets away with being a fucking idiot, people just shrug and say, "oh it's just Boris, he was so funny on Have I Got Shit For Brains." He's not your slightly racist grandmother, he's the fucking Mayor of London. He's an elected representative, and as such we have a right to criticise him. He can't tell us to "put a sock in it", no matter how hilariously fucking quaint it sounds. He has to listen to us. That's his job. "Enough whimpering" is not a legitimate response to legitimate criticisms. Not only is it insultingly patronising, it's an attempt to close down discussion. Democracy should be about dialogue. Boris Johnson's attitude is problematic because when he supposedly playfully says shut up, he actually means it.


Boris Johnson isn't the only offender though, this is a conservative viewpoint; that we should just let the men in charge get on with it without making a fuss. A few months back, William Hague said that we'll fix the economy by working harder, "rather than complaining about it." Again, we're being told by our government to shut the fuck up, this time with legitimate criticism labelled as "complaining".

We are certainly not short of legitimate grievances; PC Simon Harwood has been found not guilty, because apparently hitting someone with a baton as they walk away from you is "reasonable force"; Jeremy Hunt still has a job, and isn't in constant pain which is completely unfair; yesterday the Treasury minister claimed it was "morally wrong" to pay builders in cash, which is obviously a much greater problem than rich people deliberately avoiding paying millions of pounds worth of tax; I was walking through St Pancras station earlier, and one of those screens with a big Olympics themed McDonald's advert wasn't working. Fix it, Boris Johnson. Fix it by hand.


But instead of listening to us, the government goes "ssh now, silly humans. Stick this special commemorative Jubilee lollipop in your mouth and be quiet while we spend £80 million on a big fucking yacht." We're given the Jubilee and the Olympics to shut us up for a bit, like parents giving their child a rattle to distract it from their messy and violent divorce. 

So I won't "cut out the whining" thanks, because as the government it is your job to listen to me. Well not me, obviously, because I don't live in London and also I'm a fucking idiot. But they constantly try to close down discussion and expect us to just be ruled without questioning, and that's not good enough.


Thanks for reading this rant, I'll leave you with the Madness song that this blog is named after. Enjoy!

Reality Show

As you know, I love everything in the world, with the exception of three things. One of those things that I love is TV shows about TV shows.

The Newsroom saw its UK debut this week, a show so unbelievably Aaron Sorkin that it would feel like a parody, were it not for the fact that it's obviously really good. Yes it's smug and over the top and shouty and there are inexplicable English people and the newsroom itself looks more like CTU from 24 than any real place on Earth - which is probably more a problem with 24 for making the Anti-Terrorist HQ look, in the genius words of Charlie Brooker, "more like the offices of a Hoxton-based fashion magazine than a top-secret quasi-military nerve centre." - but you can't help but get lost in Sorkin's world; a world in which people randomly make rousing speeches as a Thomas Newman score soars underneath; a world in which the unattractive and unwitty are kept in bunkers deep, deep underground; a world in which no one ever says "ermmm..."

But what's my point? Well, ermmm... The Newsroom is a TV show about a TV show, as are previous Sorkin works, the brilliantly clever Sports Night and the terribly titled Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And this phenomenon doesn't end with Sorkin; a lot of TV shows are about the production of TV shows, and I don't mean documentaries about real TV shows, I mean dramas and comedies that revolve around the production of a fictional TV show. Perhaps it's a case of television writers taking heed of the advice, "write about what you know." As a result, we have the depressingly unfunny Home Improvement, the oddly interesting but seen-by-no-one Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive, and Ricky Gervais' second favourite show of all time, Extras. His favourite is Life's Too Short.

As a complete sucker for the postmodern, I love this kind of clever meta stuff, so here are my top 5 TV shows about TV shows:

5. Sports Night

Sorkin's first TV show is, in my humble and horrendously ill-informed opinion, his greatest work and subsequently he has just been trying to replicate it. Sports Night centres around the production of a sports show called Sports Night. Replace "sports" with "news" and you have The Newsroom. Literally; it centres around the production of a news show called News Night. There's no weak link in Sports Night, with actors including Peter Krause, Joshua Malina and Sabrina Lloyd bringing Sorkin's unfeasibly sharp script to life; they really can walk and talk at the same time. Because it wasn't massively popular and, as the tagline says, "it isn't about sports at all", Sorkin was able to recycle a lot of it later for his bigger shows. For me though, Sports NIght has more heart than any of them, and its rough edges make it feel warmer than the slick glossiness of The West Wing and The Newsroom.

