Sigh. Hard-drive problems here once again, so there'll be a delay of a few days
before I can get the Super Bowl writeup in place, sorry. In the meantime, there's
this.
I must. Must. Must. Stop watching "Made-Up-Number Best Whatever" shows.
Why do I put myself through this? I know they'll only ever bring me pain at best,
and the urge to commit genocide at worst.
I don't want to live in a society that considers Come On Eileen to be superior to
Life On Mars?, that's all I'm saying.
Mrs. Blue has been watching VH1's "500 Great British Songs" all this Easter
weekend, and your humble correspondent sat through the entire last eight hours of
the chart so that you didn't have to. The following long, rambling and barely-edited
thoughts take place between midday and eight p.m. on Easter Monday. All formatting
happens in real time. And I'll try to keep the pointless carping about "how
can X be considered better than Y" to a minimum, since I realise it's not terribly
interesting to read.
Now, that being said - Common People is the 83rd best British song ever written,
is it? 83rd. You fucking wingnuts. Then, to add insult to injury, what's sitting
at 82? Love Is All Around by Wet Wet Fucking Wet. Precisely what sort of sick, sad
world am I living in? Love Is All Around is 82nd, Wild Horses is 106th? I don't
want to come over all Music Nazi here, but might it not be an idea to restrict voting
in these things in future to people who actually own more than, say, 10 CDs? Fuck's
sake. This is doing nothing to re-affirm my faith in democracy. If you can't trust
your fellow countrymen to know a perfect pop song when it falls in their lap, how
can you trust them to decide who should be running the fucking country?
Can't argue with Step On at 81. I can't work out if I'm laughing with Shaun Ryder
or at him, mind. Remember kids - winners don't use drugs. Although to be fair, it's
probably that they can't use drugs, since Shaun Ryder's more than likely used them
all.
Rod Stewart is a prat, and his haircut hasn't changed since about 1972. Maggie May
is a great tune, though.
It's actually pretty difficult to put my loathing for Wonderful Tonight into words.
It's another The Boys Are Back In Town for me, a song that everyone else on the
planet loves, but that inexplicably sets my teeth on edge. Actually, the Boys Are
Back In Town thing is easier to explain - the characters in it are exactly the sort
of arrogant, ignorant arseholes who made me feel like a nerdy little prat all the
way through my teenage years. I mean, it's not like they didn't have a point, but
even so. The Big Train sketch in which the horse commits suicide to Wonderful Tonight
made me laugh far more than it ought to, though.
If fucking Angels, or Bohemian Rhapsody ends up at the top of this chart, I shan't
be responsible for my actions. Just warning you now.
Hey, it's Primal Scream! Remember when they were great? No. No, me either, actually.
The Happy Mondays without the wit and eloquence.
Question for the gallery - what the fuck is the video to Ashes To Ashes meant to
be about? I'm holding my hands up, now, I'm stumped. He's a clown, right? Putting
on his makeup-mask in order to caper for our amusement, without our ever realising
the pain inside him? Okay... aaand... the bulldozer is us, the public, our demands
driving him ahead of us because otherwise he'll... be crushed beneath our mighty
ignorant caterpillar-tracks? And the New Romantic-types are... nope, sorry, I'm
just talking nonsense now. If I don't at the absolute bare minimum see Ziggy Stardust,
The Jean Genie and John I'm Only Dancing further up the chart, there's more wrong
with this country than even I suspected.
The Spice Girls. Wannabe is, it seems, a better song than Common People. Or Karma
Police. Or Get It On. I'm afraid I can't comment, I've just driven a couple of knitting-needles
through my ears.
Oh, now we're talking. The motherfucking Kinks, baby! Can't type. Rocking.
Aaaaand from the sublime to the ridiculous. Everything that's wrong with modern
pop music in one overproduced four-and-a-half minute package. Design For Life really
suffers coming straight after the tight-as-a-fucking-drum, gone-in-a-hundred-and-eighty-seconds
You Really Got Me, because it just highlights how sprawling and formless and overblown
the Manic Street Preachers were and are. Still, the "DUH-DUH-DUH-DUUUH!"
orchestra-bit in the middle of the chorus is fun to sing along to, and the vocals
are so muddy and indistinct there're near-endless opportunities for entertaining
misheard lyrics - there's one part in particular which I'm pretty sure is being
sung as "For a shallow pea and dead man's cheese" -if you know
what the actual line ought to be, please, please don't bother to tell me.
