Huge Throbbing Pens

Losing the Plot?

2012-02-04T13:43:00.000-08:00

When congratulating a friend on the birth of her baby daughter I said that I hoped the new arrival 'brings many hours of quality entertainment'.

I think I may have got babies mixed up with Sky Plus.

Is she going to punch me do you think?

Film Review - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)

2012-01-29T13:46:00.000-08:00

When it comes to Hollywood remakes of highly successful Swedish films based on bestselling Swedish novels I've been burned before.

I'm referring, of course, to Matt Reeves' Let Me In, the 2010 remake of Tomas Alfredson's beautifully melancholic Let The Right One In which managed to quite spectacularly miss what made the original (and the novel) so special. Eschewing the original's slow burn pace and mounting sense of dread of the original, Reeves shoehorned John Ajvide Lindqvist's bleak parable of unhappy adolescence into a paint by numbers Hollywood shocker replete with predictable 'made you jump' gags, unneccessary gore and preposterous CGI that even the considerable talents of its young cast (including Chloe 'Hit-Girl' Moretz of Kick Ass fame of whom I'm a huge fan) failed to redeem.

Coming out of the cinema after watching that film I thought to myself "What's the point in remaking a film if the only thing that changes is the language?". My rhetorical question was answered by the couple exiting the cinema behind me, the male portion of which piped up with (and I speak not a word of a lie);

"I'd never watch the original... It's all in foreign!"

*Facepalm*

There you have it folks.

The multiplex patronising, popcorn guzzling, CGI addled Blockbuster crowd are too lazy to go and investigate a film (however good it may be) if it means they have to endure the cripplingly laborious task of reading subtitles because the film is 'all in foreign'.

Knowing this the suits of Tinseltown have for years been throwing together a slew of shoddily assembled English language remakes of decent films. The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, the list goes on and on (including those nauseatingly persistent rumours of an Oldboy remake). All of those films were subjected to the nip /tuck treatment and forced into the formulaic model of the Hollywood blockbuster, inevitably losing their intrinsic charm in the process.

Not to say that there aren't good remakes of non-English language films. Martin Scorcese's The Departed is in fact a remake of Hong Kong police drama Infernal Affairs relocated to Boston and given enough of a makeover to stand up as a film in its own right with its own merits.

But more often than not they're just awful. Absolutely fucking awful, artistically bankrupt cynical knob cheese designed to facilitate no creative vision other than the easiest way to rob cineasts of their cash.

Thus my expectations for the English language remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo were pretty low but it was David Fincher's involvement that swung it for me.

I've been a fan of Fincher's ever since his first ill-fated and hugely underrated debut Alien 3. I've followed his work through the years and while there some of his films enjoy regular rotation in my Blu Ray collection (Fight Club, Zodiac, Se7en) even my least favoured of his films (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network) leave most of Mr Fincher's contemporaries in the dust.

Bluntly speaking I was expecting something stylish and visually interesting if ultimately unneccessary.

And that's pretty much what I got, which is by no means a bad thing.

Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo isn't exactly a game changer but that isn't to say it's not a compelling romp. As I type I have to prevent myself from typing the word 'enjoyable' because as much as I liked and appreciated the film, there's really nothing enjoyable about it.

Fincher sets up his stall pretty much from the opening shot with a bleak cinematic palette interspersed with moments of punk rock sexuality. Look no further than the opening credits sequence over which a melange of fetishistic CGI images merge in and out of each other to Karen O's industrial cover of Led Zep's The Immigrant song for a prime example of the film's Modus Operandi.

Watching the film made me realise that I enjoyed the book far more than I thought I did. The book is very... Swedish and I mean that as a compliment. It's a slow burn and relentlessly bleak with a mounting sense of dread building between the covers. The film thankfully resists the urge to rush itself by conforming to the conventions of flashy pacing and editing that plague Holywood today. The film ticks along nicely at its own pace without losing us along the way (much like Fincher's previous masterpiece Zodiac).

That mounting sense of dread I referred to in the book is transferred with great success to the film, due in no small part to the throbbing bass and scratchy strings of Trent (Nine Inch Nails) Reznor's musical score.

If you've read the book then you'll know what I'm referring to by 'the really, really unpleasant bit'. Suffice to say the filmmakers haven't balked at showing 'the really, really unpleasant bit' despite a Hitchcock-esque slow pan away from a closed door. Having lulled us into a false sense of security Fincher then throws us kicking and screaming into the room with the characters during 'the really, really unpleasant bit' which, while unrelentingly graphic, maintains a semblance of good taste and respect for the seriousness of the subject matter.