4. Episodes

Because of this character.

3. The Larry Sanders Show

Proving yet again that HBO can do no wrong - even if they killed your grandmother they'd do it with such intelligence and class that you'd say "fair enough" - The Larry Sanders Show did it all first. I'm only on season 1 because no one grabbed me and shook me and shouted at me to FUCKING WATCH LARRY SANDERS, and as a result I'm angry at everyone. That's why I'm so aggressive when it comes to recommending brilliant TV shows; I want others to do the same for me. So FUCKING WATCH LARRY SANDERS. You can see it oozing out of every modern comedy, particularly in the case of 30 Rock and Extras, on which the influence of this classic cannot be understated. The Larry Sanders Show had celebrities appearing as parodies of themselves over 10 years before Ricky Gervais made it his gag. His one gag.

2. Dead Set

Charlie Brooker is a TV critic, and nothing criticises TV quite like his zom-com Dead Set. Famous for its zombie-Davina, Brooker's viciously scathing and articulate attack on reality television sees the zompocalypse strike during a Big Brother eviction night. Trapped in the Big Brother house, the contestants become the survivors. It's a genius premise, but it's more than that; it's a bitingly dark comedy, a genuinely scary piece of horror, and a poignant and ruthless satire. Plus of course, zombie-Davina.  

1. 30 Rock

I am nothing if not predictable. Unlike 30 Rock, which has run for six seasons and never ceases to be clever and funny in equal measure. It has created some of the best comedy characters of all time, with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin at the show's heart, trying desperately to run a live TV show and keep reins around the insanity of Jenna, Tracy and of course Kenneth. The next season of Fey's perfect creation will be its last, which is tragic, not least because I don't know where I'll find quotes to put at the top of my blog. But 30 Rock is so ingeniously written that it can be watched again and again; it's satirical, it's warm and it's hilarious, with some of the best guest stars in TV history. Talking of which... funny how these things all click into place.

So those are my top 5 TV shows about TV shows, thanks for reading. If there's two things I love it's television and Spanish ska, so I'll leave you with the Ska-P song that this blog is named after, enjoy!

Chez Madame Louise

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is menshn.

"But what is menshn?" I hear no one ask. In fact, the only question to which "menshn" is the answer is: "Why did all those people commit suicide?"

Menshn is the illegitimate brain-spawn of everyone's second favourite chick lit author turned MP, Louise Mensch (the first is Michael Gove, who just really gets teenage girls). Here's Menzch's to-do list:

✓ Have name that sounds like an STD.
✓ Have written more books than have read.
✓ Launch a rival to Twitter.


That's right, Louise Menxch has founded a social networking site called menshn. But if you're thinking that she just named it after herself like a weird power-mad egomaniac then think again, because it's actually nothing to do with her creepy name but merely a play on the word "mention." See, there's no C in "menshn" you big idiot, can't you even read? It's definitely got nothing to do with her name, despite it being almost identical to her name. Stop assuming that it's got anything to do with her name when she keeps insisting that it absolutely hasn't. It's not vain to the point of disturbingly sinister at all, because again, "menshn" and "Mensch" are obviously entirely unrelated words. Now stop going on about it.


So what is menschn? Well, apart from being nothing to do with the name "Mensch", it's a microblogging site where posts can be no more than 180 characters in length. I'm going to preempt you again a bit here; it reminds you of Twitter, right? BUT IT'S NOTHING LIKE TWITTER YOU DICK! Because menschn has an 180 character limit on posts, while Twitter has 140. That's a difference of a massive 40 characters! The two websites couldn't be more different. 


But wait. Because menschn differs from that, let's face it, now obsolete "Twitter" thing, by making sure that every post is "on topic." Because that's what Twitter needed; censorship. Censorship controlled by Louise Menzxch. She identified that the problem with Twitter is the freedom to talk about whatever people choose. It seems so obvious now, doesn't it? That's why we're all over at menschn, having forgotten about whatever that lame 140 character shit was.


