1. The cinema hasn’t attracted a mob so middle class since
The King’s Speech. I thought I was waiting in line to see highlights of the
Queen’s Jubilee.
2. Attracting a bourgeois theatre going crowd ensured they all
laughed at the “funny” bits as they would do watching the stage production. Just
because you pay £60 for a ticket and it’s in a fancy theatre doesn’t mean the
shitty jokes and dialogue become high art and hilarious. If you charged £60 for a peasant stoning they'd find that hilarious as well.
3. Helena Bonham Carter has only ever had one look in her
career: The scatty wench pimped by Tim Burton.
4. Wolverine, Maximus Decimus Meridius, and Catwoman all
feature, yet all they do is go on about their feelings through the medium of
song.
5. Speaking of which, Hugh Jackman ages horribly in the film,
what happened to his regeneration abilities?
6. Why do the revolutionaries all look like they’re in Mumford
and Sons?
7. Revolution looks fun!
8. Oh no it doesn’t.
9. I wonder if Chris Klein auditioned for the film.
10. Why do girls love it so much? It’s two and a half hours of
relentless depression. Valjean dying at the end isn’t sad. It’s like the dog
dying at the end of Marley and Me. He’s fucking old. Write some lyrics for
Schindler’s List and they’ll eat that shit up.
It’s that time of the year again when reactionary phrases like these break Twitter. Yes, Britain’s Got Talent is back and this year it has a rival! The Voice UK, or Don’t Look At My Ugly Face! As it’s more commonly known. Along with Take Me Out, Saturday nights have become a three hour long cavalcade of judging twats. No longer do you need to leave your house to experience the dickheads that England has to offer.
It starts with The Voice UK. At first The Voice seems to dissuade you from judging and laughing at its contestants. It’s all about the voice you see, not the HORRIBLE face. The judges - Tom Jones, Jessie J, Will.i.am, and that Irish guy from The Script - have their backs turned from the HIDEOUS faces and as a result they’re never able to hurl the same caustic insults as The X-Factor judges do: “You look like a prick, you dress like a prick and you sing like a prick”.
X-Factor fans may find this disappointing but they should embrace the positivity of The Voice, it’s not some freakish sideshow where we point and laugh at all the DISGUSTING people who can’t sing. Instead we applaud all the REPULSIVE people who can sing. You go girl! Or are you a man? 80 minutes of this is just depressing. There aren’t any bad contestants at all on The Voice, in fact the only ones who don’t go through are already famous or have a moderately interesting tale to tell. Watching 80 minutes of talented singers can leave your self esteem in tatters.
It’s alright though, because they’re SICKENING right? You can’t even look at their faces without wanting to gouge your eyes out. Well no. Most of them are good looking people, while no contestant could be considered downright fuck ugly. Sure that guy is fat and that woman has no hair but at least they haven’t got a foetus growing on the side of their head. Watch The Voice and you’ll feel like you’re the horrible, hideous, disgusting, repulsive, sickening excuse of a human being. There must be something wrong with these people!
And there is. They’re all cunts. The bald woman doesn’t have to be bald, she can wear a wig, Beyonce doesn‘t have real hair! The man who acted like quitting his job at Sainsburys was the biggest sacrifice ever made didn’t have to quit, book the day off you dickhead! The sixteen year old girl who dressed like a slutty crow didn’t have to dress like a slutty crow for a competition where the judges couldn‘t see her!
I started to enjoy The Voice when these idiots showed up but it’s not enough to save such a flawed and contrived show. It’s called The Voice but the judges spend as much time bemoaning how they would have said yes had they seen the contestant as they do finding as many cool ways to push the button. Try your elbow this time Jessie! The whole point of the show was to find the next Susan Boyle yet all they’ve found is a bunch of misshapen camp men.
Britain’s Got Talent is like a circus that comes into town once a year, bringing with it the nation’s biggest freaks and mentalists. The format has stayed the same since its conception and there’s no need to change it. BGT exists so we can point and laugh at the deluded and ugly. Most of us probably are deluded and ugly so it makes a welcome break to crying in the mirror.
It’s a shame that Britain has got some talent because BGT would be a far more entertaining show if it didn’t. If anything the talent gets in the way of the entertainment and it would bring in a much larger audience if it was called Britain’s Got Ugly. We don’t really care about the good auditions unless there’s some sort of odd quirk to them, like the two gay ballroom dancers who showed that ballroom dancing is literally gayer than gay sex.