"I wanna hold you, wanna hold you tight, get teenage kicks right through
the night..." Cheers, John mate. Are the Undertones the ugliest band in
history? And there really aren't enough people who sing in a regional accent. Basically
the list runs Feargal Sharkey, The Proclaimers and the bint out of Catatonia, doesn't
it?
All rise for Saint Elton. Sigh. Don't be smutty, you know perfectly well what I
mean. This is another Ashes To Ashes situation, though - yeah, Sacrifice is an OK
tune, but it's not even the fifth best song in Sir Reg's catalogue. Off the top
of my head, Rocket Man, Tiny Dancer and Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word simply
have to be higher than this, and I'd have Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and I Guess
That's Why They Call It The Blues in there as well. Shut your face. You're wrong,
he's great, you're an idiot.
Ah, Led Zeppelin, or as they're otherwise known, the most overrated band in the
history of music. Yes, they've a handful of good tunes, and a couple of great ones
(two words - Immigrant Song). But so much of their music is so bloody shapeless
and self-indulgent that listening to it now is really a bloody chore. Go on, try
and sit all the way through a Led Zep album without getting wound up by it. If you
can do it, you're a better person than me, a relative or Robert Plant, or deaf.
I reckon Stairway To Heaven has to be a decent banker to be in the top five, though.
There really weren't enough harmonica solos or references to Buddhist philosophy
in the New Romantic movement for my liking. Yay for Culture Club!
Has there been a lead guitarist in the history of music who looks less like a lead
guitarist than Graham Coxon from Blur? All power to the guy, I'm all for enormous
geeks getting equal rock-opportunities, but even in the video to Song 2, with the
guitars screaming and the band bouncing off the walls he looks like he'd be more
at home playing board 3 for the school chess team.
Hmm. Creep at number 65. I'd be surprised if there was a Radiohead song that was
popular enough to chart higher than this, so that probably means that Street Spirit
won't make the cut, which is sad but hardly surprising.
Bit of a shock to hear Two Tribes this high, but it's got one of the great eighties
riffs, so respect due to Britain in this case. I'd forgotten about that backup singer
for Frankie Goes To Hollywood who was basically a much better turned-out, infinitely
gayer proto-Bez. It really does warm my heart to clap eyes on that wonderful Freddie
Mercury, Blue Oyster Club moustache of his again.
Okay then, so given that we've got the almost impossibly rubbish Radio Ga-Ga up
now, what's the over-under on the number of Queen songs coming up in the next sixty
places? I'm going to stick my neck out and set the line at five - I'm guessing BoRhap,
We Will Rock You, Under Pressure, I Want To Break Free and one more. Wouldn't surprise
me if there were twice that many, though. Queen fans seem to get everywhere. Like
plague rats.
Can I propose that from this moment on Britain adopts the Sex Pistols' version of
God Save The Queen as the country's new national anthem? I can? Thankyou kindly.
The first real revelation of the afternoon, there - Tears For Fears think that Depeche
Mode are underrated. "Some really insightful lyrics", it seems. Alright,
since I've never been afraid of the obvious question - given that we've seen such
luminaries as Bowie, Lydon, Noel Gallagher, Saint Elton and *cough* Mel C paying
tribute to various folks, what does it tell you that the biggest stars willing to
stand up for Depeche Mode were Tears For Fears, who surely couldn't be picked out
of a lineup by their own blood relatives at this stage? I'm only asking, is all.
Okay, I admit it. I quite like Holding Back The Years, in a mawkish, crappy white-boy-soul
sort've way. That being said, if I see Mick fucking Hucknell's pudgy, gurning, smirking
face so much as one more time for the duration of this chart, there's going to be
trouble. Just so no-one can say they weren't warned.
Watch the video to Club Tropicana, and marvel how it took being caught in flagrante
in a public loo to clue us in to George Michael's sexuality. Better yet, don't watch
the video to Club Tropicana. Ever. You're welcome. I was thinking this last night
when they were playing Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me, as performed by George and
Saint Elton - isn't it odd that the two most celebrated people connected with Watford,
a quiet and frankly boring little white-bread commuter town just outside London,
are both quite so famously and flamboyantly camp?
Dido. jahkhkhkhkhkhkhkhkhkhkhkhkhk.;rfgndf,gadfg. Sorry. Nodded off for a second,
there. This song, for those keeping score at home, is ranking more than 50 spots
above Get It On by T-Rex. No, I can't explain it either.
See, now here's how you make bland-yet-melodic work. You Do Something To Me, what
a cracking little song. Almost Van Morrison-y. I could probably live without seeing
Paul Weller's bare chest ever again, mind. First song in a while I've felt the urge
to sing along to, much to the delight of everyone else in the house.
