Does the Pope fuck in the woods?

If like me you enjoy the process of buying a book more than the process of reading past the first chapter, you probably crave a much lighter method of obtaining knowledge. There’s Wikipedia, but that’s as reliable as…Wikipedia, and offers so many tangents that you’ll start reading about the Spanish civil war and end up reading about whatever happened to Matt Dillon or some other wayward subject. No, Wikipedia will not do, what we need is a box that just tells you stuff, wait a minute, that’s a TV! Yes, television should be a pixelated fountain of knowledge, but more often than not it’s Come Fucking Dine With Me.

If I want to watch something about history I usually have to either watch Tony Robinson dig for shit or Horrible Histories, a children’s show which could irritate Joe Pasquale. I’m sure kids might love it, but it’s not aimed for a cool and hip 20-something like myself, in fact not many history shows are. The few documentaries that do appear on TV are mostly presented by ageing professors who could make sex seem boring. I’ve always thought David Starkey was a bit of a dick and this week he proved that, what we need is a cool and hip 20-something to present a history documentary…Joe Swash?

This poor selection of history programmes has perhaps led me to watching historical dramas such as The Tudors and Camelot (it’s kind of historical). This week saw the start of The Borgias, which if it wasn’t clear by the title is all about the Borgias, you know, they’re kind of like the renaissance Italian Osbournes. Rodrigo Borgia, played by Jeremy Irons (just so you know he’s evil) becomes pope resulting in hilarious consequences.

Other than the setting it’s not much different to other historical dramas, it took a mere three minutes (including opening titles) for the first glimpse of gratuitous sex and nine minutes for needless swashbuckling. Every actor does their best Orlando Bloom thespian impression and it’d be near impossible to tell the difference from The Tudors if it weren’t for all the silly hats.

Much like The Tudors the show is filled with sex, corruption, and murder, though The Borgias isn’t as half as sexy. Most of the cast are cardinals, old men in silly hats, how the pope managed to bag so many mistresses dressed like that is a mystery. It’s peculiar that gratuitous sex is a cliché of historical drama, was it the only thing that went on back in those days or do the writers think it’s the only way to get us interested? If these shows were about when I was fourteen I’d be a professor by now.

That is if they’re historically accurate. The Tudors took creative licence and pissed all over history, I don’t know much about the Borgias so it’s difficult to tell what’s fact or fiction. Maybe Machiavelli will come in mid-series and fuck everyone. Then again, that might have actually happened, you can see the trouble I’m having here. It’s inevitable that the writers will take liberties but I’ll be too ignorant to know when, it would be useful if there was a trivia track to tell us what was true and what was made up.

I was a little less ignorant about the Borgias than I thought I was, and why? Because I played Assassin’s Creed II. I assumed that game was all lies but some of it is actually pretty accurate, or at least it has many of the same lies as The Borgias does. Maybe if The Borgias was told from the viewpoint of an assassin it might be more exciting, instead we’re left with cardinals and a weird ginger man who loves a bit of flagellation.  

It might not be clear what I’m learning from this show apart from that chicks love a guy in a mitre, but as long as it’s entertaining, that’s all that matters. The problem is though, that so far it’s pretty damn boring. The sex isn’t sexy enough, the corruption isn’t corrupt enough, and the murders aren’t murdery(?) enough. Maybe it’ll pick up in a few episodes, but one thing’s for certain, they all die in the end.

Swagger

A blogger living on the outskirts of London should be shitting themselves over the weekend’s events. I however lack any kind of political savvy. That’s not to say I’m an idiot, but I cannot  honestly write a piece about the Tottenham riots without parading my ignorance all over the interweb. It’s easy to say “it’s a fucking disgrace!” and “something should be done about it!”, it’s easy to make bad jokes, but what isn’t easy is to write something factually sound which provides a new opinion, and one you can take seriously. I’m not a journalist, I’m a dickhead, and as such I won’t be having any ideas above my station.