The night ends with Take Me Out. Just as the world as we know it will. Any girl who thinks ITV is a suitable place to meet a man should have their ovaries confiscated. But that’s the point. To find 30 of the most undesirable women and try to pair them up with a massive cunt so we can all have a good judge and laugh about it. Look at her, she’s a slag. Ooo he’s full of himself. Her arms are too skinny. I bet he’s got Chlamydia. She’s orange. He’s gangly. She’s a bitch. He’s a bastard. I bet she’d suck off a tramp for a fiver. He’s definitely fucked his cousin.
After a terrifying horde of wildebeest stampede into the studio, one fearless wanker enters their pit. As he does his best to prove he’s a bigger prick than Paddy McGuiness (and inevitably fails) the “girls” show why we the audience are true judging connoisseurs. It took liking The Lord of the Rings for every girl to be disgusted by a man who looked like a 1930s paedophile. We’re judging him for looking like that, judging the girls for not judging him and judging Paddy McGuiness for being Paddy McGuiness.
Some people go to the cinema on a Saturday night. Some people go to a club, get drunk, and get herpes. Some people go dogging. But for most people Saturday night is all about judging the nation. Social networking has made the act into an actual event, in fact tweeting about these TV shows is more interactive than dogging. It may only be watching TV, but it’s more therapeutic than an Orwellian two minute hate.
“Gee Whiz! A free 30 day trial of Netflix! Boy I can stream just about any movie I want and for free!” - Me, upon signing up for Netflix’s 30 day trial. Or is it 31 days? That’s probably where they get you. The good ol’ days of going down to Blockbuster and picking up a shiny looking box, being told you can’t sign up because you need proof of your address, coming back later and finally taking home a less shiny looking box, are almost over.
Call me old fashioned but I kind of liked making the effort to go out to Blockbuster to have an argument. “I don’t want to watch that Julia Roberts shite you bitch!” She’d say to me. Of course I don’t actually go to Blockbuster, I’ve spent the last five years buying DVDs instead of renting them, and now I’ve got no room in my house because of all the fucking awful DVDs I’ve bought. Give an idiot money and he will buy shit. Today I have no money or room to buy any DVDs, so renting films seems like a great idea once again. Imagine watching a film and not thinking “I’ve spent 10 fucking quid on this” all the way through.
While you have to put on trousers and leave your house to go to Blockbuster, Netflix and Lovefilm don’t even require you to get out of bed. Surely a service as great as this will put Blockbuster out of business, “Hey Blockbuster! It turns out I CAN rent films in my pants!”. Sign me up Netflix 30 day (or 31 day) trial! Sign me up now!
The first striking thing about Netflix isn’t that you can watch any film you want at the click of a button, but that you can watch any film that you DON’T want to watch at the click of a button. Trying to find a film to watch on Netflix is like trying to find a nun who’ll have sex with you. When it’s free it’s difficult to feel aggrieved, but when they catch me out and I have to pay £5.99 next month I’m going to pretty pissed off. Save for a few TV shows there isn’t much on Netflix. There are some good films but if you haven’t already seen The Usual Suspects chances are someone has already told you who the fuck Keyser Soze is.
Navigating through their horrible interface is as painful as any simile you can think of involving a penis. Genres are either too broad or too specific, who is ever in the mood for a visually-striking violent film? According to Netflix, me. Netflix suggests films for you after you tick a few boxes and rate a few films. Filling in your taste preferences seems simple enough: How often do you watch the following genres? Then you have to do the same for moods. Moods! Romantic, feel-good, scary, cerebral. Cerebral? What is that? Do they mean Inception or The Man with Two Brains? They also have steamy down as a mood! Steamy! Is it Top Gun or Thomas the Tank Engine? The options I’m given to answer are ridiculous: never, sometimes, often. I’ve seen steamy films but sometimes is a bit of an overstatement, yet I can’t say I’ve never seen them. I’m just going to leave it blank until I’ve seen enough steamy films.
Netflix tells me that the more films I rate the better it knows me, and to an extent it delivers on its promise. Because most of the films in its library are terrible I’ve rated them as such, and Netflix successfully predicts that I won’t like them. It still suggests them to me though. “Hey Dave! You’ll probably think this film is shit but you should watch it anyway!”
As long as it’s free, Netflix is a joy to behold, but paying £5.99 a month every month to watch Jason Statham and Nicholas Cage films would be a waste of £5.99. You’ll feel inclined to make the most of what you’re paying for and end up watching all kinds of films you never thought you’d want to see. You’ve paid for it now, you might as well use it. You might not have to put pants on and go out, it might even be cheaper, but you’re not going to see the film you want to see. You’re going to see Drive Angry.