David Grey's got the bland down nicely, still struggling a bit with the melodic.
He kind of sounds like a British version of Ryan Adams circa Heartbreaker, minus
Adams' cynicism, joy, musicianship and charisma. Intolerable muzak shite. Talking
of which - it's Take That! Yes, it's nice that ten years on there's only one member
of Take That who's still in a position to wind up right-thinking people, yes, it's
nice it's not Gary "Doughnut" Barlow, who's plainly never seen a mirror
he didn't love - but still, the sooner Robbie Williams is trampled by a horse, the
happier I think we'll all be.
D'you know what I love about The Human League? Alright, other than Phil Oakey's
hair? I'll tell you. Here's a band with three singers, not one of whom can carry
a tune in a bucket. Isn't that brilliant? Yes, I realise that these days you're
knee-deep in groups you could say that about, but most of them at least look good
while they're miming. I'm not entirely sure how you go about becoming one of the
best pop acts of the eighties despite no discernible musical talent, but I profoundly
admire the accomplishment.
Oh, shit, it's Vienna. This is one of the worst songs I know for getting stuck in
my head, if I'm not careful I'll be going around for days warbling "This
means nothing to meeeeeeeeeeee! Oooooooooooooooooh, Viennaaaaaaaaa!" Honestly,
it's a nightmare, particularly since it's not humanly possible to sing that line
at any quieter level than a full holler. Concentrate on Midge Ure's moustache, concentrate
on Midge Ure's moustache...
This is the fourth song this weekend I thought was going to be Unfinished Sympathy
by Massive Attack from the opening bars. The last time somewhat embarrassingly it
turned out to be West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys, which despite featuring Neil
Tennant attempting to rap, was actually voted higher than It's A Sin, to Britain's
eternal shame. Oh, it actually was Unfinished Sympathy this time, by the way. Great
tune. Great video. No Pet Shop Boys. Magic.
Oh, hold the presses, we've topped dragging Tears For Fears back from whatever cruise
liner they're working on at the moment - the only person they could get to sing
the praises of Travis' Why Does It Always Rain On Me? is actually a member of Travis.
I dunno, I think I'd feel a bit slighted. On the upside, Rocket Man and The Jean
Genie have obligingly been and gone, giving me just the faintest glow of affection
for my fellow countrymen. On the downside, I've seen more Paul McCartney in the
last three quarters of an hour or so than any sane person could wish for. Ho hum.
Hang on - I was absolutely sure the Bee Gees were Australian. Don't I remember seeing
a clip of them on Australian TV when I they were kids? They can't be British, surely,
look at their bloody teeth. What's going on here? My entire worldview is shaken.
Do you think I care enough to check this one way or the other? No. No, you're right,
I don't.
Alright, okay, I can accept Blue Monday being the 34th best song, like, ever, assuming
that Love Will Tear Us Apart makes the top 10. That's the bargain. No negotiation
will be entered into. Take it or leave it. In related news - is there a better bassist
on the planet than Peter Hook? Listen to Shadowplay before you think about replying
in the contrary, that's all I'll say.
This list has been suspiciously Robbie Williams-free for far too long. The pug-faced
little creep is just waiting for me to lower my guard, I can feel it. Oop, here's
Under Pressure, as predicted. We Will Rock You was about half-a-dozen tunes ago,
so we've now got to find three Queen songs in the next 32 to push. I think I may
have underestimated.
Good God, it's Spandau Ballet. Didn't the world get together a few years ago and
decide to pretend this band never actually happened? That they were some kind of
mass consensual hallucination? Tony Hadley has the most punchable face in pop, Marti
Pellow, Mick Hucknell and Fred Durst taken aside.
I only picked up Definitely Maybe by Oasis a couple of years ago, and frankly I'm
glad I did, because I can't imagine how depressing it would have been to have heard
the promise in that first album, then to watch the car-crash that Oasis have become
since. Criminy, but Live Forever is a cracking tune, though. Ah. Except that Rio
is a better one, apparently. Yes, the one by Duran Duran. Yes, Simon le Bon standing
on the prow of a yacht in his Miami Vice suit. Yes, a guy in eyeliner playing a
saxophone solo on a raft in the middle of the sea. Yes, I am pretty much speechless,
thanks for noticing.
Ah, here they are. I've been waiting for more than fifty songs for a chance to tee
off on fucking Coldplay, and I'm not going to miss the opportunity here. Um. Hello?