Somewhere down my level and grinding my gears is the current state of music. As we all know, music is subjective and as such is very difficult to evaluate, whether it’s praise or criticism. The same is true for any form of art, but people seem to get a little more obstreperous when it comes to music. Saying you don’t like my favourite film is to an extent understandable, but if you diss my favourite band I’ll go ape shit, and so will you if I diss yours. Why are they good? It’s hard to analyse music and defend it, other than the statement “it’s good” there aren’t many other punches you can throw. If your “it’s good” is countered with a “it’s shit” it comes down to a majority opinion, and if there are more shits than there are goods then sadly you’re wrong, and your favourite band is shit. I’ll brazenly declare Coldplay and N-Dubz as excrement but how can I prove it? This cannot be done by one man alone, and in a world where half the population are below the average I.Q it’s impossible. I’m not saying that stupid people like N-Dubz, but if they knew better they wouldn’t.

So we can’t prove that music is good or bad, and in that sense it’s a bit like Schrodinger’s cat. Maybe we should put Dappy in a sealed box with a vial of poison. Why? Because he’s a cunt. That we can prove. Worryingly, we can’t prove that Cher Lloyd’s Swagger Jagger - which made it to number one yesterday - is a pile of shite. It’s my opinion that it’s the biggest piece of wank ever to be recorded, it offers nothing to the world, it’s an insult to everyone living, everyone that has lived, everyone who has yet to live, to animals, to plants, to atoms, to electrons, to neutrinos, it is offensive to everything, it’s a fucking disgrace and something should be done about it! I can’t prove it's shit though. Objectively it’s not and this is frustrating. If anything its success suggests that it is in fact good.

It’s likely that mostly kids bought the single, but it’s out there now, it’s on TV, it’s on the radio, and it’ll become increasingly difficult to avoid and the mere knowledge that it’s out there is enough to piss me off. There’ll even be a few adults who bought it. We don’t trust kids with a vote so why do these cunts get one as well?

Knowing that the song is pure terrible, why has it made it to number one? It sounds like a bad Alesha Dixon b-side (and they must all be bad) but she’s never got a number one, there must be another reason. Cher Lloyd was of course an X-Factor contestant, and being on TV for several weeks appears to be the X-Factor. It’s nothing to do with talent or image, it’s all about exposure, and the X-Factor is the perfect vehicle to sell an artist to kids and idiots. Mr Blobby, the Teletubbies, and Bob the Builder have all been massively popular TV characters who have had number ones, and Cher Lloyd is no different to them. She’s the same gimmick only sold to a slightly older demographic. I can’t objectively prove that Cher Lloyd is shit, but I can compare her to Mr cunting Blobby. I’ll take that.

Trend of the World

Twitter has steadily become part of my life. Pre-Twitter I used to look at my phone to see how many text messages I didn’t have. These days Twitter gives me something to look at other than bitter disappointment. The majority of what I read might not be interesting, some of it might even offend me, but it always distracts me, Twitter passes the time, and because of that it’s an essential part of my life.

It’s more than something to look at when you’re waiting for someone to come back from the toilet though, it’s a fantastic resource for news and entertainment, as well as a great way to socialise with friends and even people you’ve never met. For someone like me who texts absolute shit without expecting a reply, Twitter is perfect, I don’t have to abuse an individual with my inane tomfoolery, I can share the shit with my followers. Not that many of them are real though.

Essentially Twitter is just a conduit to show the world how witty, funny, and caring you are, or more likely, how much of a dick you are. While I may think I’ve just tweeted the funniest tweet in the history of tweeting, only four people will read it and think “what a prick”. If they do like it then they might retweet it and for ten minutes I will feel like a king. The entire retweeting culture can be quite depressing at times though. If the link to one of these blog posts is retweeted then I know I’ve done a good job, though if it’s not then it’s the end of the fucking world! If no one retweets the link it must be shit! Twitter is messing with my emotions, making me feel good about myself and then taking it all away from me and kicking me face first into the dirt. You better fucking retweet this.

Twitter is a good thing then? Sort of. There are many good things about Twitter but if like me you find yourself looking at trending topics you might get very annoyed. Currently these are the topics trending on twitter:

#BornElectric
#1datmtv
#undateable
#arentyoutiredof
Dear Santa
Duncan Bannatyne
Mike Ashley
Joey Barton
Goodwillie
#iwantacopyofsavage

Trending topics might be a good idea in principal, but by the time a subject trends it holds no relevance. If you were to click on Dear Santa you could read every tweet which includes that phrase, but most of them will be “Why Dear Santa be trending? Huh? LOLZ”. What are we supposed to do with this information? Every single time a film is on TV, thousands will declare that they are watching it, it trends, and then thousands more tweet “Minority Report is trending! I love that film!”. Then you get the spambots, who mention every topic and a suspicious looking link.

