Saturday 30 October 2010

Awkward Situations #1

I’m not the most outgoing of guys, lets be truthful and say that I’m pretty shy. I like the idea of conversation and company but in action I am often flustered and either say very little or come off as a colossal knob. I don’t mean to be, you know me, read the 30 odd posts below and you’ll know that I’m not mean or angry and that I’m actually a lovely guy and by no means a knob (alright I’m clearly a bit of a knob).
I am totally fine around people I know, we have a rapport and we all get along, you think I‘m a bit of a knob but it‘s all ok and it to me it really is. If I don’t know you I will be stiff (that’s what she said), nervous, have very little to say and what I will say is a misjudged joke in an attempt to break the ice which will inevitably offend the new acquaintance. I am totally aware of this and like a domino effect it only makes me more nervous and a lot of the time I will remain totally silent, contemplating the worst possible situation. If I was to speak I might make a fool of myself, someone could be filming this and put it on youtube and I become an international phenomenon overnight I mean even the Queen sees it and decrees that I am the nation’s jester and I have to dance for everyone who demands it while they throw rotten tomatoes and used condoms (the modern day equivalent of rotten tomatoes) at me while the whole world points and laughs at me (even my cats).
So I don’t talk much. Where a normal person will meet another normal person and immediately have a relaxed conversation it will take me several meetings before I can have that relaxed conversation. It starts with “hello“, then “hello how are you?” Eventually “did you see that ludicrous display last night?” And before you know it a fully blown conversation. This process usually takes around three years providing I see you on a daily basis.
Unfortunately this effect isn’t permanent and with time wears off. Recently I have been bumping (quite regularly) into old friends. I managed to get to this point of conversing with them like a normal person and due to a prolonged absence have withered back into this little shy creature. I know I can talk to them, but there’s this additional pressure that I should have something to say and I should be able to talk to them but it’s like I’ve never met them and it’s even more awkward than talking to a total stranger!
Picture the scene, you’re walking down a high street, someone says “Dave!” (or whatever your name is (I don’t assume everyone is called Dave)), you turn around and it’s Dave! You know, you worked with him two years ago, you were never that close but you used to enjoy the conversations you had but that was when you had nothing else to do but talk to him, you’re on your way to KFC, you can’t have one of your hilarious banterations (it’s a word!) about the football nor can you really extract any detailed information to how he is doing in life nor can he with you. With your mind’s eye fixed on KFC and his on Subway you say hello as you’re still walking, but one of you stops, so the other has to stop as well and you are now locked into a verbal exchange but you know it can only last so long (unlike previous conversations which to be honest took a while to get going) so you don’t want to get into too much detail, just the basics and then you don’t want to seem like a dick and walk away and neither does he so you just stand in front of each other in total silence staring at each other, it’s fucking torture and then one of you says you’re really busy and the other says “yeah me too” and then you leave grateful that it didn’t last any longer.
To prevent this I have created the following formula:

Step one: You recognise an old friend/colleague/acquittance. If they recognise you go to step two, if they don't go to step four before they do.
Step two: Say hello, exchange pleasantries
Step three: Say goodbye
Step four: Walk away

With this universally put into place these awkward situations will be eradicated and I won't have to feel like such a knob, no one will. 
                                                                   