Am I going insane, or aren't they just releasing the same bloody song over and over
and over again? Which would be less of a problem if it had been a good song in the
first place. Oh, and until Joe Pasquale takes over as the new frontman
for Guns And Roses or Lloyd Grossman gets a record contract for his skiffle group,
Chris Martin will forever be the proud holder of the award for the most annoying
voice in the history of music. He seems to be aiming for a plaintive, spine-tingling
Thom Yorke-esque moan, but in practice his range sweeps all the way from a faintly
aggravating whine all the way to a fingernails-down-the-blackboard, red-mist-inducing
whine. If I want to experience entertainment that's excruciatingly dull and yet
supremely irritating, I'll sit with my boys and try to watch an entire episode of
Dragonball Z. I don't, so I don't.
Sky Sports always used to use Fool's Gold by the Stone Roses as the intro music
to their League Cup coverage. You have to smile.
I know he's a saint and all, but if there's one thing that annoys me more than songs
about how your dad never understood you, it's songs about how difficult it is to
be famous.Yes, it's bloody Candle In The bloody Wind time. At least it's the original
version, not the cringemaking, vomit-inducing Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead re-do.
Look - nobody twisted your fucking arm, chum. If being in the public eye is that
big a deal, stop doing whatever it is that made you famous, with the help of the
stacks of cash that being famous has earned you, and wait for the next flavour of
the month to appear. Otherwise - bed, lie in it and so on. For crying out loud.
"Hope I die before I get old". Oh, well. As musical prophecies
go, that one's right up there with Neil Young's "It's better to burn out
than fade away..." Oop, and there's We Are The Champions. Two more Queen
songs needed, fifteen more possible slots for it. You could cut the tension with
a knife. Sort've.
Okay, the first utterly inexplicable, can't-even-imagine-what-people-were-thinking
song I've seen all day is at number 15. Will Young? Leave Right Now? Are you serious,
Britain? Look at some of the songs that have gone before, and ask yourself - exactly
what were you thinking? This utterly forgettable slice of soulless manufactured
pop crap is a better song than There Is A Light That Never Goes Out? Rock The Casbah?
Don't Look Back In Anger? Another Brick In The Wall? Really? Really? Yes, Britain,
well might you look ashamed. You've been very silly, haven't you? Bad country! Dirty
country! To your bed!
I know he's a saint and all... but honestly, I think that "I sat on the roof
and kicked off the moss / And a few of the verses, well they've got me quite cross"
could be the single lamest couplet in popular music history. I'm just saying.
I had a friend who swore blind that the line in Careless Whisper that goes "guilty
feet have got no rhythm" was, in fact, "guilty meat has no incision".
This ranks squarely at number three in my list of favourite misheard lyrics, just
behind "Making love with his eagle, Ziggy sucked up into his mind..."
(What appeals most is that Ziggy Stardust isn't fucking the eagle or anything, they're
not screwing, they're making love. It's a beautiful, mutual, spiritual thing, not
just brutish lust. Oh, and watch out for the talons) and the story my friend Rob
tells about an ex-flatmate who thought the chorus of Femme Fatale by the Velvet
Underground went "And everybody knows - she's a stupid cow...".
To this day, I can't listen to that song with a straight face.
Alright, the top ten. Time to brace myself, I'm fairly sure this isn't going to
be pretty. Heroes (fair enough. No Ziggy though, with his eagle or otherwise.
Sigh), Yellow (or possibly Trouble, or Clocks, who can be bothered to listen
to a Coldplay song all the way through to make sure?), Satisfaction (um...
not even the Stones' best song, surely? What, no Gimme Danger? No Paint It Black?),
Hey Jude (caution, obligatory Bill Hicks quote coming - Did I miss a meeting?
"Yeah, sorry, Blue Man, we decided Paul McCartney's solo stuff is great. I
think you were in the bath or something"), Love Will Tear Us Apart (nice
to see you can keep to a deal, Britain), Wonderwall (can't actually put my
finger on why this is a great song, but it obviously is), Bohemian Rhapsody
(if you took the under, it's time to collect).
Oh, alright, since you ask. The top five British love-fallen-apart songs:
5. Hedonism - Skunk Anansie (yes, it is actually. You're wrong.) 4.
Rid Of Me - PJ Harvey 3. When The Spell Is Broken - Richard Thompson 2.