This is irksome to say the least but what’s genuinely terrifying about Twitter is the ever increasing cult of One Direction fans. #1datmtv may look like gibberish but I’ve come to understand the language of one-speak, and it means One Direction at MTV. The most talked about topic in the UK is that a boy band who haven’t even released a single were on MTV. What the fuck is wrong with this country? It’s not just today, they’re constantly trending because their fans do nothing but tweet about them. Soon this evil cult will have more influence and power than the Royal family, they’ll be more of a threat to western civilization than Al-Qaeda. Imagine the pandemonium when One Direction do release a single, Twitter is going to crash, so will the stock markets, and every plane in the sky. The Mayans were right, the world is going to end in 2012 and it’ll all be the fault of this cult of fucking morons. Fucking morons devoting their lives (and sacrificing yours!) to cunts with smiley faces and an average amount of talent. THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!

I think I’m just going to stop looking at the trending topics and get on with my life.

Saving Captain America

I was only a kid when I saw the motion picture Captain America. My memory is hazy but there was a guy dressed in a blue suit who had a shield. That’s all I remember about 1990’s incarnation of the Cap but I doubt many people are even aware of the film’s existence. After all, it currently holds a rating of 2.9 on IMDB. Just to compare, The Phantom (you know, it had Billy Zane literally dressed as a bellend in it) has a rating of 4.9. Praise the lord for my hazy memory!

In 2000, X-Men kick started a golden age of comic book movies, and by golden age I mean a relentless barrage of the fuckers. We were given films like Elektra, Ghostrider, and The Spirit, hardly the most recognisable of heroes. Yet Captain America, one of the biggest Marvel heroes, had escaped another adaptation until this week. Why the long wait? Did they think that we didn’t need another Captain America and that the 2.9 pile of shite would fulfil us for eternity? That’s unfair, I can’t honestly judge that film with the limited memory I have, it might be a masterpiece. There were over 20 Marvel films between X-Men and Captain America: The First Avenger, did they forget about him? Or was it political? After all, it’s Captain AMERICA. You might as well call him Captain Prick outside the States.

Captain America: The First Avenger follows Thor as the second big Marvel film of the year, and manages to up the ante considerably. While Thor was a strange mix of Norse fantasy and California Man (Encino Man for the Americans), Captain America is a straight up WWII adventure romp. Directed by Joe Johnston of The Rocketeer fame, you would be forgiven for lowering your expectations, but Johnston has managed to make a film which should not only beat an IMDB score of 2.9, but also 4.9, making it officially better than The Phantom. Score!

Since Iron Man in 2008, there has been a steady string of films leading up to next year’s avengings, though what sets Captain America apart from the likes of Iron Man 2 and Thor is that for the most part, it completely forgets it’s an Avengers prequel. Set in WWII it’s free of restraints and can focus on being an actual film, Agent Coulson can’t appear every twenty minutes, and nor can a one eyed Samuel L. Jackson.

Steve Rodger’s journey to becoming Captain America is perfectly paced, and akin to the sort of heart warming overcoming the odds film Disney might make. We see Chris Evans’ puny Rodgers get beaten up and rejected from the army, and by the time he makes the transition to super-soldier it feels like the end of one of those Disney films, and in a good way. This is a man who has been bullied all his life, and he is finally able to defend himself. In this sense, Captain America is far more human than any other Avenger, and despite being a piece of American propaganda, we can relate to the guy standing up to bullies.

We’ve not just come for the sentiments though, we’ve come to see Captain America kick some Nazi ass! And he doesn’t just kick them, he kills them! I guess I’ve got so used to super heroes just slapping their enemies about a bit that seeing Cap shoot his is quite surprising. He just don’t give a fuck. It is WWII after all. This isn’t Saving Private Ryan however, Johnston directs the action in the style of a Sunday matinee adventure reminiscent of something like Indiana Jones (and even Star Wars), yet there are only so many ways you can see the Captain attacking a Nazi with a shield.

The action isn’t bad, it’s just not good as everything else, especially the acting, which for a comic book film is rather good indeed. Chris Evans has already proved he can handle action roles in Fantastic Four, Push, and The Losers and he is perfect in the role of Steve Rodgers. British actors Dominic Cooper, Toby Jones, and Hayley Atwell do an impressive job and while he’s not on screen for very long, Stanley Tucci shows why he makes everything better.

