Batshit

I’ve always liked Batman, my affinity for the Dark Knight is probably similar to how Christians feel about Jesus, he’s A-OK. But doesn’t everyone like Batman? The success of his last cinema outing suggests that his appeal is universal, much like birthday cake and trying on someone’s glasses. Not everyone will have a Batman section on their bookshelf but most people will have seen The Dark Knight and concede that “yeah it was alright”. Most Batgeeks however can’t get enough of Batman and will currently be going Batshit over Batman: Arkham City, myself included.

Two years ago Batman: Arkham Asylum was released on those consoles that turn kids into murdering rapists and not many games have bettered it. If I was writing this blog two years ago I would have definitely written about Arkham Asylum and it would have probably read like this:

“I’ve cum in my pants!”

Arkham Asylum is one of those rare moments of gaming perfection, like Donkey Kong Country or Ico. Set over the course of one night in Arkham Asylum, as Batman you must beat the shit out of the Joker and pretty much anything else that moves. It captured the tone of the comics perfectly and the gameplay was pretty much flawless. It had moments that surprised and shocked you and that just doesn’t happen enough in games.

So it’s been two years I’ve been waiting to play its sequel Arkham City, was it worth the wait? The short answer is yes. The set up is typically textbook comic book, Arkham Asylum has been relocated to a vast section of Gotham City (think District 13, that brilliant French parkour film), shit is going down, and it’s up to Batman to stop it.

As it’s Batman the storyline and scripting is vital to the game’s success, and to an extent it works very well. There are countless twists and turns that drive the story forward and while some are predictable they will at least make you want to play on. The dialogue is what really makes the game come to life, as you glide over Arkham City you can hear its inmates’ conversations, often discussing the events of the game. The Joker (expertly voiced by Mark Hamill) has some excellent dialogue which will have you genuinely laughing out loud (or LOLing as the kids say), while characters such as Catwoman are somewhat cringe worthy in their crusade on breaking the world record of puns per minute.

While the mechanics of the game have been refined and work even better than its predecessor, there is something about Arkham City which isn’t quite right. Unlike Arkham Asylum there is a strong emphasis on freedom, if you don’t want to continue the story you can glide about the city and complete some side missions. Oh, it’s a bit Grand Theft Autoy, or Assassin’s Creedy then? Well sort of. The side missions aren’t much of a challenge and only take as long as they do because the objectives are quite well hidden, and when you realise you’ve just been aimlessly searching for a corpse for ten minutes it’s not really that much fun.

The freedom aspect of the game is something of a lie however, you are in a prison after all. As open worlds go, Arkham City isn’t much of a city. Of course it’s supposed to look run down and shit, but there’s nothing really interesting to look at. There are a few fairly large interior locations (and it feels like you’ll spend most of your time in these) but the city looks much bigger than it actually is. What makes things worse is there’s a big chunk of the map you can’t access.

Contrast this with the last two Assassin’s Creed games and you may feel somewhat short changed. What would you prefer to jump around in, a beautifully recreated renaissance Rome or a dank squalid slum? Unlike Assassin’s Creed, Arkham City wasn’t limited by history, it was free to create any kind of interesting city, instead it made a boring one, and you run out of things to do in it very quickly.

Arkham City is like a Crème Egg, amazing but disappointingly short lived. The few hours you play the game for may be cosmic (I‘m bringing it back), but they will only be a few. Games like Call of Duty and Battlefield can get away with this because of their multiplayer content but what does Arkham City have to offer? There are some moments in which you can play as Catwoman. Well there are four and they’ll take you less than an hour to complete. There are the aforementioned side missions but these also take relatively little time to complete. There are challenge maps but their longevity is dependant on your level of OCD. So too are the 400 Riddler trophies to collect, either little green question marks scattered across the map or various challenges, however there seems to be little or no reward in doing so.

This brings me to my next qualm with Arkham City. I’ve grown up playing games in which you unlock content by playing the damn thing, though in the case of Arkham City and many other games you can only unlock content by purchasing it. Some content can only be obtained by purchasing the game at a specific shop, or even by purchasing a different product altogether (by buying the Green Lantern blu-ray you can play as a special Lantern Batman or something). For most content you have to purchase it online, and in the case of Arkham City, this content is superficial, largely consisting of different costumes for Batman.