Yesterday - The Beatles 1. St. Swithin's Day - Billy Bragg
Stairway To Heaven is in second place (no Stairway at one? Denied!) , which means
that the number one has got to be... yep, there we go. Imagine. Which is alright
and all, I s'pose, in a tuneless drippy hippy nonsense sort've way, but still -
best British song? It's not even the best song written by John Lennon (*coughs*Working
Class Hero*coughscoughs*Jealous Guy*coughs*). Still, it's a choice that doesn't
actually incite me to violence against my fellow man, which is about all you can
expect from these things.Â
What in God's name are you doing still reading? I stopped reading this an hour ago,
and I'm the one who's writing it. Go on, be off with you.Â
PS - Twenty minutes later, during the 50 Most Shocking Moments In Pop (count yourselves
lucky you're not getting a blow-by-blow account of that, as well), Paul McCartney
appeared complaining about Michael Jackson buying up the rights to the Beatles back-catalogue
then selling the rights to Revolution to Nike for use in an advert.
"Revolution wasn't about a pair of trainers," he whined. "It
was about revolution!"
[ I Know, I Know, But This Is Sort've The Weekend, Isn't It? ]
Bloody hell. There seems to be something screwy with my comments at the mo. Sorry
about that. I'm trying to work out the problem at the moment.
The long-overdue NFC Championship
Game is now available for you viewing pleasure. Caution - even longer and more
rambling than usual. Please don't set out to read without sufficient fluids and
Kendall Mint Cake.
Apologies to those of you waiting for the writeup to the Cardinals' foray into the
NFC Conference Championship, it's been held up a bit by a virulent attack of the
'flu that's left me pretty much incapable of handling a joypad. I'm aiming to have
the game up by the end of this week, but I think you know me well enough by now,
gentle reader, not to treat that as gospel. In the meantime, why not have a glance
at the blog of m'new chum Jen,
who's one of those New England Patriot fans we seem to be hearing so much from over
the last few years.
No, I've no idea where they were hiding, either.
Having spent most of yesterday in a feverish state of semi-consciousness, last night
I found myself utterly unable to sleep, but unable either to move or form a cogent
thought without discovering whole new realms of shrieking agony.
In other words, I temporarily found myself as Jerry Bruckheimer's target audience.
So it's time to welcome back an old friend, as we have a late new entry into BMStW's
Guide To The Top Five Worst Films Ever Made!
The thing is, it's not like I went into this with any expectations. In my brain-addled
state, I was anticipating just a couple of hours' worth of disengage-brain ersatz
entertainment in the mould of its prequel. At worst, I was expecting to come to
the end, think "Wow. That was shit." and go about my life forgetting I'd
ever seen it. I wasn't, however, expecting to be left angered, repulsed and mildly
depressed by the experience. Which is what I was. Plainly. Or I wouldn't have mentioned
it.
Blah blah blah spoilers upcoming blah blah blah.
The problems start with the casting. For his part, Will Smith's not much of an actor,
but he is blessed with good comic timing and the ability to bring bad-assery more
convincingly than anyone with those ears should be able to manage. Martin Lawrence
on the other hand is a twat. In the original Bad Boys, that was more or less OK
because his twattery was made to work for the movie ("Look! He's a twat!
And he's having to try and pretend not to be! And from this the humour arises!").
In the sequel, however, there's no humour to be had, no real context, he's simply
a whining, aggravating, miserable twat. And furthermore, the sort of twat who wears
a Miami Heat basketball jersey in one scene and an Atlanta Falcons shirt in another,
which bothers me on a level so deep and profound I can scarcely express it.
I realise that the whole mismatched-partners riff is a time-honoured tradition in
the cop movie game. It's just there's a reason why most of the time scripts call
for "renegade cop / by-the-book cop", "macho cop / lady cop"
or "human cop / dog cop" partnerships, as opposed to "largely likeable
albeit sickeningly ultraviolent cop / complete and utter fucking prick cop".
That's all I'm saying.
What's this about sickening ultraviolence? Steady, gentle reader. I'm coming to
that.
Let's not misunderstand - your correspondent is no shrinking violet when it comes
to the graphic application of gunplay or fisticuffsmanship. I was raised on shoot-em-ups
and Schwarznegger movies, love The Sopranos and Grand Theft Auto, would count The
Crow, Robocop and Hard Boiled amoung my ten favourite action flicks of all time,
can still remember the exact wording of Torso Critical #16 from Warhammer
Fantasy Role-Play ("The blow ruptures your opponent's chest cavity,
spreading blood and entrails over a wide area. Death from shock and blood loss is
almost instantaneous"), and laughed my arse off through pretty much the
entire run of Preacher.