Who would have thought that the director of The Rocketeer could come up with something this good? Not me, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much, because I expected The Rocketeer. This should get us all excited for The Avengers but I still can’t see how it’s going to work. There are so many loose ends from four different films that it has to be at least five hours long just to tie them all together. It’s either going to be a horrible mess, or there’s going to be a horrible mess in every nerd’s pants. I’ll let you know next May if I come or not.

The United States of Funny

When it comes to comedy we Brits like to think that we’re the best at it. We gave the world Monty Python! Or at least five sixths of it. It’s something of a cliché to comment on the good old British sense of humour, but we are funny people, or so we keep telling ourselves. There’s not much evidence these days of our hilarity, we appear to have stopped being funny.

Turn on your television and it’s just panel shows, we’ve stopped writing comedy and focused purely on commenting on stuff. How many times can we watch six comedians make jokes about a number? Comedians don’t even have to be funny anymore, they just have to look trendy. Put a pair of converse on and gel your hair and you’re a comedian! Jack Whitehall has somehow managed to forge a career in comedy without being funny.

Forget about panel shows and Michael “I’m so funny I can’t stop laughing when I point out stuff that happens” Mcintyre’s comedy road shows and what’s left on our screens? BBC One family sitcoms. Shows that aren’t offensive but also not funny. Even good sitcoms like How Not to Live your Life, Lead Balloon, and Him & Her aren’t hilariously funny. We can’t even claim the IT Crowd as our own because it’s written by an Irishman. Yeah we have Peep Show but we’re not getting a new series until next year. The Scottish have made some great sketch shows this year (Burnistoun and Limmy’s Show) but it’s not enough.

I might never tire of the IT Crowd (we‘re claiming it!) or Peep Show but this drought of British Comedy has prompted me on a perverse expedition across the Atlantic into the treacherous territory of…American comedy! America makes such a large quantity of programmes that it’s like throwing wet tissue at a wall, some of it has to stick.

American comedy can sometimes come across as brash, people will gleefully deconstruct it as mindless shouting and dancing, and while this may be true for some cases, American comedy is in many ways becoming superior to British comedy, and I think we should take the credit. The Office is one of the best comedies we’ve ever produced and has been incredibly influential in turning American comedy funny.

More and more comedies are moving away from canned laughter and live studio audiences and adopting a tone more akin to The Office, focusing on characterisation over a constant stream of one liners. Perhaps the most obvious example is the US version of The Office, and I assume the mere concept of remaking our beloved series has put many Brits off ever watching it. Barring the first episode, the two shows are completely different and comparing the two is redundant.

The US Office might be zanier than we’re used to, it’s inevitable that some people will be incapable of getting it (such are the woes of comedy‘s subjectiveness), but for the ones who do, they will love it. There is a perfect balance between comedy and tragedy for every character in the show, the more tragic the character’s life, the funnier they are. It’s amazing how many characters they’ve crammed into the show, and how detailed their idiosyncrasies are. We don’t usually get to see much character development in British comedies because they usually only last two or three six episode series‘. So far the US Office has made it to 152 episodes, and while there may be some weak episodes now and again, it’s rare that ten minutes will go by without a huge laugh. To put this into perspective, Two Pints of Lager ran for 80 episodes, and how many times did you laugh watching that?

Greg Daniels, the dude who adapted the US version of The Office, went on to create Parks and Recreation, another US comedy worth all of your time. Like The Office, P&R is filmed in the style of a documentary and focuses on an ensemble of idiots, this time based in the parks department of a small town in Indiana. It may be very similar to The Office (I could just copy any paste the previous paragraph) but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are of course differences but if you like The Office, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll like P&R. Just watch them both.

It’s likely that you haven’t seen these two shows, it’s almost certain that you haven’t seen Community. A quick look on Wikipedia tells me that Community started airing in the UK last October, on Viva. Viva! Isn’t it a music channel? It’s no place for comedy. This is one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a long time, at least put it on FX, a channel one of us might happen to stumble upon. Community is all about an American community college, a place of education for the more unfortunate people of the world.