This should be available to the poor soul who spent £40 on the game, especially when there is very little content in the first place. Collecting the 400 Riddler trophies would be a very long and very boring exercise and the player should be rewarded for their efforts, and not in the form of concept art. Why do I have to pay to dress up in a different costume when other games give me the privilege for free? It’s not going to radically change your gaming experience by wearing a different cape but it’s incredibly cynical to charge you for it.

This cynicism taints Arkham City. It has a great main story, but as a complete package it’s pretty awful. It has a mode called new game plus and this sums up everything wrong with Arkham City. In any other game, new game plus would be known as “playing the game again”, but Arkham City has put fucking bells on it, as if in an attempt to convince us that it’s not as threadbare as it actually is. It’s not that the game is short, it’s the lazy attempt to cover up the fact that makes Arkham City disappointing. The developers are laughing, and we’re left wanting justice, sound familiar?

Terrable: A Tale of Dickheads and Dinosaurs

Before I even watched Terra Nova I thought of the title I would use for this post: Terrable. Not that I’m a pessimist. No, if I liked it I would have used Terrabrill, which is the better title. I wanted to like Terra Nova purely because of this, I’ll be proud of that title all week, like that time I came up with the best pun ever (you had to be there/I’m still smug about it) a few weeks ago.

You can see by the actual title that this is anything but Terrabrill. At first Terra Nova seems a bit confusing, there is so much clunky exposition during the first hour of the pilot that it’s pretty hard to follow. That is until you realise you’ve already seen it. At its simplest, it’s Stargate meets Jurassic Park, but it’s so much more than that. There’s echoes of Avatar what with the jungle and weird creatures, and they even have the crazy colonel from Avatar playing a crazy colonel. There’s a forbidden zone just like in Planet of the Apes, there are some strange hieroglyphics on some rocks just like in Smallville, there are “others” just like in Lost, there’s even a weird midget guy just like in Twin Peaks. Well not the midget…yet. There is hardly anything original about Terra Nova, you’ve seen everything already so what’s the point of it?

A spork is just two pre-existing things mashed together and that works fine so why can’t you mash several films and TV shows together? Well you can, and they have, but much like the spork it’s not a revelation. A spork doesn’t function better than a spoon or fork, and Terra Nova isn’t better than Stargate or Jurassic Park, it’s not even better than Avatar.

*This may be a good time to explain the premise of Terra Nova. It’s the future (2149), Earth is overly populated but luckily a rift in time and space enable the people to start a colony in the Cretaceous age where there are dinosaurs and shit.*

Its formula may be readymade for success - the money thrown at it means it probably will be a hit - but there’s something inherently shit about it. It looks nice and all but so did Avatar, and what’s a beautiful setting if it’s populated with dickheads? And boy are there some dickheads. We’re introduced to a family who have broken the law by having three children (in 2149 you are only allowed two) and their reason for having three children? We just felt like it really. We just felt like breaking the law for shits and giggles. Just so we’re even more sympathetic towards these rebels the dad punches a policeman and goes to prison. Oh the injustice. He then precedes to break out of prison and smuggle himself into Terra Nova with his family.

So they’re a flippantly lawless family but they’re not annoying, boring but not annoying. Well maybe the teenage son is annoying. Maybe he is like Tom Cruise’s son in War of the Worlds, fucking annoying. Carrying around a hatred for his dad like it’s nobody’s business. “Oh I hate you and it’s all your fault I turned out to be a total prick” and all that bollocks. It’s understandable because he left a girlfriend behind in 2149, and he wuvs her. It would be understandable if he wasn’t cavorting with some other broad a mere twenty minutes later.

I could probably live with this, so what if the characters aren’t interesting and one of them is irritating? If the concept is good then I’m in, I fell in love with Lost before I even noticed how dreamy Sawyer was. Terra Nova could have been brilliant, unoriginal, but brilliant all the same. It’s easy to think that Lost was bad because of the ending, but it was truly great at patiently giving you details and keeping you intrigued. Aversely Terra Nova sets out to explain everything as quickly as possible, and badly. To tell us what Terra Nova is, the sister of the family (didn’t catch her name) tells her annoying brother what it is, because he seems to be more clueless than us. She might as well have looked straight into the camera during her expository speech. She even told us about how it’s a parallel timeline and therefore we needn’t worry about the butterfly effect. She was very clear on that.