This is not an inhabitant of Daily
Mail Island you're talking to here, chilluns.
So the fact that I was quite as bothered as I was by shots like, for example close-tracking
a bullet as it emerges from a gun, showing us the round as it passes through a series
of water bottles (in a direct homage to / ripoff of the classic video to Korn's
"Freak On A Leash" by the by), then goes through a guy's head with a spray
of blood is something that causes me to pause for thought. I've seen worse, I've
accepted worse, so what's the issue here?
As best as I can discern the problem is this. The shot doesn't tell us anything
about the characters (the "ear" scene in Reservoir Dogs) or their situation
(the cheerful four-colour brutality of Starship Troopers), it's not there to sober
or shock (the brilliant hostage-shooting scene from Three Kings), to tell us that
war is hell (the guy getting his head blown off with an M60 in Hamburger Hill) or
even to make us laugh (the guy getting his head blown off in the back of the car
by Jules Winfield in Pulp Fiction). The director of Bad Boys II (Horse-faced, Meatloaf-video-directing
nonce Michael "Fucking"
Bay, lest we forget) chooses to show us loving detail of a bullet passing into
a bad guy's head for one simple reason - because he thinks it looks cool.
Ugh.
Oh, and by the by - enough with the fucking Bullet-Time, okay? Yes, it was jaw-droppingly
fantastic in the first Matrix movie, when not only was it something we'd never seen
before, but also the film's plot ("plot", in the case of the sequel and
the sequel's sequel) justified for the effect to be used. In retrospect, the plot
of The Matrix doesn't look like much other than justification to show off Bullet-Time,
but that's by the by. But by now they're using it in fucking adverts, alright? Seriously.
Bored now. Move on.
It's not just the minute details of the ultraviolence that're troublesome, either.
Near the end of the movie, the pair mount an expedition to rescue complete-and-utter-fucking-prick
cop's sister (played by Gabrielle Union, who's so, SO much better than this material)
from the main villain's half-finished mansion in Cuba (!), in a sequence so mind-bogglingly
stupid and offensive from start to finish that critiquing it seems almost pointless.
Almost.
First and foremost, why the fuck does the villain keep the sister alive in the first
fucking place? This guy is meant to be a Teflon don-type, a bloke who's won a dozen
wrongful arrest suits against the Miami P.D. She's investigating him on behalf of
the US government, he's found out, why the hell doesn't he put a bullet in her head
and have done with it? If he were planning on torturing information out of her,
or he had a Ming The Merciless "And now, Earth woman, you will become my bride..."
thing going on I'd see where he was coming from. But no, he just puts her up in
his back bedroom until the forces of ultraviolence are ready to rescue her. Talking
of which...
The mansion's half-finished, right? The movie makes sure we see that there are still
painters and things running about the place. So what do the guys on the theoretical
side of the angels do in order to help secure the release of a single person who
had knowingly put herself in harm's way, who voluntarily took a job she knew to
be risky? Yep, that's right. They attack the place with a rocket-launcher, machine-gun
anyone left standing then, for completeness's sake, blow the fucking house into
the stratosphere.
Then we come to the bit post-rescue as the two main characters are fleeing the scene
with sister in tow aboard a Hummer, with the suddenly-mansionless bad guy in hot
pursuit. Down a verdant hill they plunge toward Guantanamo Bay (!!), in the process
of which they end up in a shanty-town. "This is where they make cocaine!"
shouts Fucking-Prick-Cop. "Ah yeah, I'd like to blow this up!" replies
Borderline-Psychotic Cop.
These may not be precise quotes by the way, but since no fucking force on Earth
could compel me to watch this movie again you'll just have to make do.
And lo, the next five minutes are spent watching the cars blindly crashing though
corrugated-iron huts, with debris scattering and explosions going off left, right
and centre. To be honest, I wasn't too bothered right up till I noticed that they
were blindly crashing though washing-lines laden with laundry, implying strongly
that these weren't workrooms or storage-huts or anything of the sort that were being
flattened, these were people's actual homes. At that point I sort've felt we were
beyond contractors needing to know the risks of the job, and into the realms of
callous sociopathy.
"To Protect And Serve - Providing You're Not Poor, Cuban And In The Fucking
Way". Jesus Christ.
And then just to put the tin lid on things, the car crashes through the perimeter
fence of an extraordinarily sensitive US Naval base, two guys leap out of it brandishing
guns and yet they aren't immediately shot to pieces by the armed guards. Words can't
express my disappointment.