Thursday 28 October 2010

A Belated Breakfast

I think I’ve said this a few times before and like a broken record I’ll say it again, I’m not the most up-to-date kind of guy in the terms of, well everything. It takes me longer to do things than everyone else, much much longer. For a while during the first year of school I couldn’t pronounce my y’s and l’s and while every other kid said yellow I said nellow. If I’m honest I still don’t know if I’m pronouncing failure and volume correctly and I‘m too scared to ask for fear of looking like an idiot. I couldn’t swim until I was sixteen, I didn’t have a mobile phone until I was seventeen (I didn’t receive a phone call until I was eighteen), I didn’t pass my driving test until I was nineteen, I still throw like a girl (one who can’t throw very well), and until yesterday I had never seen The Breakfast Club.
I’m never the first in line for anything other than a party which I will always be unfashionably early to, so it’s perhaps no surprise that it’s taken this long to see The Breakfast Club. You might think that I’m prioritising the wrong things in life and you would be exactly right, I have a research report to write and my absolute hatred of it has led me to write about a 25 year old film, thus proving I cannot do anything on time. I couldn’t even grow punctually, I was one of the smallest people in my school year, and while I’m not hobbit size I’m by no means Andre the Giant.
I have avoided John Hughes films ever since I saw Ferris Bueller’s day off (about five years ago), a film I absolutely hated. To me Ferris Bueller was a total prick, he was obnoxious and annoying, was awful to his friends, he got away with everything and we’re supposed to think “yeah, what a cool guy”, and if you don’t then you’re the real prick. Maybe I just didn’t get it, or the film was making fun of squares like me, but I judged John Hughes’ career on this film.
It wasn’t until I got into the films (and comics) of Kevin Smith (again quite late) that I started to realise the importance of John Hughes in the world of film and literature. Just as most bands I like today were influenced by The Smiths, many films I like have been influenced by Hughes. I am sure that if it weren’t for my unpleasant Ferris Bueller experience I would have already seen most John Hughes films like I already love so many Smiths songs.
It’s not as if I thought John Hughes was shit, I just thought I wouldn’t like his films, I still might not like the rest of them for that matter. With my casual fanboyism of Kevin Smith, indie films and even Dawson’s Creek I have learned a lot about John Hughes, and it has become more evident over the past year that the kind of films I like have been influenced by Hughes. So it was time to finally see the film they all talk about when they mention John Hughes, no not Ferris Bueller, The Breakfast Club.
Since the Bueller-incident I have gone on to garner a love for 80’s movies, the whole decade encapsulates everything I love about film, from Back to the Future, to Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Die Hard, Stand by Me, The Goonies, The Karate Kid, Rain Man, it goes on. Films often reflect the eras they were made in, and while I’m no expert on American history (someone help me out here) I’m guessing the 80’s was a much better decade to live in than the 70’s (which saw such films as The Godfather and Taxi Driver).
This love of all things 80’s warmed me to The Breakfast Club, had I not seen so many 80’s movies this year I might not have been able to stomach it, it would have been too cheesy, too sentimental, too damn 80’s. It was all this but I didn’t mind, in fact it made it more enjoyable, these kind of films are almost a kind of escapism for me such is the difference in style between them and contemporary films. Aspects may be dated now but the themes are still relevant, and this would have no doubt been a film I would relate to and perhaps watch every day when I was still at school.

Unsurprisingly I related to Brian Johnson the most (we have the same birthday! OMGSPASM!), I was never a “brain” but I was most certainly a “dork”. The strength of this film is that while the characters are all archetypes of the typical school groups, everyone can relate to at least one character, if not all of them. What this film shows is that no matter where you stand in the school hierarchy, you all feel the same insecurities, the same pressure, and the same loneliness, and that the stereotypes of the social groups hide these feelings.
I’ve never seen a film so candid about adolescence, I grew up watching films like American Pie where the problem was not getting laid which seemed so far removed from my life at the time I couldn’t really relate to it, and when I did, it was something you could easily talk about. The problems the breakfast club have are ones you never usually talk about it, this makes their temporary friendship in the film the more significant, and one you can connect with.
Most films based in school are often skewed and don’t represent the true essence of what it’s like, take Twilight for example, a superficial smorgasbord of bullshit that is as believable as the concept of vampires. Other light hearted affairs show school to be this kooky balls out fun filled party and The Breakfast Club shows it as it really is, lonely.
It’s not all bad though, and as Judd Nelson pumps his fist it gives you the magical hope that you might just get the…oh wait I’m 23. Still, I loved this film, it’s my kind of thing, it’s not Back to the Future but what is? I suppose the moniker “better than Teen Wolf” will do. So now I begin a voyage of other John Hughes films, treading ever so carefully on the most treacherous of them all, Ferris Bueller’s day off. Expect a post soon about how freaking awesome I thought it was.