So far this has been one of the hardest blog posts to write, I like these shows, what more is there to say? I can’t express my affection in a witty manner, it just comes across as if I’m a teenage girl doting on N Sync (or whatever the kids are listening to these days). All this praise on one page is sickening, it’s hard to express how much I like Community. I love The Office and P&R, but I really love Community. It’s fuckrilliant. It’s so good I’ve made up a word to describe it. It’s intelligent and stupid in equal measures, the characters are flawed yet loveable, it has countless callbacks and makes endless film references. If ever a show was made for me, it would be Community. It’s totally bewildering that it isn’t being shown on a much more popular channel in the UK, Channel 4 likes to think it’s hot stuff when it comes to American comedy, so does Sky One, why haven’t they picked this up? I’ve only discovered it yet it’s been running since 2009.

Maybe it’s time we take a look at American comedies and see what we can take from them. Perhaps we should band together and write as a team rather than individually, have a go at writing more than six episodes, and work on characterisation as opposed to puns. Whatever the solution is, we need to up our game. The Americans are already more powerful than us, we can’t allow them to be funnier than us.

Torch My Wood

I’ve always laughed at Torchwood. Probably in the same way “normal” people laugh at Doctor Who. I’ve always ignorantly declared it as shit without ever watching a whole episode. As with Doctor Who, every now and again I would catch a few minutes of Torchwood, and dismiss it as nerdy bollocks. These days my bollocks are considerably nerdy, now a fan of Doctor Who I wilfully turned on the new series of Torchwood. Or maybe I should say season.

The Americans have put a bit of money into Torchwood and in a sense have hijacked our British sci-fi series and made it their own. Bloody yanks, coming over here and taking our shows, increasing the budget and hiring better actors. While a sense of national pride may lament this Americanisation of the series, we have to admit that in general US TV shows are much better than ours.

A spin-off of Doctor Who with a terrible anagram as a title, set in Wales, and starring John Barrowman? This is what has kept me away from Torchwood for so long. How much shit can happen in Cardiff anyway? About three series worth apparently. The Americans probably realised this and subsequently have moved season 4 over to the good ol’ US of A.

This entire series/season is based on one story in which people stop dying. Sounds alright doesn’t it? Well it turns out it’s shit. With the prospect of the world becoming drastically over populated it’s up to Torchwood and some CIA guys to find out what the hell is going on. Obviously the Americans didn’t want the whole series/season set in Wales though. How can you convey this tragedy in Cardiff? A place where it already looks like the living dead roam the streets. Instead Barrowman's Captain Jack is swiftly relocated to his homeland.

As a result we get some good acting. The standard BBC procedure for casting Americans is to just use Brits who can only do awful New Jersey accents, but this time they’ve found some real Americans. Mekhi Phifer and Bill Pullman no less. Pullman was the President in Independence Day, here he’s a convicted paedophile and murderer. It’s all gone wrong for him.

If you’re going to be shaking your fists at anyone in Torchwood it’ll be Pullman. After surviving an execution for his crimes, he is freed on a technicality, and just walks about looking all evil. He’s not the main villain however, we’re only two episodes in but it’s going to be the American government isn’t it? It’s always the American government, and usually the vice president. We shouldn’t really trust Joe Biden should we?

So far Barrowman has had relatively little screen time, the focus being on the global implications of an ever increasing population. Issues such as food shortages, overcrowded hospitals and drug resistant diseases have taken precedence over Barrowman running down a street and twatting someone in the face. Whenever he is on screen I think he’s suddenly going to burst into a number from West Side Story. Then the Welsh bird speaks and the accent ruins the whole tension.

Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Christian Bale, all Welsh actors who don’t have Welsh accents. Would Batman have been as good if he had a Welsh accent? “Ooo this disbanded coal mine would make a good batcave mind. Anyone fancy some cheese on toast?”. A Welsh accent makes everything sound funnier, and as a result it makes Torchwood seem a bit comical at times. The breaches of health and safety in Fireman Sam were no laughing matter, but the accents made them funny. The comedy can be considered as a good thing though, after all there is a convicted paedophile walking about, you need to balance that shit with some comic relief. I’m sure Schindler’s List would have been easier to watch if it was set in the valleys.

And I said what about...

I write about films a lot. At least I try to. If you do happen to read this drivel on a regular basis (god help you) then you would have noticed that I write about films I haven’t seen more often than I write about films I actually have seen. The reason for this is that I have a very short attention span.