It's not clever. It's not funny. The script veers between banal and nonsensical.
It's highly polished, expensively-made soft-porn for psychopaths. It is, in short,
a piece of shit. And so in accordance with
the teachings of Saint Bill we shall say so - and walk away.
It's a funny thing, being a sports fan, voluntarily tying a portion of your life's
happiness to something you have next to no ability to influence, much less control.
Looked at rationally, it seems to be profoundly odd to define yourself, at least
in part, by your allegiance to a group of fabulously rich professional athletes
who by and large perform for their own benefit and care as little for the wellbeing
of the club than the average Joe cares about the stockmarket performance of the
company they work for.
Because that's what the replica shirt market is all about, isn't it? A public declaration
of loyalty, an invitation to the casual observer to pigeon-hole you by way of the
slightly tacky polyester uniform that you've chosen to wear. Granted you could say
the same thing about any set of clothes to some extent, but devotion to a team isn't
like falling for a band or a TV show, or liking the way that you look in plaid.
You can love both Radiohead and Iron Maiden, you can enjoy both South Park and The
Simpsons, you can think both jeans or a skirt make your arse look good...
That last one assumes you're Eddie Izzard, of course.
You can't, however, like both Liverpool and Everton unless you're willing to accept
that you're the lowest form of life on the planet. So choosing to wear a team's
shirt nails your colours to the mast, it gives a more definitive and easily-digested
statement about who you are as a person than any other item you can wear short of
a police uniform or a clown costume.
All these thoughts crossed my mind in the wake of the Jets
trading for Laveranues Coles, a move that has sportswriters all through America
coming together to ask the pertinent question - "How the fuck do you spell
Laveranues?" - and that has me asking an even more pertinent question, namely
"Is it possible to keep wearing a player's jersey after he's been quietly run
out of town without feeling like a total tit?"
After much soul-searching, the conclusion I've come to is that there are probably
two groups of players whose lustre is immune to such negligible trivia as whether
they're still with the team or not. In the first group are the greats. Your Blissetts,
your Beckhams, your Montanas, your Shaqs and so on. Someone like, say, Curtis
Martin, a future Hall-Of-Famer and the rock the Jets have been built around
for the last two hundred years or so - at this stage it wouldn't matter if he was
cut by the team after being found in a motel room lying naked in a pool of someone
else's vomit surrounded by whores, mountains of coke and a billy-goat, I'd still
be happy wearing his number. That's just how it works.
Then there's the other end of the spectrum. If I were a Dolphins fan - and I thank
good God almighty on a nightly basis that I'm not - then I'd be perversely but genuinely
proud to wear a David
Boston #80 revolting aqua monstrosity in tribute to the sense of humour of my
team's front office. In a similar vein, if I were an Chelsea fan - and I thank God
etc etc - I think I'd be over the moon to have my shirt tricked out in tribute to
the mighty Adrian
Mutu. There's the Minnesota Vikings "Walker
#34" jersey. There's maybe the ultimate example of this category - the
Bills "Simpson
#32" throwback. Don't you know an Arsenal fan who needs a "Stepanovs
- 26" shirt in her life? Or a Manchester United supporter who'd love to be
reminded of Diego Forlan's Old Trafford reign of terror every time they pulled on
the red-and-black, a time when no member of Row Z was safe?
I know I do.
A browse through Ebay reveals a catalogue of despair, eloquent tales of hopeless
optimism and shattered dreams told via the medium of mesh polyester and ill-advised
screen-printing. It's difficult to express the tiny peaks and huge troughs inherent
in following a relentlessly mediocre team in a more comprehensive way than seeing
an unworn "Leaf
#16" jersey available
for less than 20 dollars. Perhaps you want to commemorate the Dan Snyder era
in Washington with your own tribute to how (dead)
money can't buy you love in the shape of "Sanders
#21"? And - my personal favourite - what better way to celebrate the rise
and fall of Ricky
Williams than by purchasing a jersey that you'd have to be rrrrrreeeeeeeeeeal
fuckin' high on drugs to wear?
Age cannot wither, nor custom stale the infinite amusement to be had from items
like these.
So in this spirit, I went in search of a shirt to supplement my beloved, soon-to-be-obsolete
Santana Moss #83. I was really, really hoping that I might turn up a nice Akili
Smith throwback from his time in Cincinnati or even, if I was very lucky, a David
Barrett Cardinals jersey which not only would have made me smile on two levels,
but also would
have looked the business.