We’re given too much information too soon and with this there is no mystery or intrigue. The family are told they cannot leave the confines of the colony, ooo what’s out there? I’m interested, but ten minutes later we find out exactly what’s out there. The forbidden zone is no longer a mystery, it’s just Jurassic Park and shit. We learn that there are others out there, but we immediately learn who they are and how they came to be. Lost was able to keep their “others” shrouded in mystery for almost three seasons giving us little details here and there, Terra Nova managed about thirty minutes.

There might be more revelations to come but they have shown us too much too soon, Jack Bauer wouldn’t catch the terrorist in the first hour and then relax for the next twenty three. There’s not much you can do with dickheads and dinosaurs and you have to think that the show will only get more and more ludicrous as they run out of ideas. Why dinosaurs anyway? Are we that impressed with them? I wanted to like Terra Nova, I wanted it to be Terrabrill, but it’s Terrashit.

Hate-Factor

It’s perhaps a little clichéd of myself to come out and say I despise the X-Factor, but hey what, of course I do, and I despise it more than I did last year. The reason for this is because I didn’t watch it last year, but like a serpent handing out free apples it was too hard to resist and I just had to watch it to see what’s going to happen to my country.

Every year it’s always the same, that’s what I’ve always said, but surprisingly this year it has evolved. No, not the new judges, they’re exactly the same as the last, but the contestants are different. We’ve had gimmicks in the past but with the ever increasing popularity of Twitter we now have trends, and that’s what the contestants are this year, sixteen trends. It doesn’t matter if they can’t sing, we just want to talk about them.

Take Essex girls 2 Shoes for example, or as I like to call them, Two Shoes, or Matt Lucas and David Walliams in drag. Everything about these girls is fucking awful, but they’re from Essex, and even as Tulisa spelled out for us all, Essex is very “current” right now. Yes, because TOWIE has become inexplicably popular so to has anyone from Essex. The stereotype is that everyone from Essex is a horrible human being, they’re stupid, they’re orange, they’re self obsessed, and watching them makes us feel good about ourselves, but it also aggrandises the act of being from Essex. If these were two stupid orange girls from Wiltshire we wouldn’t give a fuck, but because Essex is “current” we do give a fuck. Say something Essex! “This is so emosh” HAHAHA, do something Essex! “I’m so happy being pregs” HAHAHA, she’s pregnant, typical Essex. They’re singing a cheesy song in a pink car, and she’s smeared lipstick all over her face and she looks like one of the Joker’s henchmen, HAHAHA, typical Essex.

Apart from talking about people from Essex, we like to talk about people who are just total wankers, and that’s what Frankie “The Virgin” Cuntcozza is to his parents. For everyone else, he’s worse. I admire the X-Factor producers for their meticulous research and ability to find the smallest thing and fucking run with it. For Frankie they found out (without too much trouble I imagine) that he has some girl’s names tattooed on his arse. That’s dynamite! Let’s run with that, we’ll portray him as a lothario and girls will love him. Why? Why would they love him? He’s a prick who’s admitted he’s only in the competition to fuck girls, he’s going to use his fame to take advantage on vulnerable girls with low self esteem. He should be put on the register, but girls do apparently love him, shouting such inanity as “why r u so fit?” (that’s how she’d spell it). People who brag about having sex are the people who don’t have sex, and it won’t be a surprise that his sob story will be all about how he’s a virgin. For now, he’s just a cunt.

Cuntcozza will only cater for a relatively small hatred demographic, so they needed someone we can all hate and that’s why they’ve put the mentalist Kitty through. Anyone with the name Kitty who is not an actual cat is likely to be a mentalist. That’s the clue and the producers probably looked out for the name on applications. Ah Kitty! Get her in here right now! And fortunately for the producers, she is a mentalist and could potentially be the most hated contestant in the show’s history. Twitter went livid when she got through to the final sixteen, but they should be happy, they get to talk in anger about her for the next twelve weeks. People will vote for her just so they can carry on hating her.