It’s a strange state of affairs when John Terry becomes an example of quantum physics. Just as Schrodinger’s cat is both alive and dead, John Terry is currently both innocent and guilty, the only difference being that John Terry hasn’t been locked inside a box…not yet anyway.
Last season the only trend of the footballing world was the snood, but since its ban from the game it’s been replaced by never ending sagas. We’ve had by the hour reports on the non-movements of Carlos Tevez - “yep, he’s still here” - the minute since he refused to play in September. Arsenal need a left back, Manchester United need a midfielder, Fernando Torres isn’t scoring, Andy Carroll isn’t scoring, Jack Wilshere is still broken, Joey Barton did a tweet, the referee is a wanker, Liverpool are racist, ‘Arry hasn’t paid his taxes, the same stories are being regurgitated in our faces every day, and now we know that the John Terry saga will not end before July.
Boyz n the Snood
Luis Suarez made his racist remarks only a week earlier than John Terry and was banned and fined in December, so why such a delay for Terry? The two incidents are very similar yet there is a huge contrast in results, is this purely because John Terry is English? Would he have already have been banned if there wasn’t an international tournament this summer? It would be cynical to suggest that the FA are protecting John Terry so he can play in Euro 2012 but what other reason would they have to delay the decision?
The build up to last week’s fixture between Queens Park Rangers and Chelsea focused solely on whether Anton Ferdinand would shake John Terry’s hand, and in the end the FA stopped everyone shaking hands. This week Chelsea play Manchester United and we were all poised for another dreary will they won’t they shake hands episode as John Terry was set to face Anton’s brother Rio, though an injury has forced him out. Had he played it would be reasonable to assume the FA would ban handshake formalities again, preventing Rio from making a statement had he chosen to do so. The phrase “help, help, I’m being repressed” comes to mind.
Is this going to be a common occurrence for the rest of the season? Are the FA going to ban any situation where John Terry could look like a dick? Or will they introduce situations in which he’ll look like a hero? Maybe they’ll buy him some Jay-Z albums and find him some best friends who are black. Maybe a team mate has a black wife he could have sex with. All possibilities the FA are considering.
The FA’s first act of protection came today in stripping John Terry, not of his clothes, but of his captaincy. It may only be an armband and the seat next to the driver on the team bus to you, but to some people the captaincy is a big deal, it’s an honour. Only after criticism from the media that John Terry could captain England to a trophy and then be found guilty of racial abuse did the FA deem any action necessary. “Punishing” John Terry now will placate the media and the public to an extent, alleviating some pressure and criticism from Terry. It’s not a punishment at all, it’s a tactic to make John look like a stand up guy, he’s done his penance, so we needn’t cry for it anymore.
Even so, it’s a temporary punishment at best, he’s not even been dropped from the team, he’s lost the captaincy once before so what’s stopping him from being reinstated in six months time? If England miraculously win Euro 2012 and he’s then found guilty will people care that he’s a racist? He’ll be a hero in some people’s eyes, he already is to Chelsea fans. Come the autumn we could have a tax dodging manager and a racist captain (not that the rest of the team are model citizens though), would this matter to anyone? Luis Suarez’s ban only spurred Liverpool fans to be racist themselves and boo Patrice Evra for not being anything other than overjoyed by Suarez’s comment; While Chelsea fans chanted “you know what you are” in reference to Anton Ferdinand earlier this season.
Whether John Terry is found innocent or guilty is somewhat irrelevant because there will be fans who will see him as nothing but an angel, they’ll do a “Liverpool” and adopt his attitudes, the stereotypical football fan is like that, irrational and illogical. They can’t see the truth, only an opposition to their opinion. Like it or not, footballers ARE role models and a single sentence has ignited a whole new wave of racism in football. It might not be believable, but it might be nice to see John Terry buying a Jay-Z album or sleeping with a team mate’s black wife.
I’ve become dependant on Wikipedia, it’s like information heroin, I can’t do anything without referring to it. As Wikipedia blacks out (that’s surely a racist term right?) today I’m sure to learn EXACTLY what Pete Doherty’s life is like. Is that the guy in that band? What were they called? Babysham?
I’ve already used Wikipedia a few times today, quickly looking things up on my phone, not important things but things that would slowly grate away at me over the course of the day until I started shouting at strangers, “WHAT WAS THAT THING CALLED? ARGH!”. If people are anything like me then the Mayans were right and the end of the world is happening today.