Sarcasm aside, it's one of the worst things to have ever happened. It's just downright bizzarre. The tagline is "talk on topic", lending the whole thing an eerie school-vibe, which isn't exactly what you want on a Twitter-style website. But then, what do you expect when it's run by a Conservative MP? This is free speech, Tory-style; talk about whatever you want, as long as it's this. In fact, menschn is a beautifully bleak insight into a dystopian future in which the internet is controlled by the Tories.


Glancing round the website (I'm not going to join due to genuine fear), there's a weird crypto-fascism on display and I'm not just being a silly lefty; it's really fucking strange. The fact that users are called "menshners" and that topics are "menshnd" doesn't help the whole Inglorious Basterds thing, and there's a list of "high rated users" which resembles something of a high command, in which Louise Menzxsch ranks second.


The rules had to be called "the menschn rules" just in case you weren't already reading all the content in a bad Nazi accent. "The first rule of menschn is you do talk about menschn." Now, as you probably know, Fight Club is my favourite film, and if you have to add to the steaming high pile of "first rule" jokes out there in the world, it best be worth it. This is more like brutally murdering Chuck Palahniuk, David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and everyone else before digging them up and mensching all over their corpses.


I stopped reading soon after that, as it continues in the same Project Mayhem style vein of cultish fascism and I got angry and then scared and then confused and then eventually angry again, but I skipped to the end which perhaps best sums up menschn, the website founded by someone who has never had fun but deems themselves worthy of controlling online discussion but definitely, DEFINITELY did NOT name the site after themselves:


"Have fun - talk on topic!"


Thanks for reading, I'll leave you with the Puggy song that this blog is named after. Enjoy - talk on topic!

You Change the Channels and You Change Our Minds

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is adverts. Again. Again.

I'll stop complaining about them when they stop being so shit. I spend a lot of my time at the cinema, where I see the same handful of adverts blasted at me every time, before I finally get to watch Chernobyl Diaries and then go home thoroughly depressed.

So here are the 5 worst adverts currently shown at the cinema:

5. Sony Ericsson Xperia

Why the fuck would we want children to explain the workings of electronics to us in adverts? Children are idiots, famously. No, Jake Ryan (age 8), we DO know what's inside that device. Apparently Wes Anderson directed that advert, because that's what a Sony Ericsson ad needs; whimsy. Forced, desperate, tedious, irritating, crushing whimsy. Jake Ryan (age 8) probably got one of those phones for free as well, and would have tried to eat it or something. Ditto Wes Anderson.

4. Carling

Partly because of "British" being used as a selling point, but mainly because of the music; that kind of boring fucking guitar noise that sounds like it was written by someone who has never had fun in their life. I call it "Ad-Rock".

3. From the Red Carpet

These are on every time and the film in question changes disappointingly rarely; at the moment it's a particularly hateful one about Snow Shite and the Cuntsman. But this is the worst one that's on YouTube, and while not really an advert it deserves its place on this list. It's part film trailer, part M&Ms advert, all fucking awful. I've not wanted to inflict such graphic and twisted pain upon two colourful pieces of confectionary since Jedward. They also somehow managed to find the only human in the world who is less lifelike than the M&Ms. That said, it's quite fun to watch esteemed actors try desperately to talk up films that they know are absolute shit; "There's a lot of... humour." "It's very... big." "I think it's a very... brave directorial attempt by Madonna."

2. VW Polo

   

This would-be Christmas advert tries so hard to be emotionally manipulative that it ends up feeling weirdly creepy, and would be infinitely improved if the car burst into flames as she drives away at the very end. Also note the unrelentingly fucking dreary music and dad's swallowing-acting at 1:21.

1. University of Lincoln

Ok I admit it, I love this advert, just for the sarcastic pompousness and ridiculous grandeur. No offence Lincoln, but you're no Mars University. It looks like something from Brass Eye, and you just have to admire the audacity of getting that shown in cinemas. Fuck it, let's watch it again!

Thanks for reading, maybe next blog won't be about adverts, but I'm not promising anything... I'll leave you with the System of a Down song that the title of this blog comes from, enjoy!