At least Kitty sings though, the majority of this year’s contestants are intent on rapping their way through the “competition“, because Cher Lloyd was a hit wasn’t she? Urban music has become the most popular music so it kind of makes sense that the contestants are rapping, but really it doesn’t. They’re not saying anything political or profound, there is no wisdom or nous emanating from their mouths, they are just saying things, or just as Rhythmix (or shitmix) did this weekend, they’re just copying what someone else said. The talent is in what you say, not how you say it, covering someone else’s bars (I’m streets ahead) is redundant. Reciting Wordsworth does not make me a poet, reciting Niki Minaj does not make me a rapper.

The next twelve weeks are superfluous though because they’ve already found their winner. She can sing, she makes up her own raps, her surname is a single letter, yes, Misha B looks like she’s already won. They give her the most popular song of the year, they give her the most extravagant outfit, they give her the most dancers, and they even sit her in a fucking throne. They want you to vote for Misha B and they’ll manipulate you into it. There is no free will in The X-Factor and that’s why I hate it, it’s a totalitarian nightmare. If we don’t vote for Misha B then they’re going to put another contestant on a pedestal (literally) and manipulate us into voting for them. The only way out of this Orwellian torment is altruism, we all stop watching it and then they’ll just have to stop. But then what would we talk about?

Still Who

Back in May I started writing about Doctor Who, because after all, I’m a geek with a blog and that’s what we people do (it’s not like we’re going to go clubbing). Due to a reoccurrence of acute laziness I never finished the blog, I added to it in June, and then again in August and September but I never managed to write the final paragraph. It was a good blog too (probably), look, here is an example:

“The Doctor should be travelling to weird and wonderful locations, instead he’s doing a tour of dark and dingy corridors.”

Ok, so it wasn’t that good, and that’s partly why I’ve started from scratch, the other reason is that now the series has ended I can finally gain some perspective on the whole confusing thing.

Doctor Who has always been for kids, it’s why I avoided it for so long, I thought it was silly (unlike Star Wars) and therefore not worth my time. I only watched Matt Smith’s inaugural episode last year with the intention to write a blog about how silly it was. Instead I ended up loving it because while Doctor Who is primarily for kids, it’s really for adults as well, or at least nerdy ones. It’s definitely silly - no nerd can deny that - but it’s knowingly silly and that gives it a loveable charm that even I can appreciate. Yes, I appreciate things.

For whatever reason the latest series has been a little more adult than previous ones, I don’t mean in a dirty “I’m going to sonic screw you” kind of way, but more in a “the new Harry Potter book is a lot darker than the last” kind of way. With its new super serious and seriously dark tone it lost its silly charm. No longer was it just a silly space adventure, it was sci-fi, with overarching plots, twists and reveals.

The writers’ ambition is admirable but I kind of liked not having to concentrate too hard. There was time travel and aliens and shit but I didn’t have to think too much where with this series I had to pay attention, I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the first two episodes and after watching the final episode I still don’t really know what was going on.

The whole series was structured around a seemingly inevitable death of the Doctor and the mysteries of River Song and the Silence, who were always going to be intrinsically linked to the Doctor’s inevitable death. Of course it’s hardly a spoiler if I tell you that the Doctor inevitably didn’t die and in hindsight this makes the whole 13 episode series seem kind of pointless. If we’re told he is definitely going to die and then he doesn’t, then what was the point of the whole hoopla about his death?

The series was intriguing and mysterious but only because we were constantly told it was. It had that Lost-esque answer a question with another question thing going on but with questions that we were never asking. I didn’t really care about who River Song or the Silence was because in Doctor Who everything is just an alien. There’s vampires in Venice, oh wait, they’re aliens. It’s James Corden, oh wait, he’s an alien (probably).

There was so much emphasis placed upon the big plot that the whole series suffered as a result. In the past the tone of each episode has usually been quite unpredictable, you never know what kind of episode you’re going to get, but with this series it’s been the same dark tone for every episode. Quoting version one of this post, it did seem like the Doctor was doing a tour of dark and dingy corridors. No matter where he was in time and space, he was usually down a dark corridor.

For me the low point of the series was the “Let’s Kill Hitler” episode. LET’S KILL HITLER! Fuck yeah! Now that’s a title, they’re gonna get Hitler and F him in the A. No, no, no. We didn’t get any of that. Rory, or Scrappy Doo as he should be known, gently punches Hitler in the first few minutes, and that’s the last we see of the Fuhrer. After that there’s a few plot twists while the characters try and evade the evil clutches of the miniature space police. Let’s kill Hitler? Should have called it “Let’s softly punch Hitler in the face, run away and get embroiled with the mini space police for 40 fucking minutes”.

