Exit Music (For A Film)

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

Ooh I should start with a follow up to my last blog about Skins... Channel 4 emailed me back and said: "Unfortunately, the information you have provided does not enable us to accurately assist you." I'm not sure how much clearer I could have been, but anyway...

You know that annoying thing David Cameron does? Every Prime Minister has a sort of embarrassing tick that they do. Gordon Brown had that jaw thing, Tony Blair had the flappy hand gestures and David Cameron has that annoying habit of fucking TALKING. Talking about stuff that it is not his job to talk about, like music videos. Giving his opinion without even being asked, and yes I appreciate the irony, fuck off.

This is the latest example of him gruntingly spewing his salty judgement all over something about which he has no fucking clue; the film industry, he says with all the wisdom of a Lego brick, should support commercially successful mainstream films like The King's Speech.

As everyone has pointed out, we don't know which films are going to be "commercially successful"; that BBC article uses the example of The Artist, a black and white, silent film, which is enjoying enormous unexpected popularity.

That said, we can sometimes tell when a film is going to be "commercially successful". For instance The Iron Lady, a film so flimsy and so blatantly targeted at a mainstream trans-Atlantic audience that it can be folded up into a paper plane and thrown at America.

I won't go on about that excuse for a film, which I reviewed here, but I will say this: What does The Iron Lady have in common with The King's Speech? They both celebrate members of the ruling class. Oh and they both include montages in which the protagonist is taught to speak differently, but only one of them made me wish that the cinema in which I was sitting would go all Inglourious Basterds.

But that's what David Cameron means isn't it? When he says that we should be making more "commercially successful pictures", what he's saying is that we should be making more films that glorify archaic British institutions. This is for two reasons: Firstly, as a conservative he wants to see these traditional values celebrated, and secondly, those films make money.

Look at the recent successful British films. The Iron Lady is a big hug for a Tory Prime Minister. The King's Speech and The Queen are big kisses to the monarchy. Even Harry Potter is a celebration of elitist private education. And remember that nightmare you had in which Shakespeare In Love won the Best Picture Oscar? Well that actually happened, because it's a film that wallows in export-friendly olden-days bull-shit.

The comedian Greg Proops recently said that the reason the British are good at making these period pieces is because we kept all the costumes. And that's just it. The Academy and the export market lap up this outdated view of Britain and what David Cameron is suggesting is that we pander to them. "You know," Britain says timidly to Oscar (I assume that's a guy), "we're not actually all about the posh people and the frilly clothes and the stiff-upper lip and the big houses so much these days..." To which Oscar simply laughs and unzips Britain's fly, as we churn out "Meryl Streep IN... The King's Speech for cunts." It's embarrassing.

It's embarrassing because the monarchy is embarrassing and our political institutions are embarrassing and our class system is embarrassing and Shakespeare In Love is fucking embarrassing. That's not what I want to be cinematically representing Britain. It's like Blue representing us in Eurovision.

2011 gave us some of the best British films I've ever seen; Kill List, Submarine, Wuthering Heights, Wreckers, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Attack The Block, WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN! And of course Senna, which has been eliminated from the Best Documentary Oscar category, despite it being the best documentary. Weird. If only Ayrton Senna had worn a crown...

Incidentally, Senna was commercially successful, but like The Artist, that was a surprise. Senna is not the type of film Cameron is talking about putting money behind. He's talking about Phyllida Lloyd's upcoming musical entitled Lady Di!

British films that are challenging and interesting, films from Paddy Considine and Shane Meadows and Andrea Arnold and Ben Wheatley, films that aren't formulaic or condescending or stuffy, won't have a chance if David Cameron gets his way and keeps fucking talking. He should really get some therapy for that. *Cue montage!*

Thanks for reading, I would leave you with the Radiohead song that this blog is named after, but that would leave things on a bit of a downer. So here's a great reggae cover by Easy Star All-Stars, enjoy!

New Skin(s)

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

As it returns soon for its 74th series, I sent the following email to Channel 4.

_______________________________________

Dear Channel 4,

It has come to my attention that your pro-abortion campaign show Skins is returning soon, so I thought I'd share with you my 10 ideas for Skins storylines. They might come in useful if ever the Skins writers forget their weird dreams before they have time to write them down. I should also add that I don't watch Skins, so have had to guess names and things.

1. Sam "STD" Davis fails his driving test for trying to smoke the car's exhaust pipe.

2. One of the infamous Skins parties is shut down by police due to the amount of semi-naked children in attendance.

3. The Skins gang are on their way to see the band Enter Shikari live, when their bus explodes, killing them all in a painful, fiery death.

4. Roxxxie fails to pay back her unstable drug dealer, who is also her boyfriend, so as punishment he welds her BlackBerry® to her hand permanently; directed by David Cronenberg.