In the end, though - if you're going to be wearing the number of a stroppy wide
receiver who was drafted high in the first round by your team, never really lived
up to expectations then was dumped via trade, I figured you might as well make it
a REALLY stroppy wide receiver who was drafted REALLY high in the first round and
dumped via a REALLY big trade.
Normally I'm quite loath to share with you the results of my very occasional and
generally regrettable forays into amateur photography.
I'm quite pleased with this
one, however. It's a pretty big file, just to warn you - 150K or so, but I couldn't
bear to make it any smaller. I'm such a sensitive artiste.
I dashed out to the local park the moment that I saw the snow had settled, and it's
a bloody good thing I did. The snowfall had turned into showers of rain within ten
minutes of starting my walk, and by the time I got back to the car about two hours
later, about two-thirds of the stuff that had settled was gone. There's now a thunderstorm
going on outside, so by lunchtime I'm guessing it'll be like the snow was never
there at all.
If I were a character in a late-eighties sitcom, I'd say there was a life-lesson
in there somewhere. Fortunately, I don't have the hair for that sort of nonsense.
My second Sisters Of Mercy title-quote in a week. Dear Lord, but I need to get out
more.
ITV were reporting this
story with the opening line of "Mel Gibson is releasing a family-friendly
version of The Passion Of The Christ..."
Let's take aside for the moment that personally I can't see how getting the film
down to a 15-certificate is exactly making it "family friendly". And let's
also take aside that if there is a family out there who are seriously considering
getting together to go and see Mister Gibson's Opus (no, not
that opus, the other one) then I'm glad I don't have to meet them (it's my guess
that the word preceding "family" would be either "Manson" or
"Addams").
Those digressions aside, The
Passion Of The Christ so far as I could make out was pretty much entirely about
specifying in minute and near-voyeuristic detail exactly how unpleasant the manner
of Jesus' death was, to really spell out in gore-splattered letters ten feet high
exactly how much of a big deal Christ's sacrifice of himself for humanity was.
I don't wish to labour a point, but if there really are Christians roaming about
for whom the notion of God's son voluntarily surrendering his life for the benefit
of people who he never knew and never would wasn't really good enough, who actually
needed to have their faith affirmed by having the horrible mechanics involved in
crucifixion rammed into their brains in glorious Technicolour, then frankly - yikes.
And I realise this is a fairly committed atheist criticising a reputedly devout
Catholic, that the film wasn't really intended for the likes of me and so on and
so forth, but I've never let a position of ignorance stop me before and I'm damned
if I'll start now - but wasn't all the emphasis on the long, drawn-out, torturous
means of Jesus' death rather... missing the point, a bit? Doesn't the nature of
the film and its choice to linger on floggings, scourgings and endless close-ups
of bloody wounds sort've imply that Christ's self-sacrifice wouldn't have been so
powerful or important if he'd given himself up to a regime that put people to death
in a more humane way?
My point? Glad you asked. The notion of Passion - The Fluffy Cut bothers me, but
I can't put my finger on precisely why. If I were forced to articulate my feelings
on pain of an hour or so's whipping by a bloke speaking Aramaic, I think I'd say
that it goes beyond the edits that you used to see when terrestrial TV when they
used to show the Governor of California's movies, that it's a problem on a more
fundamental level. If I were pushed further, I think I'd talk about a time I was
watching Ghostbusters
on ITV one Sunday evening. There's a scene late in the movie in which Egon, Ray
and the rest are trying to persuade the mayor to let them deal with the coming of
Gozer. If you watch the film on video, there's an exchange that goes like this:
STANTZ: Everything was fine with our system until our power grid was shut off
by dickless here. WALTER PECK: They caused an explosion! MAYOR:
Is this true? VENKMAN: Yes, it's true. This man has no dick.
However, the Powers That Be, seeking to protect my young sensibilities decided in
their wisdom to clumsily overdub the dialogue thus:
STANTZ: Everything was fine with our system until our power grid was shut off
by this fool here. WALTER PECK: They caused an explosion! MAYOR:
Is this true? VENKMAN: Yes, it's true. This man is an idiot.
A toning-down of the brutality at its heart does to The Passion Of The Christ what
ITV did to that joke.
Place your bets on how long it takes this attempt to finish the story to lurch to
a grinding halt, but still - week
14 of the third season of Watch
The Birdie is now available in the usual place for your delectation and delight.
Or your something beginning with d, at any rate. Distress? Dehumanisation? Deodorant?
P.S. (2/3/05) - The week
15 game against Seattle is now up as well.