Bad episodes aren't anything new in Doctor Who, in fact I’ve geekily calculated that 1 in 5 episodes are either bad or downright awful. For every “Blink” is a pavement with a face that gives blowjobs (not even making that one up). There weren’t many truly bad episodes this series however, there just weren’t many good ones. They were too dark and too complicated, and any jokes or moments of silliness felt somewhat inappropriate amongst all the seriousness, why was Rory dressed as Roman when his wife was in danger? Surely the time spent finding and putting on a costume could have been better spent? Fortunately the series’ conclusion suggests that the show will be going back to basics next year, without anyone chasing the Doctor he should have time to feature in some good episodes. Let’s just hope there are no more pavements with faces that give blowjobs (seriously, it happened).

Trailer Trash 2

Earlier in June I wrote about how I saw some of those trailers people like to watch and how I didn’t like them. It turns out that they’ve made more of them and naturally I watched them and didn’t like them.

The Three Musketeers

If 1993’s adaptation of The Three Musketeers told us anything it was that Americans don’t make good Musketeers, which is perhaps why they are all British in 2011’s adaptation. All except for D’Artagnan who is a stupid pissy whiny American. It’s bad that a film set in France is largely made up of British accents, but the fact that the main protagonist not only has an American accent, but an irritating one, is unforgivable. I could get over Leonardo DiCaprio’s “French” accent in The Man in the Iron Mask, I’m not that much of a pedant to let an accent ruin a film for me, but this one is just ridiculous.

Even if the stupid pissy whiny accent didn’t irritate me it looks like the rest of the film would. It’s as if Pirates of the Caribbean crash landed in 17th century Paris, even Orlando shitting Bloom is in it, presumably playing a camp pirate, as is everyone else apparently. Everything looks textbook Pirates from the mild peril to the woeful dialogue to the wooden acting.

Even if the stupid pissy whiny accents, mild peril, woeful dialogue and wooden acting didn’t irritate me the historical inaccuracies would. It’s the 17th fucking century! Why are there airships? That didn’t happen did it? I’d remember reading something like fucking airships. Its Wikipedia page claims it’s a steam punk influenced reinterpretation of the novel. No! If you want to make a steam punk film make a fucking steam punk film, don’t mash it up with a classic novel. And why do the Musketeers only ever use swords? Oh wait, it’s in 3D? I’m on board!

Abduction

“Sometimes I feel different” says Taylor Lautner, riding into school on a motorbike, with sunglasses on and no helmet. Seriously, we’re supposed to relate to this guy? He has every Apple product ever made for fucks sake! What’s this fancy facey program? It’s bullshit! Where is he getting all this expensive shit? Oh, here’s where I keep my spare BMW and this is where I keep my endless supply of leather jackets. And why is there a kiss scene? People are trying to kill him! There’s no time for kissing, the train is about to blow up!

Of course it looks awful but it’s still going to be successful as Twilight fans will kill to see one of the men they‘re in love with. And that’s all what Twilight and Abduction is about, lusting over a man. Lautner could sit in a box for 90 minutes and they’d still pay to see it. This tweenage lust for Lautner has propelled him further than his talent deserves and he’s suddenly found himself as the lead in Jason Bourne Junior. Abduction looks as if it should be a comedy akin to Mr and Mrs Smith, but what’s laughable is that Taylor Lautner is probably the new go to action guy for Hollywood, no doubt along with that D’Artagnan prick.

Battleship

I decided to include this before the trailer even started. Never judge a book by its cover. Never judge a film by its premise, unless that premise is based on the game Battleship. Having now seen the trailer to Battleship, Abduction is looking pretty good right now. I remember playing Battleship as a kid and my favourite thing about it was the bit where you wanted to marry a whore but her dad was Liam Neeson who was also your boss and you had to gain his respect by sinking ships. And Rihanna was there for some reason you couldn’t fathom.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Cumberbatch and Freeman shit all over Downey Jr. and Law.