It started as a casual thing, you wanted to know something every now and again so you went on Wikipedia, it was no big deal, you were in control of it. Then time passed and before you knew it you couldn’t watch or listen to anything without knowing everything about everything and everyone. What was he in? I recognise him, I’ll look it up. Oh he was in it as well, but what was that other thing he was in? I’ll look it up. I remember that show, it had that girl in it, oh there she is, what’s she up to these days? Oh she’s in a thing with him, I wonder what everyone else in that show he was in are doing now. Oh, right, oooo, ahhh, IT GOES ON! AND ON AND ON! I CAN’T FUCKING STOP IT!
Only last week I read the entire history of the ice cream soda! Did you know that in Australia they call it a spider? I FUCKING DO! What am I supposed to do with that information? I don’t even like ice cream sodas. I just had some ice cream and a soda (Pepsi Max, though I do not agree with its pro-rape stance) and thought that people put them together and how that’s a bit weird so I looked it up. I just didn’t look it up, I “Wikipedied” it, I’ve started using it as a verb! Like those cunts who say “I’ll BBM you”. What is wrong with you people! Just say message or text, it’s quicker! “I’ll text you my BBM pin and then we can BBM”, FUCK OFF!
It’s not just ice cream sodas, one day I read about the history of Dr Pepper, I actually looked into what EVERY cast member of Lost was up to, for a previous post I needed (wanted) to know if hit 90’s TV series Woof! had an exclamation mark in its title and ended up reading everything about the show and its cast.
I’ll make it through the day, it might even be nice not having the compulsion to look up whether Pete Doherty is still alive. If I do have a query I could use Google and look for a trustworthy source, I haven’t trusted a single piece of information on Wikipedia, it might be comforting to know that what I know is actually true. I could go to the library and spend four hours searching through books and journals, and that would be fun, in a way.
What if this whole SOPA and PIPA thing goes through and Wikipedia does somehow get shut down? Isn’t ignorance bliss? You’re watching a film and your wife asks you “wasn’t he in that thing” and you can simply answer “I don’t know”. You don’t miss the next five or ten minutes of the film looking on Wikipedia (or IMDB because that got shut down as well), you get to enjoy the film. Or not, because her question infuriates you so much that you can’t concentrate on the film, what was he in? you think to yourself for the entire film, and when you say “I don’t know” she says “you fucking idiot! I’m leaving you!”. Six months later you’re banging on her door shouting “IT DOES HAVE AN EXCLAMATION MARK!”.
The January sale. It’s clearly the invention of the devil. All that shit you bought for your family is now half price and all that shit you didn’t buy for yourself because it was too expensive and too frivolous is now just cheap enough to warrant spending the money you put aside for your car tax. You buy it all! All of it! Stuff! You buy endless amounts of stuff, it’s like a licence to be financially irresponsible, and for an hour you’re happy with your purchases until the pile of metre long Jaffa cake boxes becomes a portrait of regret.
I resent the January sale because I know it’ll defeat me. Something will be reduced just enough to warrant a purchase, and then how will I pay my car tax? It’s Boxing day and I turn on my laptop, I’m looking at clothes, I’m looking at DVDs and mail order brides and I buy nothing. I’ve survived! I’ve beaten the sale! And then I have a thought: I’ve run out of that aftershave I like. I’ve lost.
After looking at aftershaves for a while I started to realise how many celebrity fragrances there are, everyone has one, even Ian fucking Beale! Well not him, but that’s a plot the writers at Eastenders can have. Celebrities don’t stand for much these days but a fragrance is an opportunity to show the world their identity and what’s inside their soul, or so they think. The celebrity fragrance consumer must be pretty overwhelmed by the market and as such I’ve compiled a comprehensive guide.
Katy Perry - Purr
“The fragrance is a rich eau de parfum which opens with a fresh citrus accord of peach nectar and forbidden apple to awaken the senses.” - I bet it smells like candyfloss and cum.
Kim Kardashian - Kim Kardashian
“A modern fragrance for the modern woman. A beautiful blend of feminine and sensual notes, the debut fragrance captures the many sides of Kim's personality and glamorous style.” - Yes, because the modern woman is famous for being rich and famous. The many sides of Kim’s personality? I’ve had shits with more personality than her.
Besotted
adj
1. infatuated: made confused through affection for or attraction to somebody
2. muddled: in a confused mental state, especially through having drunk too much alcohol
Definitely the second one. Just look at that picture, is that a besotted face? You could put a photo of Hitler on the box and it would look more besotted.