5. The Skins gang stop taking hallucinogenic drugs for long enough to see that in reality they are a bunch of boring fucking borderline rapists.

6. Suzzzie comes out as a lesbian, then decides she's straight after all, then changes her mind again, then goes back to being straight, then turns into a cat and gets run over.

7. The Skins gang, having snorted every single possession including money and laptops, are forced into abject poverty and finally have something real to whine about. Starving and desperate, Sam is the first to be killed and eaten...

8. Crazy Dave sleeps with a prostitute and contracts a bizarre STI which makes him wake up in a cold sweat and furiously itchy in the middle of the night, but inside MySpace.

9. Johnny The Cunt has a particularly heavy night and wakes up with a broken wrist, which he sustained while fisting someone, and a severe hangover. He realises that he's late for his art exam (because he's arty). Due to his wrist injury, he has to draw using his left hand and as a result repeatedly snaps the lead of the 80 pencils he gets through. His unsettled stomach leads to him "expressing himself" all over the canvas. He gets an A*, but is left a forever shaking wreck scarred with debilitating mental illness.

10. Skidmark's ego grows to the point of self-awareness and becomes a new character.

You're welcome.

Yours faithfully,

Daniel Meier.

_______________________________________

But hey, 30 Rock is back tonight! I'll leave you with the Incubus song that this blog is named after. Enjoy!

Top Five

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is 2011.

The BBC news was dominated by headlines about the royal family, but then why would we want to read about boring, unimportant shit like foreigners being killed? Then yesterday Geoffrey Howe tried to deny stuff that definitely happened. Poor man, it's as if you say one thing and suddenly you're branded as having actually said that thing. Though my memory is obviously not great, considering my summary of the events of 2011 only goes as far back as yesterday.

I may have become blinded by anger. Just a few nights ago I dreamt that I went up to Beyoncé and said, "Oh you fucking cunt." Then last night, after becoming disproportionately annoyed with 2 people on Facebook, I spent about an hour thinking, "if I could line them both up so that if I punched one of them, their head would knock painfully into the jaw of the other, which one of them would I punch?"

But instead of all that, I'm going to talk about my favourite things of 2011. Because in spite of everything, some great stuff came out of this year. Here are five Top Fives:

Films:

5. Take Shelter

4. Wuthering Heights

3. The Guard

2. Drive

1. We Need To Talk About Kevin

Not forgetting Senna, Super, A Separation, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Super 8, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Scream 4, Attack The Block...

TV Drama:

5. The Shadow Line

4. This Is England '88

3. Doctor Who

2. Black Mirror

1. American Horror Story

Seriously, American Horror Story was a brilliant mixture of The Shining and David Cronenberg and every horror film ever and Glee. Well not Glee, it was just created by the same people, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. The perfect cast even included Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy, whose character is simultaneously old and young and dead. In fact 90% of the characters are dead. It is set in "Murder House" after all, hence why there's a thing in the basement and a thing in the attic. They might as well have included the exchange:

"In the interest of full disclosure, I should warn you that this house is known as "Murder House."

"We'll take it!"

"No seriously, all the previous owners were killed in here."
"I'll double the asking price!"

"Listen to me, you will definitely be brutally murdered in this house."

"You had me at Murder!"

TV Comedy:

5. Him & Her

4. Fresh Meat

3. Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

2. 30 Rock

1. Community

And my thoughts remain with Community during its hiatus. Thank fuck for the return of 30 Rock to keep me sane during this difficult time.

Music (Gigs and Albums):

5. If Not Now, When? - Incubus

4. Queens of the Stone Age - Queens of the Stone Age (Originally released in 1998 but thankfully re-released this year)

3. Incubus at the Manchester O2

2. The Skints at loads of places

1. Jamiroquai at the O2 Arena

That Jamiroquai gig was one of those special, unforgettable experiences, and not just because Jay Kay spoke to me.

Live Comedy

5. The Future Is Another Place - Josie Long

4. Richard Herring (Christ on a Bike and What Is Love, Anyway? and AIOTM *aiotm*)

3. Carpet Remnant World - Stewart Lee

2. Curse Sir Walter Raleigh - Michael Legge

1. The Trap (X and Bad Musical)

Not forgetting the brilliant Robin Ince and his ridiculous amount of stuff; people with shows so great that I saw them twice such as Tony Law and Tim Key; and those geniuses that I finally saw for the first time like Simon Munnery and Dave Gorman.

Thank you for reading, happy new year! Enjoy 2012, even though there's going to be that big, ghastly, expensive affair with all the nationalism and shooting. No not the Olympics, the US Presidential election! Hahahahah oh fucking hell let's just hope the Mayans were right. I'll leave you with the Hotspots song that this blog is named after, enjoy!