Friday 22 October 2010

“Built by Shanks, Raped by Yanks”

I don’t write much about football, in fact only one post has been about football thus far and that was the World Cup, which if you think about it, doesn’t really count. I have decided to break this tradition however, as the last week has shown that not only is football a waste of everyone’s time, but so is 24 hour news coverage.
We all know that football has become a business, if you didn’t, you do now, and it’s a shitting awful business, no club seems to be making a profit and even the biggest of them are in millions of pounds of debt. Footballers are often criticised for their stupidity, but evidently it’s the owners of the clubs that are the real morons, if there is one thing you don’t want to invest in, it’s football.
Only earlier today did Portsmouth announce that it’s very unlikely that they will still exist next week, and this makes you think, where is the money coming from? The general goal in running a football club is not making a profit from being thrifty and frugal, but through success and the riches it brings. Portsmouth are a perfect example that success doesn’t bring money so why even bother? Perhaps it’s easy running a football club, it’s just that the people doing it aren’t very good at it, or what’s more likely, is that you just simply can’t.
There is a lot of talk about the much dreaded player power, and how the players are ruining the game with their ridiculous wage demands and how they won’t go out on the pitch until they’ve fucked at least three prostitutes. While this is true, they only have as much power as you give them, and it’s the owners of the clubs who are enabling them to be such colossal cunts, and in Portsmouth’s case, putting a lot of ordinary workers at the club, out of a job.
The most recent example of player power comes from Wayne Rooney. Claiming Manchester United not to be as ambitious as he was, demanded a transfer, obviously forgetting he wouldn’t be able to leave until January and any such public statement would make him a hate figure until he left, and even then he would still be hated. Earlier today he signed a new contract, stating his rejuvenated love for the club, which definitely didn’t have anything to do with a pay rise.
How far will this go? If it works for one player, it will work for another, they kick up a fuss and get a pay rise, or, they move clubs and get a pay rise, it’s a win win situation, never mind that you’re team mates hate you, you’ve got loads of money, and you certainly didn’t have enough before.  
Its often noted that “the kids” are the future, and a lot of kids look up to the likes of Wayne Rooney, and when they see him pulling a despicable stunt like this, or repeatedly cheating on his wife (a well respected journalist!) with prostitutes, they will think that this is the right thing to do, and in fifteen years time we could have a scary number of Wayne Rooney type adults littering the country. Would it hurt if he was photographed reading a book every now and again? He wouldn’t have to read it, just pretend. Or he could be photographed in a children’s ward, pretending to treat a cancer stricken child. It might be a lie, but it’s certainly better than being sucked off by a prostitute in the back of a 4X4 in broad daylight (that was Jermaine Defoe), and by the way footballers, a “high class hooker” does not make it acceptable.
The media doesn’t help the situation, and any seemingly irrelevant piece of sports news is seen as IMPORTANT BREAKING NEWS! The 24/7 news channels have covered nothing but Rooneygate for the last two days, Sky News literally running the story again and again, showing the same footage over and over, it’s not even news! Wayne Rooney isn’t going to play football for a different team, surely that can be said once and we all get over it.
Perhaps there was no other news today, but we had a football story running non stop last week, the buyout of Liverpool football club. With the coverage it received you would think that it would have at the very least a tiny consequence to the world, but no, a football club was sold. Liverpool fans took it seriously though, as if it was some kind of anti-war march. Hundreds of fans (clearly unemployed) were stood outside the stadium shouting at the American owners to shit the fuck off. There were banners that said things like “Thanks but no Yanks” and “Built by Shanks, Raped by Yanks” (or something like that). There were celebrations when the club was finally sold, though none of the fans seemed to mind that another American had bought the club, they probably didn’t notice the link.
It’s this 24/7 news coverage which is annoying, there is never enough news to be spread out over 24 minutes, let alone 24 hours, and as a result the same news is repeated every ten minutes, and this brand new trend of football dominating the news channels is turning the news (remember its aim is to be informative) into a 24/7 reality show starring Wayne Rooney. And why does all news have to be breaking news now? Surely it’s only breaking news for the first ten minutes and then it’s just normal news?
If football is to become even more prominent in the news then maybe we should incorporate actual important things into it. If we want to go to war with Iraq again we will play them at football. The next election will be decided with a football tournament, or more realistically, how many prostitutes Cameron and Milliband can fuck in 90 minutes.