Watching and dissecting a trailer is far quicker and easier than actually watching the whole film, and sometimes it’s all that’s necessary. I don’t exactly want to go to the cinema and pay to see something like Twilight, especially since I’d probably have to go by myself. Imagine the embarrassment of seeing Twilight on your own. “Oh it’s alright I’m writing a review.” “Who do you write for?” “The rascal with the tweezers in his pocket, you read it?” “No“.

I could just watch them online but there’s only so many torrents and buffering you can tolerate before you realise you’ve been waiting hours to watch Twilight or Green Lantern. And then you have to watch the damn thing, and I’ll get bored, or I’ll like it and then what? Writing a positive post is insanely difficult, there’s thousands of ways to describe shit but if you like something? Yeah it’s good, it’s really good, it’s great, it’s brilliant. It’s boring.

In January I wrote about all the films I wanted to see this year, and thus far I’ve only seen two of those, Paul and Thor. In total, I’ve seen four films at the cinema this year, and I’m typing across the interwebs about films like I’m some authority on the matter. I did go through a whole semester studying media at uni.

If I’m to continue my ignorant ramblings on the world of film then I must start watching things. I’ve never seen Citizen Kane, the Godfather Part II, or Flubber, and it’s about time that I start watching these so called classics. For lack of anything better to write about I will chronicle this treacherous journey of cinematic discovery.

I watched War of the Worlds the other night for the first time, but as it was only made in 2005 and was pretty terrible, I’ll skip it. First on the list (I’ve not got one) is Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which I’m told is a classic. I don’t think it’s really aimed at me. On the back of the DVD Holly Golightly is described as a madcap, carefree New York playgirl. She’s not, she’s a dick, who is probably mentally ill.

It’s essentially just a rom com, if it was filmed today it would probably have Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in it, fucking things up for everyone. It’s obvious from the opening scene that this is not a film for men. It’s a fashion statement, and it’s purely for the ladies. I’m sure every girl wants to be like Holly, a girl with fancy clothes doing whatever the fuck she wants, I’d be happy with that life.

Holly Golightly might be an inspiration to some women but to me, she’s fucking annoying. She just goes on and on and on, it’s exhausting. She’s a hazard to society and this dude just thinks she’s swell, why? And what’s appealing about him? He’s just as much of a dick and appears to be a rent boy for much of the film. A rent boy!

The film has aged well in terms of style, but not so well in political correctness. Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of a Japanese man is so overtly racist it kind of overshadows everything else in the film. Imagine a Jim Davidson impression, and then imagine something worse.

Excluding this racism Breakfast at Tiffany’s isn’t a bad film, but it’s not as classic or great as some people might have you believe. Maybe I can’t truly appreciate it as I lack fallopian tubes but this is a film made infamous by its style above anything else. I also can’t help but feel that the ending is not a happy one. I bet after the credits she kills the cat and runs off to Brazil.

Why you hate Fred Durst

It’s a Saturday night and you’re watching a film all cosied up on the sofa, you’re having a good time and suddenly in the corner of your eye you see a gigantic spider sprint across the room. HOLY FUCK! You leap out of your seat fearful for your life. After a five minute staring contest with said spider neither of you have moved. You decide to leap into action grabbing the closest thing to you that can be used as a weapon but by the time you are able to pounce the spider is gone. You stay weary of its return but it looks like it’s never coming back. Just as you start to get comfortable with life once more it strikes back!

The same thing has happened with Fred Durst. I thought we were done with him. Him and his stupid fucking red cap on backwards and his “fuck this, fuck that” attitude, a moron of the highest calibre. Barring a rather peculiar appearance in an episode of House, we hadn’t seen much of Fred Durst and his “band” Limp Bizkit, it looked as if they had finally called it a day, but I was horrified to discover that they’re back, and more pointless than ever.

My hatred for Limp Bizkit goes all the way back to school, where everyone seemed to love Limp Bizkit regardless of what clichéd social group they were part of. I didn’t. I didn’t get Limp Bizkit, or any music for that matter. At that time my CD collection consisted of the South Park compilation Chef Aid, and Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP. Now because my opinion differed from the norm I was deemed “sad and gay” for not liking Limp Bizkit (or any nu metal band). Read that again. I was “sad and gay” because I didn’t like Limp Bizkit. School was a cruel mistress.