Peter Andre - Mysterious girl
She’s only mysterious Pete because you don’t ask her name before you fuck her. I don’t think I’d be comfortable going out with someone who wore this fragrance. “What’s that smell?” “Peter Andre” “WHAT? WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING WITH HIM?”
Tulisa - TFB
It sounds like some kind of infectious disease but TFB stands for The Female Boss, because every celebrity needs a brand to sell right? Women, are you all happy with Tulisa claiming authority over you? Is that ok? If you’re going to call in sick (you might have caught TFB) make sure you let her know.
Paris Hilton - Stupid spoilt whore
Who is this for? The packaging would suggest young girls but look how whorey she looks even in cartoon form, it looks like hentai (a word not recognised by Microsoft word). They’ve really captured that vacuous look though. Eloquently blends top notes of sick with the musk of a thousand dicks.
Jade Goody - Shh…
THIS IS JUST TASTELESS!
And that’s your expert guide to the world of celebrity fragrances.
It would be harsh to describe Misfits as ASBO X-Men (because that sounds fucking awful) but that’s pretty much Misfits in a nutshell, though imagine X-Men had a much smaller budget, no much much smaller, keep going, imagine the budget for the catering for X-Men, half it, half it again and that’s probably the budget for Misfits.
I was late to the Misfits party after initially dismissing it as Marvel Hollyoaks but after actually watching it I was thankful that it wasn’t nearly as traumatic as that description. For all its flaws (and there are many) Misfits is a surprisingly funny show, and guess what Phone Shop? It’s not even a comedy and it has more jokes than you! Much of said comedy has come from the depraved and amoral Nathan, whose dirty mind would make The Inbetweeners’ Jay shudder with fright and disgust, so much so that he’s the best thing about Misfits.
Or he was the best thing about Misfits. Upon hearing of his departure from the show every fan must have muttered “it’s not going to be as good as it used to be”, myself included, and now the third series has ended, it isn’t. The correlation shouldn’t imply causation however, yes Nathan has left, yes it’s not as good but there are other reasons for this, and Nathan’s replacement Rudy isn’t one of them. The writers must have been aware what the character of Nathan brought to the show as Rudy pretty much embodies the same degeneracy and delivers the same kind of dialogue. Either that or they based him, a sex crazed northerner, on Vernon Kay. As the series has progressed Rudy - much like Nathan - has quickly become one of the best things about Misfits.
So Misfits is still amusing but this series has been somewhat lackadaisical, without a direction the show has started to go round in circles retreading the same territory as the last two series. Surely there are only so many probation workers they can kill before it goes from tongue in cheek to absolutely ridiculous? The premise of the show, some naughty kids have powers, seems to have gone to the wayside and is more of an afterthought.
The powers have always been fairly low key, nothing that would result in expensive special effects, but they have been massively downgraded in series three from relatively heroic abilities to more pointless and humorous ones. It might be funny to juxtapose the “chav” stereotype with the ability of a rocket scientist for a scene but there’s not much you can do with it afterwards. Curtis’ ability to change into a woman produced an entertaining Woof! style episode accurately answering the question “what would men do if they had a vagina?” but again there is only so much you can do with it.
This has been a common problem with Misfits with the protagonists’ low key abilities offering little in the way of character development. How long could they really go on for with Alisha’s ability to be susceptible to rape? The introduction of Seth - the man with the ability to change abilities - has to an extent allowed Misfits to remain fresh and full of ideas though the bell end with the dragon neck tattoo is as dull as February. He was initially very mysterious and powerful looking sat in his weird office like he owned a club in Eastenders but as soon as we saw him sat in the world’s shittest bar he just looked a bit pathetic, and boring.
Despite these niggles I’ve still enjoyed Misfits, with the exception of one episode in particular. Doctor Who had a go at killing Hitler this year (and quite frankly a shit attempt) so why couldn’t Misfits have a go as well? When an attempt to kill what looks like Ricky Gervais dressed as Hitler goes wrong, the Nazis are left with a mobile phone and the subsequent advances in technology lead to the modern day misfits living in a Nazi nightmare. An intriguing and ambitious concept is turned into a series of events that just don’t make sense. Respect the space time continuum! Why is that dude back from the dead but no one else is? Why are they still doing community service? Why does that Nazi officer keep switching between German and Irish accents? The whole thing left me confused.