Thursday 14 October 2010

Pomp and Circumstance

I wasn’t going to write about The X-Factor because, well, I wasn’t going to watch it. I have watched it in previous years, mainly because I was unaware of its turdness and didn’t want to be left out of a hundred conversations. How foolish of me! How could I not know it was the work of the devil? We are only a few weeks into the new series and I’m sad to report that I didn’t learn from my mistakes of yesteryear and I watched Sunday’s programme.

Well I watched 20 minutes, it’s all I could take. You see I had a lapse in concentration, I lost my focus, and I thought that if I am going to be irritated by a thousand conversations and arguments about the series then it might be slightly less irritating if I knew what they were on about. HOW WRONG I WAS.
My gripe with The X-Factor isn’t that it’s a talent show, and the fact that talent shows are ten a penny (or a dime a dozen, or even yen a ten (does that work?)), and are all the exact same thing whichever way they spin it. No, that’s a reason to hate ALL talent shows for sure, but there’s something about X-Factor that makes it more detestable than any other show, and that’s the whole pomp and circumstance of it all, like it’s the epitome of class and culture.

We are made to believe that the “judges” are these all powerful sentient beings who we have to kneel before and lavish them with whoops and gushes and “boy wouldn’t it be swell if we could be like them?”. It’s not the whole talentless pricks judging talent thing, I don’t mind that because it doesn’t take a talented person to tell if someone is talented. A lot of people do take offence to this though, seemingly forgetting that they are also talentless and yet still phone up every week voting for the contestant who they “judged” to be best.

What I find offensive is the fake personas the four of them have adopted. It worked for Gordon Ramsey and Alan Sugar, yes they are wankers in reality, but on screen they really wank it up an extra notch, kind of like a pantomime villain, but one who would punch a child in the audience. Simon Cowell’s head is so far up his own arsehole it’s on his shoulders. He’s not as mean as he used to be, and every so often he realises this and insults someone just to stay consistent with the persona. “That was the best performance of the night and err…actually you’re a cunt and I fucked your mother”. Louis Walsh and Dannniii Minogue talk a hell of a lot for people who have absolutely nothing to say, and there really is nothing left to say about them.

And then there’s Cheryl Cole. Revered by the nation like a goddess. Driven by her own ego her one goal is to be more popular than Cowell. She disagrees with absolutely everything he says, if he were ever to say that rape is wrong, she would say it’s right. If he were to say that Nigerian toilet attendants are great, she would punch one. The only thing more irritating than her is the people who idolise her. She has had a successful solo career despite releasing songs that can only be described as fuck awful, all because these people have bought into this horrible concept of the celebrity. Why would you want to be like her? She has nothing interesting to say, looks really aren’t everything.

The show treats its audience like they’re idiots, and they must be idiots if they’re still watching. The format of the show has been exactly the same year after year save for a few superficial tweaks. Nothing is surprising anymore, if you hear some sombre piano in the background you know a sob story about a woman who was eaten by a dog is coming. If anything new does occur, the producers make sure it is repeated, because hey, if the audience liked it first time round, why wouldn’t they like it a second time? And they do like it. Jedward were the new thing last year, an obviously shit entity whose only saving grace was the “comedy” of it all. This year of course we have a gay version of Jedward, and in future series there will now always be a terrible duo who provide some comic relief.