Without A Face(book)

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

So here we are are, at the final chapter of my trilogy of blogs that I'm calling: Failing My Degree. And what a ride it has been. Remember how it all began? Two days ago, we began this saga. They said we'd never make it. "You're crazy," they said, "get out of my bedroom." But we persisted. We never gave up, even during that difficult middle section of our journey. Yesterday. Dark times indeed. But we made it out the other side, ready to face the biggest evil of all: Facebook.

Last month I blogged about Twitter, and now I turn to Twitter's sex-offender uncle, Facebook. Don't get me wrong, I love The Social Network. But I often wonder what it is that I really hate: Facebook, or most people that I know. The answer is both. The former because of the way it constantly restyles itself like a fucking celebrity, because of the way it shows everyone exactly what you're reading and watching and wanking over, because of Facebook Chat acting like a temperamental, uncooperative, moody teenager. We're all "experiencing some problems" Facebook Chat, get over yourself.

But what really makes me want to put my hand in a toaster is that persistant irritant, Other People. With their Facebook Statuses. The kind that make me want to comment saying "CUNT" and then claim I was fraped. The kind like these: The 10 Worst Kinds Of Facebook Status - Oh and if you're thinking, "why don't you just hide the people who piss you off?" Fuck you.

10. The Mundane - eg. Loving X Factor and pizza tonight - People complain that Twitter is full of mundane "I am eating" style tweets, but clearly they're not friends with the same people as me on Facebook. Every other status is "I am in a library" or "I am bleeding to death, please get help." YAWN

9. The Wry Observation - eg. How come the more you sleep the more tired you are?! - This covers "that awkward moment when..." statuses too, which I've complained about before. "That awkward moment when you walk into a room and forget why you went in there!" Thanks Michael McIntyre.

8. The Copied Joke - eg. David Cameron's wife has given birth. I didn't even know Clegg was pregnant! - Yeah we've all seen Sickipedia.

7. The Link To The Thing I Hate - eg. I love this new Florence And The Machine song! - Followed by a YouTube video. Equally awful is when someone I hate posts something I like. Shit, THEY like Fight Club? Time to find a new favourite film. And stab myself in the leg with a corkscrew.

6. The "Ironic" - eg. S Club 7 back together. Life is complete. - That one is a genuine status from someone I hope never reads this blog.

5. The Smug - eg. That's 8 hours in the library done, time to start another essay! - Like I don't feel bad enough about doing fuck nothing with my day.

4. The In-joke - eg. Shoelaces! LOL @Jamie Jameson - I hope your head gets stuck in a boiling kettle.

3. The Lazy Frape - eg. I love cock. - New rule: Only Dan is allowed to frape. He is the master. He fraped someone when they were LOGGED OUT of Facebook. And even if he does just do an "I love cock", it's funny when it's Dan.

2. The Pretentious - eg. Now dance like a dandelion in the wind on the hill underneath the pines, yeah move like the river flows, feel the big drum down deep in your toes. - Another genuine status. From a male. These statuses could be song lyrics or a nonsensical quote. "'Healing yourself is connected with healing others.' - Yoko Ono". Just because it's incomprehensible doesn't make it clever. Statuses like this are just pretentious, meaningless, smug, attention-seeking, self-absorbed, self-centred, self-involved piles of nothing.

1. The Night Out - eg. Can't wait to get on it tonightttttttttt! - When the last letter of a word is held down like that I always hope it's because they've collapsed in pain on to their keyboards. But no, because the next day they have statuses that just say things like, "Hanging." Which leaves me hoping it's literal. These boring cunts have mistaken telling everyone about how drunk they get for a personality.

The name of this blog is a genius play on the Rage Against The Machine song with which I will leave you, enjoy!

Look Alive

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

Welcome to this, the second instalment of my trilogy of blogs that I'm calling: Failing My Degree.

I hate music gigs. Which is why I go to so many of them. Actually, seeing my favourite bands play live is one of my favourite things in the world. But there's always that annoying virus at every gig; Other People. So here's the 5 worst things about gigs, starting with when you first arrive and try to buy...

5. Overpriced drinks - One of the great things about the fact that loads of my favourite bands are relatively unknown is that I can see them live for around a fiver. Unless I want to buy a drink. In which case I need to sell my liver. Which renders the entire drinking operation redundant. How much?! £4?! For a pint of disgusting beer?! Which I'll inevitably get spilt all over me anyway?! Yeah, 2 of those please. Then, plastic cup of watery piss-beer in hand, you run to the front, unless there's a...

4. Barrier - I understand why you'd need a barrier between the crowd and the stage at a venue like the O2 Arena, but at this tiny punk venue in Camden I want to be 2 metres closer to the lead singer of Capdown! And even if you do make it to the front, there's the inevitable...