Jack And Jill

A lot of people LOVE Adam Sandler, they think he’s just swell. While I would distance myself from these people I do own a few of his films on DVD. Adam Sandler isn’t unfunny, it’s just that he pretty much plays the same character in every film, a loud obnoxious guy. Going the Eddie Murphy route, Sandler has gone for playing two loud obnoxious guys. It doesn’t so much look as Adam Sandler playing brother and sister, but Adam Sandler playing Adam Sandler and Adam Sandler in a wig. It all seems a little too much like Meet the Parents, they’ve even got an old famous actor! Oh wait, it’s Al Pacino, never mind.

Ok, that’s all I can handle for one day.

Fresh Meat

Hollyoaks, Skins, Misfits, The Inbetweeners*. Channel 4 loves a bit of the old young guys having fun shit, it’s probably the only thing they’re really appreciated for that doesn’t feature horribly disfigured human beings. So why stop with these programmes when they can make more? If they don’t, BBC Three will have a go and no one wants that to happen.

The Inbetweeners will likely be confined to cinemas for its remaining lifetime, and the next series of Misfits will likely be shit after the departure of Robert “the only good thing about Misfits” Sheehan, so Channel 4 need a new “young hip person” kind of show, because we’re never going to survive on Hollyoaks and fucking Skins are we? So what have Channel 4 given us? Fresh Meat, a new comedy about university students.

Hmm, a comedy about university students? That’s new. Well you’re wrong. BBC Three had their own university sitcom a while back called Off The Hook, which was exactly that, if “off the hook” meant fucking awful. In a blog way back last summer I called it the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and it probably still is. Hopefully the writers of Fresh Meat (Peep Show’s Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain) watched this crock of shit and made a meticulous list of notes of how not to write a university based sitcom.

Having watched the first episode of Fresh Meat, they probably didn’t. While avoiding Off The Hook is not only understandable but advised, Fresh Meat suffers from many of the same problems. The biggest being that it doesn’t feel like an actual university experience. Both shows depict a small group of “losers” living in a horrid squat far away from a campus and any other students. Are we supposed to believe that a university only has five or six students? Where are the all other dickheads? Where is the university? How did these esoteric creatures get an offer in the first place?

The answer to all these questions might be “we didn’t have the budget”, but if you don’t have the budget, don’t bother, make it something else, make it a comedy about some young twenty something flatmates, it’s not vital that they’re students unless the comedy is going to derive from that fact. When you’re at university you’re always surrounded by hundreds of people, not four. When you go out, you don’t go to a quiet pub populated by old people and Jack Whitehall. It’s about university students, but without seeing a university, how are we supposed believe this? Oh they have to write a personal statement, they’ve only just moved in (without any bags), they haven’t even started yet, but they have an assignment to complete. That’s baloney! (I’m trying it out).

The validity of the setting shouldn’t be such a concern but when the show is primarily about university students there should be at least some sense that they are students and that a university actually exists. The comedy should be about the troubles of being a student, and it’s hard to do this with only four or five characters living under one roof. Drying poultry with a hairdryer might be fine in The Mighty Boosh, but not in this. Fresh Meat seems like it’s accidentally surreal; Do girls sleep with someone they don’t really like on their first night because they just want sex? Why are they drinking a bottle of vodka in a pub toilet? It’s the little things that an OCD freak like me obsesses over. I’ve written three fucking paragraphs about it.

With the realism aside, it’s not actually terrible, but it’s not something that you should watch. The Inbetweeners’ Joe Thomas makes up part of the ensemble, playing another awkward teen as if he’s becoming Britain’s answer to Michael Cera, yet apart from being slightly awkward and slightly perverted, there’s not really much else to his character. This is the same for most of the characters, they’re all slightly something, slightly uptight or slightly hipster, but there’s nothing substantial to any character.

And yes, I mentioned Jack Whitehall earlier. That comedian who isn’t funny, acting? If he’s a bad comedian he must be a terrible actor. Which is why he’s playing himself, a posh coke head. Whitehall already has a posh accent yet exaggerates it so much it sounds hideously fake. It makes you wonder how he’s become so successful despite having so little talent. The only actual comedy comes from Greg McHugh (from Gary: Tank Commander) but there’s a sense that he’d be funny in anything and perhaps Armstrong and Bain (or Bain and Armstrong?) would have been better suited to writing a sitcom specifically for McHugh.