This series may have given the impression that it was wandering aimlessly without a “BIG PLOT!” but just as the final episode looked to be finishing it broke away from its “fit more sex scenes in than an episode of True Blood” record attempt to tie up that whole time travel thing I forgot about. The show had been begging for a direction but it’s only when drama is introduced into Misfits that it feels a bit silly. Zombie cats and gender swaps strangely go together but throwing in any serious drama feels out of place, just as a cancer scare would in The Mighty Boosh. Seeing death after death with no consequences has desensitised the whole thing, we can’t have an emotional response to a death of a main character because like every other death, it’s just another grave to dig, and another murder to get away with (is there such thing as the police in this show?).
Maybe I expect too much - I have my cake and I’m bloody well going to eat it, all of it, I like cake - but Misfits has bent reality and it can’t…unbend it. How are we supposed to believe that these characters who have been caught by the cops for minor offences can evade the five-o for a string of murders that they have all been connected to? I can believe the powers thing, that’s fine but this? no no no, this is shit, and is the whole world contained in a community centre and a bar?
We’ve been given three good series of Misfits but its future is looking bleak. With another two cast members leaving and a rapidly dwindling stock of low budget super powers it surely won’t be long before Misfits’ plug is pulled. Let’s just hope series four doesn’t turn out to be Marvel Hollyoaks.
What’s better than a good old fashioned American horror story? If you’re me, just about everything. Horror isn’t a genre I dabble in all too often, I don’t want to spend ninety odd minutes watching unpleasant things in a wilful attempt to be scared, it’s irrational. I live by myself, I’m scared enough as it is, it only takes the fridge to spontaneously come to life at 1am to get me going.
Despite this I still felt compelled to watch American Horror Story which seems to have garnered quite a reputation for itself judging by the internet and my twitter feed. Hey, I could like it, I didn’t think I’d like guacamole and I did. So with this newfound optimism I set out to watch the pilot episode of American Horror Story.
The first thing that became apparent about American Horror Story was that it was created by the folks who gave us Glee, which should have been enough to turn it off there and then, but persevered I did. It doesn’t take long to realise that you’re basically watching The Amityville Horror in a serial format, it’s a haunted house where weird stuff happens and some idiots move in because they’re idiots.
Idiots are a hallmark of the horror genre but this is a series, we’re going to have to live with these dickheads for a long time, at least make one of them likeable. I think they want us to like the daughter what with her “brash and quirky” dialogue but I can’t like any girl who wears a trilby. The husband cheated on his wife and instead of getting a divorce they move into a creepy looking house where she spends all of her time hating him. We know he’s a bad guy for cheating and that she’s even more of a dick for staying with him and stating that she doesn’t let her family drink out of plastic bottles.
It feels as if the idiocy of this protagonist family is quite tongue in cheek and they’re supposed to be dicks but it could also be that they’re just accidentally that way, it’s impossible to tell. As a drama American Horror Story is boring, the family are going through some incredibly mundane problems and are incredibly mundane themselves, so the show is reliant on the horror side of things to be interesting.
The house does indeed look very creepy which only further amplifies the family’s stupidity because who would move into that house, let alone let the defining factor be the knowledge that the last owners were murdered? But hey, that’s horror for you. There are many moments intent on frightening you throughout this pilot episode but it feels somewhat like a ghost train, plenty of frights but without any narrative or context, and by the end of the credits I was still not sure what the show was about.
Having been made by the creators of Glee there are inevitably a few parallels between the two shows. American Horror Story could be considered as the anti-Glee - for every sparkly smile and song in Glee there’s a weird and ghastly fright in American Horror Story - if it wasn’t so much like Glee. The biggest flaw of Glee is its insistence on cramming as many musical numbers as possible without any regard for context and the same can be said for American Horror Story’s “weird bits“. There’s no reason for finding a gimp suit in the house just as there’s no reason to break out into song every five minutes.
American Horror Story might be saturated with mystery and weirdness but it comes in such regular and expected beats that it’s rarely shocking or exciting. It’s greatly disjointed and incongruous while its characters are tedious and two dimensional. It’s unclear whether American Horror Story is supposed to be a parody on the horror genre or just camp twisted razzle dazzle. For a true American horror story you’re better off watching the Kardashians.
I’ve made a pact to myself to tidy this room by the end of the day. I didn’t do anything yesterday and if I’m not productive today then I’ll go to bed smelling of shame and guilt, and I don’t want that, it’ll manifest into a strange dream where I’m attacked by the mess that I didn’t clean up. So I really have to do something. There are several CD’s stacked on a desk, many are missing their cases and don’t even match the empty cases next to them, and as I spend the next half hour dusting the once shiny discs and putting them away I realise something, most of the CD’s I own are shit.