I said I watched 20 minutes of Sunday’s episode, and like all of the Sunday episodes from last year, it featured a musician who had a tour to promote. Clearly people will have bought tickets to see Usher upon seeing his performance, despite it consisting of him haphazardly shouting “Yeah” and “Come on” every now and again while dancing like he’s being attacked by a wasp.

The format of the Sunday show has already come under some hyperbolic criticism from The News of the World, where the headline “what the X is going on?” was used in reaction to that whore everyone seems to hate not going out. What the fuck is going on indeed. For this inconsequential event to make the front page of a national newspaper with such an aggressive headline is to suggest that this show is the only thing us Brits have to live for. People are throwing themselves off buildings in protest! If only!

Saturday 9 October 2010

Clungens and Dragons

A list of TV shows that at one time I rather liked:

Heroes
Prison Break
24
CSI
Family Guy
Scrubs
The O.C
Chucklevision
Joanie Loves Chachi

And now I fear that The Inbetweeners will soon be added to that list. When The Inbetweeners hit our screens in 2008 is was a breath of fresh air, kind of like Skins but good. I say that but I only watched Skins the one time and it felt like an expensive episode of Hollyoaks trying too hard to be cool and not capturing anything remotely realistic about my adolescence. We can’t all have grown up making films with Hugh Grant.
The Inbetweeners on the other hand wasn’t trying to be cool, it was trying to be funny, and it succeeded. It wasn’t totally akin to how I remember school but that didn’t really matter because the interaction between the four protagonists was often amusing and to an extent a realistic depiction of four teenage boys. Mix that with some embarrassing situations and you have quite an entertaining show.
Unfortunately the sharpness and wit of the first series (at least I remember there being some sharp wit) was mostly gone by the start of the second, replaced by a relentless barrage of crude obscenities. Saying clunge the tenth time is not as funny as the first time. The embarrassing situations are still there however, but they seem to be relying on them more and more as the series progresses, and if these situations don’t work, the episode generally fails. They don’t always have to be vulgar and disgusting either, Frank Spencer never got his dick out in public.
I was part of a four strong group of “inbetweeners” at school, the geekiest part though, and I no doubt dramatically lowered the coolness of the other three. Looking back I was punching above my weight, I still am. School was endlessly awkward for me, and usually consisted of trying not to get an erection, inevitably getting an erection, being too shy and embarrassed to talk to anyone, mocked for being shit at football (wasn‘t even that bad), bullied for being small and quiet, and insulted by my own friends. It was never about really embarrassing situations you could base a sitcom around, it was a culmination of all the little awkward things that made school so hard and humiliating, and maybe this is just me, but I spent most of my time narrowly avoiding embarrassing situations every day, possibly even every hour, rather than actually having them.
The Inbetweeners should in my opinion focus on the smaller things that make adolescence such a nightmare because the bigger things like shitting yourself in an exam or exposing a testicle in front of an audience don’t happen in real life, if they did you would never go back to school, you’d probably jump off a bridge.
The characters in The Inbetweeners have become very two dimensional. Jay, against all odds is the most realistic character in the show, there were dozens of people like him at school endlessly talking about sex, overcompensating for the fact that they weren’t having sex, as if everyone expects a 13 year old to be “knee deep in clunge” and you've failed at life if you're still a virgin before your SATS. I never understood that need to show off your (fake) sexual affluence. I remember one time in year 9 maths that someone said that a tit wank is better from a woman with small tits. Totally useless information for a 14 year old like me, or for the cunt who said it, I don’t even know if he was right either (answers on a postcard please). Another time in what must have been year 7, someone said that a woman should never be at the bottom of a 69 because they would choke. I absolutely hated these people, who wouldn’t?
Simon has the neurotic sensibilities that I assume a lot of people once had, or still have, which in a way helps you empathise with him and makes his experiences totally relatable. Will and Neil are probably the weakest of the four. Once you get that Will is intelligent, a square, and hates idiots, and that Neil is just an idiot, there’s not much comedy to come from them, and while Jay might be realistic, he says the same thing over and over, and it’s getting pretty tiresome now.
With the interactions between the four protagonists becoming much weaker and repetitive, it’s a shame there is such a little ensemble to mix things up, it’s like they go to the world’s smallest school. Any recurring characters are also quite two dimensional often showing only one personality trait, Donovan for example is supposedly hard, and every time he’s on screen we know exactly what he’s going to say.
Of course I’m the minority here, the show’s popularity seems to be at an all time high, probably because it’s so crude and Jay says minge and clunge a lot. It will only get more popular the more it uses mindless profanities because there are so many people who talk like that out there. Peep Show proves that you can be rude and intelligent at the same time and make something as small and simple as walking down a street or dancing as one of the most embarrassing things in the world. The problem with The Inbetweeners is that it’s sinking too low too fast, how is it going to get worse for them? Awkward moment after awkward moment only numbs the whole experience until it no longer seems that awkward. And we find things embarrassing because of what people will think of us, and as the cast of the show is so small, we cannot see the repercussions of their actions to the fully embarrassing extent that would happen in real life.
While the show may still have its moments now and again, the direction it is taking is not ftw (as geeks would say), maybe not for its audience, but for me certainly. With two dimensional characters, clunge, clunge, fucking clunge, and relying on the sit rather than the com, The Inbetweeners is not the show it used to be.