It’s slightly disappointing that the writers of Peep Show and Four Lions have given us Fresh Meat, they may be talented writers but this isn’t their magnum opus. I’d like to think that they weren’t involved in every aspect of the programme, that the producers specifically wanted this, and requested Jack Whitehall to be in it. Perhaps it’ll get better, but I don’t really want to find out. The fresh meat is already rotting.

*I forgot about Beaver Falls, but perhaps for a good reason.

Biebergeddon

That perfume smells fucking horrible. Let’s put a famous name on it and the masses will buy it! This is the general trail of thought of fragrance companies before they release the toxic gases that are celebrity fragrances into our atmosphere. It’s one thing having Charlize Theron or James Franco promoting a fragrance but would you really want their “scent” bottled for your home use? Well maybe, but would you want to smell like Jordan, Coleen Rooney, or Robert Mugabe? What about Justin Bieber?

Yes, Justin Bieber has brought out a fragrance, and why not? Surely every man would give his right arm to smell like Justin Bieber, a boy who is infamous for his masculine scent. Celebrity fragrances are for those people who idolise celebrities, they’re obviously not buying for the scent but for the name, as if owning that bottle with a name on it would bring them closer to their god. Not many men see Justin Bieber as a god, most men feel a surge of hatred run through their veins just hearing his name, they would die of shame before they’d smell like him.

It’s for this reason that Justin Bieber hasn’t brought out an aftershave, but a perfume. A boy so un-man like that it cannot possibly be conceived that he smells like anything but a girl, and a flowery girl at that, one who has a “fruity gourmand scent with top notes of mandarin, pear, and wildberries, heart notes of jasmine and creamy florals, and base notes including vanilla and soft musk”. I’m aware they’re not actually bottling his natural scent, but by affiliating himself with creamy florals, he is voiding himself of any masculinity (not that he should have top notes of blood and shit).

Who needs machismo though when you can have money? After all this (like all celebrity fragrances) is just a cynical cash cow, much like his range of nail polishes, music, film, and face. Bieber doesn’t care if a cunt with a keyboard and too much free time on his hands thinks he’s a disgrace to the male gender, he’s rich. And it’s not stopping him from getting any game, he’s Justin fucking Bieber, if he tweeted “I want sex” he could ejaculate within seconds, it’d be like fucking fish in a barrel, that’s the power he has over girls.

Why is he so popular? What makes Justin Bieber so appealing to girls? I can understand the likes of Justin Timberlake or…Matt Cardle, but this gaunt specimen? I’m inclined to call his music shit but I’m twenty four, of course I think it’s shit, but it’s not like he’s an amazing singer and dancer. It’s not like he has anything interesting to say, yet he causes riots everywhere he goes.

He has close to 13 million followers on Twitter, I have 32. I deserve 32 followers, but is Justin Bieber worthy of 13 million? Barack Obama has just over 10 million followers, this must mean that Justin Bieber is more influential than the President of the United States. This is worrying. If God was on Twitter, he’d have less followers. Merely knowing of Justin Bieber’s existence is like watching The Wicker Man, you just know there’s going to be a sacrifice at the end of it. The monster has started a cult, his “Beliebers” cause riots in his name, does anyone else find this odd? Or downright terrifying? If he asked his Beliebers to bring him the blood of every non-Belieber they would, and we’d all be dead unless we convert to Belieberologyism. “Kill the infidels” tweets Bieber as we lock our doors and pray for a military intervention.

This perfume is just another example of the power Bieber has over his cult fans. Just look at this advert for his perfume “Someday”.

It’s not just a perfume, it’s a freaky conduit into his soul. Spray the magical scent and Justin will float into your bedroom like something out of Salem’s Lot or The Lost Boys, and then he’ll smell your neck, and probably do a lot more. He comes across as a creepy sexual predator, which is somewhat disturbing considering the average age of his fan base. Never let go is the tagline…never let go of your extremist devotion to this God like monstrosity, or he will smite thee down.

Bazinga

A few years back I saw a crappy looking American sitcom on my television. It looked like something you’d see before Frasier at six in the morning on Channel 4; it looked shit. Before I could reach for the remote control I laughed, and then again, and before I knew it, I loved The Big Bang Theory.