When I was sixteen I owned about five albums, South Park: Chef Aid being one of them. At twenty four I have over 8000 songs on my hard drive and I cannot like more than a thousand of them. The South Park album isn’t even on there, nor are several other albums I regrettably own. Not so long ago I tried to make a CD of all my favourite songs, songs that I love, songs that I never get bored of, songs that get better with every listen, and I couldn’t fill the 120 minute CD, not even close. Out of 8000 songs I own there were only eight that met my criteria. If I press the shuffle button on iTunes there’s a 0.1% chance that I’m going to love the song that comes on. I don’t like those odds.
Since my ipod broke I put some music on my iPhone (last time I mention an Apple product), I couldn’t put my entire collection on it, so I put 300 songs I knew I liked onto it. This didn’t cure my obsessive shuffling disorder though. Despite having only 300 songs which I knew I liked, I still shuffled through most of them because apparently I didn’t like them as much as I thought I did.
The problem is that my collection of over 8000 songs mostly reflects my adolescence and early adulthood when I thought music was supposed to be loud and brash or Snow Patrol. Half of my collection must consist of pop punk and hip hop, and I don’t really like pop punk or hip hop these days. It would be embarrassing to admit that I own three All-American Rejects albums, and if I listen to any of them I can only think of how embarrassing it would be if people found out. “HA HA HA, you’re listening to shit that girls listen to, what next? Avril Lavigne? HA HA HA”.
So even if I like a song it comes with baggage, heavy embarrassing baggage. You might say that you shouldn’t be embarrassed, that it’s your right to listen to anything you want, but to that I say to you that you don’t own two Limp Biscuit albums, you don’t know what it’s like to own two Limp Biscuit albums. To have Fred Durst shout at you all of his vacuous lyrics like “fuck you” and “fuck this”, and not just listen to him but to be fine with it all. I didn’t care, and I carry that around with me, like a cross on my shoulder. Two fucking Limp Biscuit albums. I have two 50 Cent albums, you don’t know what it’s like to own two 50 Cent albums. To have “Fiddy” shout at you all of his vacuous lyrics like “fuck you” and “fuck this”, and not just listen to him but to be fine with it all. I didn’t care, and I carry that around with me, like a cross on my shoulder. You don’t know what it’s like to own two Pitbull albums…and neither do I.
I look back and what was I thinking? Why did I buy this album and how did I ever think this was good? So what happens to the music that I didn’t buy? The music that I already dislike? What will come of Pitbull, Coldplay, and Cheryl Cole? Are they going to get worse with age? Or is this what good music sounds like? Maybe I’m doing this whole music thing wrong, after all I have a success rate of 0.1%, maybe the likes of Pitbull, Coldplay, and Cheryl Cole are brilliant, and I’ve been blinded to the fact by my seething hatred.
Obviously they’re not brilliant, but I can’t prove it. There is no way to criticise music, it’s impossible. Pitbull is an abomination, dressed like a high class rapist in his white suit and sunglasses, like a Puerto Rican Jay Gatsby, rhyming “picture that with a Kodak” with “take a picture of me with a Kodak” (THIS IS NOT HOW RHYMING FUCKING WORKS!), and he’s only ever in a club or on a boat. Pitbull is a moron for morons. And you Sean Paul. I think Pitbull is worse than Sean Paul but I’m not sure, how can you tell? What’s worse? Horseshit or cowshit? I have nightmares that they’ll combine like Station in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and they’ll become the all powerful PitPaul.
I can’t prove that Pitbull’s music is bad though, to say so is essentially calling anyone who’s bought it an idiot, and I’m just not like that. All I can do is find people who share my opinion and get them to sign a petition. But they probably like Coldplay, or worse, metal. We might not be able to objectively critique an artist’s music, but what about their actions? I’m sure we can all agree that people like Chris Brown and Chris Brown sympathiser Dappy are complete cunts. We can’t stop them making music but perhaps we can put a warning sticker on front of the album, “WARNING: ARTIST IS A CUNT”.