Even with my poor musical knowledge back then I was spot on with Limp Bizkit, which makes it all the worse that a few years later I started to listen to them. Yep, I became a dick. I guess my teenage angst was more latent than others my age, and when it became active I suddenly liked Limp Bizkit. Perhaps it was years of being worn down by their exposure or the derision I received from my friends that turned me to Limp Bizkit, but whatever the reason, it’s not an excusable one.

Fast forward a couple of years and I once again harbour a hatred for Limp Bizkit, Fred Durst and the rest of that early 00’s nu metal scene. It feels like it’s too late though, while I have never listened to a Kid Rock or Nickelback song out of choice I have uploaded Limp Bizkit and even Papa Roach to my ipod. That shit doesn’t leave you, it’s on your permanent record. When I’m dead and at the pearly gates Saint Peter is going to judge me for it and send me to hell. I’m sorry God.

We all look back on our pubescent music taste and cringe at the majority of what we used to call music. As a whole, the nu metal scene is comparable to that awful auto-tune R&B phase we’ve just been through. Nu metal was a competition to see who could tune their guitar as low as possible and shout fuck the loudest. Thankfully it was only ever a phase, pogs lasted longer than nu metal.

Its tenure may have been short lived but Fred Durst has provided us with wisdom only Oscar Wilde could ever dream of:

“If I say fuck two more times that’s 46 fucks in this fucked up rhyme”

“Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin‘”

“I hope you know I pack a chainsaw, I’ll skin your ass raw”

“I’d eat you alive…I’m sorry, so sorry, damn you’re so hot”

“Keep rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ rollin’”

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck"

Fred Durst is 40 now though, he must have grown up, his red cap must be in the bin, his vocabulary must have improved and he must have some meaningful messages for the world, just like Bono does. We should give him another chance.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. fuck"

So he still looks like a cunt, perhaps even more as he’s wearing a vest. Let’s listen to what he has to say though.

“Holdin’ the gold, it’s so gold, it’s so golden y’all, the golden cobra”

“Douche bag I’m a fuck you up, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you up” (it repeats)

No, he’s even more of a cunt than he used to be. If we can all just tell Fred no he’ll have to stop. Mick Jagger is 67, that means we could have another 27 years of Fred Durst, I can’t live through that, can you? No you can’t, so let’s do the right thing and stop this cunt called Fred Durst.

Frankbash!

Hey look! It’s a new US TV drama featuring the dude from Road Trip, Breckin Meyer! I love that film! Maybe I’ll love Franklin & Bash! That right there is an excerpt from my internal monologue right before I watched the pilot episode of super lawyer drama Franklin & Bash. Because they’re not just any normal lawyers, they’re like Daredevil and shit.

What’s immediately striking and somewhat grating about Franklin & Bash is its relentless quest to be hip and cool. It’s a drama about two lawyers and yeah that sounds boring, really boring. Fortunately Franklin and his buddy Bash aren’t anything like those boring lawyer stereotypes we all know and meh about. Unfortunately they’re more akin to something out of the Josh Schwartz school of coolä, they’re more like Kooky & Brash. One plays the Wii while the other plays a guitar! INSANE! They have a poster of Zombieland on the wall of their office which is also their house! COSMIC! I can accept that they might very well do this, but I can’t accept that they’re cool because of it.

Americans must really love Raj in the Big Bang Theory because Franklin & Bash have their very own awkward Indian man. Are Indians in America different to the ones in the UK? Apparently they’re all nerdy and have some sort of social disability. While Raj can’t speak to women, guess what! This one is agoraphobic! By the end of the pilot episode he overcomes this fear which is a shame because that’s really all the character has got, maybe he’ll regress in the next episode, not that it’s an interesting story arc though.

If our Indian hermit was a maverick hiring from our cool dudes then what about the black female ex-con! Whoah! You might notice her as that annoying one out of the third season of Heroes and immediately find her annoying just as I did. Totally pointless in both shows. Frankbash (my new name for them) are soon hired by Malcom McDowell’s (is he in everything now?) big fancy law firm. Is he crazy? Just a bit!

During this inaugural meeting McDowell simply reads out the pitch of the show including what sounds like a word for word recital of the character descriptions for Frankbash, the clumsiest bit of writing I have ever witnessed. It transpires that Franklin has daddy issues and Bash still loves his ex. Get over her you douche!