Saturday 2 October 2010

“Windows 8, you’re a dick if you don’t buy it”

I’m a PC. I’m a Mac. Windows 7 was my idea. The iPhone 4 changes everything, again. Yes, I have a problem with how Microsoft and Apple market their products. I was fine with it but I’ve come to realise that these annoying Windows 7 adverts aren’t going away. The first annoyingly smug bastard actor telling me that Windows 7 was his idea grinded my gears, and the latest one with the even more annoyingly smug bitch actor telling me in a way that couldn’t be more smug that Windows 7 was her fucking idea has annoyed me to the point of sitting at my laptop (using Windows 7) to write about how annoyed I am at it.
I have Windows 7. I have not used any of the “genius” ideas mentioned in all of the adverts, I haven’t even seen an opportunity where I can do something new. The whole point of this ad campaign and many like it are to say to the world how easy computers are to use, but these features haven’t changed how I use a computer one bit other than I have a nice looking green taskbar.
As if we don’t know how to use a computer anyway, it’s all a bit patronising, and adding irrelevant features nobody uses won’t help at all, nor will annoying adverts. The Windows 8 ad campaign will have the slogan “Windows 8, you’re a dick if you don’t buy it” which is pretty much Apple’s slogan for the iPhone.
"Fracking Machines"
True the iPhone did change the world of phones, but the slogan for the iPhone 4: “Changes everything again” is just calling all of us cunts, yes cunts, big hairy cunts. The iPhone 4 is just a newer iPhone, just like the iPad was a bigger iPhone that wasn’t actually a phone, it hasn’t changed anything. The big new feature for the iPhone 4 was its new sleek metal design, which actually stopped the phone from working well. Apple’s response was that if you buy a phone cover (from Apple of course) the problem would stop. Yes, the whole point of the metal rim was because it looked good and now you have to cover it up for the phone to work. Apple call us cunts, again.
They know we’re going to buy their shit anyway, we want it, it’s all new and shiny and does stuff, so why put us through this painful marketing? Maybe they think it works but if you show us an iPhone in dog shit we would still want it, it doesn’t mean you have to. Nor do you have to make Mitchell and Webb sell out and sell your product. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs already own our souls, they could at least make us feel good about it.