30 or 31 Days of Netflix

“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.

Schrodinger's racist

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.    

Information Heroin

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!”.

I need Wikipedia.

Celebrity Flagrance

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.

Justin Bieber - Someday

Click here for a much more detailed review.

Katie Price - Besotted

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.

ASBO X-Men

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.

Camp Twisted Razzle Dazzle

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.

How I Came To Hate Music

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*.

*Not all of it:






   

Grand Theft Pandemonium

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.

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.