Fifteen minutes or so into the episode I realised something, Bash was Mark-Paul Gosselaar…ZACK FUCKING MORRIS! HOLY SHIT! I thought he was dead! When I used to watch Saved by the Bell I didn’t know many people cooler than Zack fucking Morris. Frankbash must be cool then. From this point I forgave the lame exposition and started getting into the show. For all its flaws (and there are many) it is reasonably entertaining and watchable in the same way that Bones is (I suppose).

"When I grow up I'm going to be a lawyer!"

Meyer and Gosselaar share a good chemistry and without this the show would be a complete mess. Every other character is boring or annoying and most fans of the show will like it for the buddy element and not the court room escapades, which frankly (ha! Pun!) lack any kind of realism. That said, the actors can only bring so much charm to their characters and the writers seem intent on making Frankbash the biggest pair of dickheads you have ever laid your eyes on.

"When I grow up, I'm going to star in a porn film called  Screeched"

I want to like Frankbash, it’s a bromance and I love bromances, but it’s a bromance between two lawyers, and lawyers as we all know are mostly dicks. In this pilot episode Frankbash not only represent a man who they know is at fault for causing an accident but also make a big deal about how justice should prevail, suggesting that immorality is interchangeable with nobility, which of course it isn’t. You can have two lawyers breaking the rules or two lawyers purveying justice, you can’t have both. Frankbash is flawed but if there’s nothing else on, sure, why not? Let’s watch it, after all it’s got Zack fucking Morris in it.

Bosses, they're not great are they?

Once upon a time ago, I watched a film called Just my Luck, featuring a pre-mental Lindsey Lohan and the future Captain Kirk. The premise was that a lucky Lindsey loses her luck, and becomes like, so unlucky it’s unreal. What went wrong for her? If you’re so unlucky that it warrants a film, some bad shit must go down right? She got splashed by a puddle. By the end credits, that’s really the only bad thing that happened to her, no untimely death, no date rape, no chlamydia, nothing seriously unlucky, just getting splashed by a puddle.

It’s a light hearted comedy for kids, so of course you can’t just put date rape in the film, but nonetheless Just my Luck made me angry (what doesn’t?), its concept of unluckiness didn’t represent reality, anything actually unlucky would have been too hardcore for the film.

I was reminded of this “film” when watching the trailer for Horrible Bosses. A comedy where three guys decide to murder their bosses, who are like, so horrible and stuff it’s literally unbelievable. In a world where any form of murder is wrong, there can be no valid reason to kill someone, least not in a comedic manner.



Like Just my Luck’s diluted definition of unluckiness, Horrible Bosses’ definition of horrible does not translate to the real world. The film’s poster describes the three titular bosses as psycho, maneater, and tool. If he’s a psycho, just get him sectioned! But he’s not really a psycho, not in a Norman Bates murder you type of way, he’s just manipulative and a bit weird, don’t murder him! Because then you’re the psycho!

Maneater? Why would you want to kill a maneater? Especially when it’s Jennifer Aniston looking hotter than she has in years? Don’t kill her, fuck her! Horrible? She’s anything but horrible. And aren’t all bosses tools? Or dickheads as we’d call them over here. If he’s that much of a tool then just report him, don’t kill him. These aren't horrible bosses, I've worked with far worse, they should call the film Slightly Horrible Bosses, or Bosses, they're not great are they?

Maybe this could work as a dark comedy, but this has the same tone as Couple’s Retreat. Imagine someone getting murdered in The Break-up or Four Christmases, it just doesn’t fit. These films are supposed to have happy endings, how does that happen after the protagonists become crazed murderers? “Oh, work sure is fun now I haven’t got a horrible boss and I’m definitely not linked to the murd…I mean disappearance“. Or maybe they don’t murder them and it all works out in the end.

I’m sure the film is watchable in the way that all Jason Bateman films are, half heartedly. I loved Arrested Development, but Bateman sure does pick some shit to be in. These kinds of films are never terrible, but they’re never better than one watch either, sometimes they’re not even that good. How many more times can we sit through these films? They’re running out of ideas to the point that they’ve made a whimsical comedy about murder. There’s no whimsy in murder! What next? Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson will star in the balls out comedy of the century: The Date Rapists.