I hear that music is supposed to bring people together, and it does in an all too literal sense, but all it really does is cause arguments. Yeah you might connect with someone because you like the same band, but it won’t end well. Yeah, you both like…Franz Ferdinand(?), and you’re talking and having fun and sharing memories of how you went to see them and you really wanted to hear that song and they went off stage and you were disappointed that they didn’t play it and suddenly they came back on and they played it and it was the best night of your life until you saw them again where the exact same thing happened, and then they say, “but they’re not as good as The Kooks”. You hate The Kooks, you’re fucking livid, how can this person like The Kooks? That naïve song is fucking shit, I don’t want to talk to this person! And meanwhile they’re thinking how can this person not like The Kooks? That naïve song is fucking brilliant, I don’t want to talk to this person! And not only do you not want to talk to each other, you resent each other.
I’ve had people call my favourite bands “shit” and I’ve taken it personally. I don’t think it’s irrational, if you introduced me to you partner and I came out with “Him? He’s shit!” you’d be offended, and it’s the same with anything, if someone insults something you like, you’re going to be somewhat hurt, and if everyone knows this then they know that when they call your favourite band shit, they’re going to offend you. Music does bring us together, but to fight and squabble about it.
As I’ve grown up I’ve acquired this bitter outlook on pretty much everything and it’s probably why I have so much disdain for my 8000 songs. I don’t share the same fervour for pop punk as my younger self, I can’t go on living with a soundtrack that’s come straight out of a Tony Hawk game. I can’t even play Tony Hawk games anymore. I haven’t played a skate game since one asked me to knock over a security guard and I just felt sorry for him, I was an obnoxious jobless dick on wheels and he was trying to feed his family.
I’ve been in denial for too long, I’ve tried to convince myself that I like every one of these 8000 songs and that they deserve to stay on my hard drive, but they don’t serve any purpose (like Pitbull), they need to go because they’ve destroyed my faith in music (like Pitbull). I’ve become disillusioned, I thought I loved music, but it turns out that I hate it*.
If you’ve stumbled upon any games website this week you’d be forgiven for thinking that Grand Theft Auto V is the only game in existence, all other games have been taken round the back and shot. Not only is GTA V not out yet, it hasn’t even got a release date, but what it has got is a whole load of pandemonium over a trailer.
A trailer? People love trailers these days, they can’t get enough of them, more excitement is generated over a trailer than the final product it’s promoting. Perhaps people are too busy to watch a film or play a game and watching a trailer is not only a viable substitute but a more preferable one, who wants to sit down and watch a film for two hours anyway? A trailer can be anything from twenty seconds to four minutes and that’s enough time to formulate some deep opinions without stopping what you’re doing (masturbating probably).
Film trailers are undoubtedly useful, if a trailer can bore you in sixty seconds then chances are you’re not going to want to see the film. You are able to produce a list of suitable reasons to why it‘s not for you, I don‘t like the actors, the plot is ludicrous, the “jokes” aren’t funny, Robert Pattinson is in it.
Game trailers however are far from useful, in recent times we’ve seen totally distorted depictions of games in their trailers, promising something that can never be delivered. Far more interested in achieving a cinematic appeal, very little of the game is shown, we’re treated to a pretty looking sequence which while impressive tells us nothing about the game. We can’t make any judgements like we can with a film trailer because we haven’t seen what the game really looks like.
So why all the hysteria over GTA V? It may have revealed a few details about the game (none of them revelatory), but it hasn’t showed what playing the game will be like. It’s admittedly quite exciting to see glimpses of the city but is this really enough to warrant multiple articles on one website? Have we been shown enough to be able to concoct accurate judgements? Looking at the comments section of said articles, apparently so. If we are to take these comments as gospel then GTA V will either be TOTALLY GNARLY! Or a sleight against god and all humanity.
It’s fine to speculate (in moderation) what GTA V might be like but to make such dogmatic judgements after seeing just over a minute of footage is moronic, as is criticising the trailer. Apparently looking at a screen for a minute is too much for some people as one commenter shared his anger of having to watch an advert before watching the trailer, seemingly failing to see the irony behind his stupidity. If you can’t spend a minute of your time keeping your eyes open then how are you supposed to play the damn game? Do you have a tantrum whenever you come across a loading screen? Do you throw the controller whenever there’s some more reading to do in Final Fantasy? What happened when he sat through the credits of Iron Man? “I WAITED TEN MINUTES FOR THAT? ARGH!”.
…Anyway, GTA V isn’t out for a long time, let’s just be content that we know where it’s set and PATIENTLY wait for Rockstar to reveal more details or, and I’m just putting this out there, just wait until the game is released. While you wait, read the #grandtheftautomemories hash tag on twitter and be thankful you’re not one of those people.