3. Pushers-in - Didn't I start at the front and in the centre? How come I'm now 3 rows back and next to the speaker? Oh, it's because you all thought it was OK to push me out the way. Even though you're all about 8 foot taller than me, you have a mohawk, and you're covered in tattoos. Not to mention that you're all...

2. Sweaty, topless men - And you have dreadlocks. Which I love, by the way, but not when they're in my mouth. I leave gigs covered in sweat, most of it not my own, desperately wanting to bathe in acid. It's even worse when these sweaty, topless men are...

1. Moshing - If the gig is punk or metal or whatever then knock yourself out. In fact you may well do exactly that. But most gigs I go to are reggae or ska and people still mosh! And no, I can't ignore them, because this venue is the size of a child's bedroom. And that child is Linda Blair in The Exorcist; I cannot ignore them. In fact I'm tacitly participating, according to the people flying into me while I try to enjoy The Skints. Presumably you paid to see this band, fucking watch them! At least face the right way.

Thank you for reading, and thanks to Ben for helping to compile these and for protecting accompanying me at these gigs, which despite the ranting, are some of the best things ever. I'll leave you with the brilliant Incubus song that this blog is named after, enjoy (Incubus)!

Sell Out

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

This is the first of 3 blogs I'm going to write over 3 consecutive days, in a trilogy of blogs that I'm calling: Failing My Degree.

So one minute you're watching Come Dine With Me and shouting "CUNT" at the TV, and the next you're watching adverts and shouting "CUNT" at the TV. The ones that try to be clever end up funny, the ones that try to be funny end up annoying, and the ones that try to be cool end up pretentious. They're nasty, obtrusive and about as welcome as a fork in the eye. And there's only one thing worse than adverts: Christmas adverts. I've talked a bit about adverts before, here and here. And the brilliant Charlie Brooker wrote this great article about Christmas adverts recently so I'm going to avoid mentioning any of the ones he covers so masterfully. (Watch his "Biggest Cocks (And She-Cocks) In Advertising" videos on YouTube, they are the best.) But here are the 5 worst adverts I've seen recently:

5. Argos

"Mmm, Bieber." Isn't he like, 9? Is that OK? I thought this was an Alien, not a Predator.

4. Marks & Spencer

"Only at your M&S." My M&S?! But I'm neither Marks nor Spencer! Unless they mean it's only at my local branch. But then why advertise it on national TV? And how do they know where I live? What am I talking about? Oh well, I'm off to buy a seriously delicious looking apple strudle.

3. Thai Life Insurance

Kathryn tweeted about this horribly manipulative piece of awful. And it's far too long.

2. I can't remember

It was for some shop, I'm sure someone can tell me which, but it started: "Love Christmas? Love Peter Kay!" What kind of an assumption is that? What fascinating piece of research led to that particular conclusion? "CUNT"

1. Hair Dye

Specifically, hair dye adverts in which we see couples with exactly the same hair colour. They look like chemically-enhanced mutants committing incest.

Ahh!

Stop it!

Stop sniffing your sister!

Anyway, I will leave you with the Reel Big Fish song that this blog is named after, enjoy!

Suicide Is Painless

There are only three things in the world that I hate, and one of them is this article from The Independent.

There's an unwritten rule about being respectful of the recently deceased. With, it seems, 2 exceptions: When the deceased is "evil" in which case their corpse can be paraded around like the FA Cup filled with blood, or when the deceased committed suicide.

The general reaction to the death of Wales football manager Gary Speed has been genuinely touching, yet there remains a largely insensitive attitude to suicide. Phillip Hodson's article in today's Independent is basically well handled, until the very end; if someone commits suicide, "they got it wrong."

This blog probably isn't the appropriate forum for a considered debate about the morality of suicide, prone as it is to descend into THINGS LIKE THISSASJKHADJHASjklsdsfa. But to look at someone who killed themselves 2 days ago and declare it "wrong" seems utterly jarring.

The argument is that suicide is selfish because you leave behind a guilt-ridden group of friends and family. But if you, upon hearing the news of someone's suicide, respond "well that's selfish", surely you are the selfish one. What right do you have to tell them when they're allowed to die? A right to life means autonomy over one's own life. And while I recognise the pain that the family must feel, they must recognise the pain that the deceased felt; their pain was so profoundly intense that they would literally rather be dead than alive. But anyway, regardless of your views on suicide, surely there is something insensitive about labelling Gary Speed's actions as WRONGjkhasdhgashgjasaaa. Told you.

This blog doesn't exactly have a reading list, but I'd urge anyone to read David Hume's 'On Suicide', a defence of suicide so strong that apparently a friend of Hume's killed himself as soon as he'd read it. I can only hope that this blog has such an effect.

I'll leave you with the song that this blog is named after, which is the brilliant theme tune from the brilliant M*A*S*H. Enjoy!