TBBT shouldn’t be funny. It’s largely set in one apartment, it has a laughter track, its characters are poorly constructed stereotypes including a token ethnic minority, it has a gimmick, it has everything most other sitcoms have, and therefore shouldn’t be funny. Initially I was confused, I was laughing at a show which I believed wasn’t funny, so was I just losing my sense of humour? I had to ask people if they had seen it and if they found it funny as well. I wasn’t crazy.

Despite having all the hallmarks of a shitcom, TBBT was different from anything else because its gimmick (science) has been so rarely used in comedy. Prior to TBBT Ross Gellar was the pinnacle of scientific comedy, the joke being that because he likes science, he’s a nerd and that’s funny. TBBT took that concept and made a whole show out of it, one scientist is funny, so four scientists would be four times the funny! It could have been terrible but the writers (initially) used the gimmick very well, making references to scientific concepts and theories proved to be funny as well as slightly educational, at least compared to the usual dumbed down cavalcade of American sitcoms.

Assuming that being a scientist means you’re smart, and that being smart makes you a nerd, and being a nerd means you like comics and Star Trek, and liking Star Trek makes you socially awkward, our four scientist protagonists are also four nerdy, socially awkward, scientist protagonists. While being stereotypical, it sort of makes sense, and the nerdiness of the show has added to the funnys. After all, there are only so many scientist jokes they can make, they need something else to fall back on.

Sadly, four seasons in, they’ve run out of both science and nerd related jokes, and directions for all five of the main cast. The majority of episodes are Sheldon-centric escapades; Whatever will this socially retarded genius do next? In the fourth season you would have expected some kind of progression for his character, instead we’ve had to go through the same “kooky mishaps” week in week out, listening to the ever present catchphrase “bazinga”, like an obligatory Scrubs pratfall, getting more annoying with each repetition.

The introduction of a potential girlfriend for Sheldon should have been much funnier than it actually was, pairing him with a female carbon copy was like introducing the exact same character. It would have been far more interesting/entertaining/funny to pair Sheldon with a “normal” woman, seeing him out of his comfort zone and interacting with society. What we got was two “Sheldons” sharing the same punch lines.

Girlfriends have been something of a theme for this season, and in a sense cavorting has replaced science as the show’s main gimmick. After it became quickly apparent that the Sheldon-Sheldon relationship was going nowhere we’re left with the irritating Howard-Bernadette and Leonard-token Indian girl relationships. Putting these characters in relationships has ruined the whole dynamic of the show. It’s just like Yoko and the Beatles. Leonard plays the part of a straight man, facilitating Sheldon’s comedy, while also providing a compulsory Ross-Rachel thing with Penny. Meanwhile Howard provides the “humorous” latent homosexual bromance with Raj. Putting Leonard and Howard in relationships not only made their characters boring and redundant, but also Raj’s and Penny’s, leaving the comedy of the show dependant on Sheldon, who we established isn’t that funny anymore.

The other consequence of this is that we’ve been introduced to three new characters, who are all irritating. Leonard’s girlfriend Priya may have been written intentionally irritating in order to contrast her with Penny in a later episode, but she’s really irritating. I don’t want to be annoyed for several episodes just so they can do what they did with Ross, Rachel and that Chinese woman in Friends. These are supposed to be socially awkward scientists/nerds, they’re lucky to get one girlfriend, let alone a fucking pick of them.

This season just hasn’t jumped the shark, it’s fucked the shark. From Raj’s Bollywood dance dream sequence to his hook up with Penny, it’s been an absolute catastrophe. Oh what was that? Yes, Raj fucked Penny, in Leonard’s bed! The writers mustn’t have know what to do with them, so they just got them to fuck, that’ll spice things up. What are they thinking? Let’s throw all rationality out of the window! Let’s introduce an alien in the next season, that’ll be funny, Sheldon and an alien, and the alien is more human than Sheldon, HA HA FUCKING HA. The alien is smarter than Sheldon and Sheldon doesn’t like that, HA HA FUCKING HA. It’ll happen, they’ll do it, those crazy writers, they’ll put an alien in, and it’ll hook up with Penny, and that will be more rational and plausible than Raj fucking her! This season has been a text book example of how to ruin a good show. If this was the intention of the writers then they have succeed with aplomb. I will pretend that there were only ever three seasons of The Big Bang Theory, and that they were funny.

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.