The acting varies from fine to excellent with female lead Rooney Mara pretty much delivering a beat for beat facsimile of her predecessor Noomi Rapace's performance. That's no criticism by the way, Ms Mara is superb and brings us an absolutely authentic Lisbeth Salander direct from the pages of the novel, although let's be honest any actress worth their salt should eat up material like that.
Given far less to work with is Daniel Craig who plays browbeaten investigative journalist and editor Mikael Blomkvist. Blomkvist is gifted with none of the emotional beats afforded by Salander and even after three books remains a mystery to the reader. Craig brings the character to life with requisite charm and intelligence but it's hardly a role (or a performance, let's be honest) that calls much attention to himself.

The supporting cast are uniformly excellent (particularly the affable Stellan Skarsgard and I was delighted to see one of my personal heroes Steven Berkoff in there) although while I'm glad the remake kept the narrative in Sweden the film's 'Allo 'Allo conceit of characters speaking English with Swedish accents is a device that never really fits comfortably here. This is particularly jarring when a lot of written text appears to be written in Swedish unless it's important to the plot and then it's wierdly translated into English.

Ultimately I'm rather glad that I didn't watch the original version of the film (although I'm resolved to track it down now) as it allowed me to judge Fincher's film by its own merits, which are ample.
It's not amongst the director's finest work but it is indeed a compelling and immersive thriller that reminds us that, even when coasting, Fincher is still one of the best directors of his generation.

The Big Three - Oh

2012-01-16T13:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm now thirty.

They say that inside every thirty year old there's an eighteen year old wondering what the Hell happened and I have to say that at the moment that statement feels pretty accurate.

...

That doesn't mean I've killed and eaten an eighteen year old. Y'know, just to clarify that.

I suppose I should bleat on about being a responsible adult and how I'm looking back on my life and recognising the need to put aside childish things and move onwards and upwards with my life.

But the truth is... I don't feel my age.

Shit, I don't even feel like an adult!

I'm one of a growing breed. A thirty year old boy.

I like comics and video games and swearing and puerile humour every bit as much as I did as a teenager. In fact, moreso.

Despite the trappings of adulthood; mortgage, marriage, job, car, pension I'm every bit the angst riddled, self doubting, doe eyed simpleton trying to make sense of a world that seems to get a little bit more bewildering every day.
At first I thought that this was me. Some warped perspective borne out of emotional immaturity. Then I realised... This is how everyone feels.

The truth, kiddies, is that we grown ups are just as clueless and terrified as you are. The difference is that we're not allowed to admit it...
Plus we're bigger than you so we can beat you up.

As for my birthday festivities...

Well they surpassed my wildest expectations.

I left the house on Saturday morning expecting to go to Newcastle airport to fly to Berlin for a brief weekend of Bavarian fun. Imagine my surprise, then, when I went to visit my Mother-in-Law's place of work expecting to pick her up so she could drop us off at the airport and find nearly everyone I know bursting out of the woodwork yelling...

"SURPRIIIIIIISE!!!!"

Well, I certainly was surprised. In fact there are a plethora of photos on that Facebook thingy of the stupid face I pulled that I shan't re post here.

It was a wonderful evening and although a few important people couldn't make it (whom I've now burned in effigy and urinated onto the ashes) the amount of beautiful people that came from near and far just to spend the night with little-old-me moved me near to tears.

If you were one of those people then let me just thank you again from the bottom of my heart for making my Birthday Party so special.

Not to mention the absurdly abundant generosity of my friends, family and work colleagues who have showered me with awesome gifts and presents. Even a spectacularly sweet sixth former I teach was kind enough to come in from study leave to drop off a Batman birthday card with a Costa gift card in it.

And finally, of course, my beautiful wife Lauren.

I suppose I should be worried that I have a wife who's such an accomplished liar but to be honest I'm so bowled over that she went to such great effort and expense (even to the point of printing off fake e-tickets for out flight to Berlin) to give me such a glorious surprise, I'm literally lost for words.

Oh and we're still going to Berlin.

Compare your life to mine and weep, losers!

Blogology

2011-12-16T02:23:00.000-08:00

Well once again a long dormant spell has been broken by an unusual occurrence that took place on Wednesday in the 'real' world in which I am occasionally obliged to spend time.

There I was savagely beating some of my A level students for not handing in their coursework on time when I was accosted by one of my former GCSE disciples who waved a piece of paper in my face and said;

"Sir, sir (put down the hammer please), is this from your blog?"

I put down the hammer, wiped the blood and viscera from my hands and perused the document in question.

I recognised the writing style as one recognises one's own reflection in the mirror, with equal parts vanity and self-loathing.

Fragmented sentence structure... Check.

Bizarrely ambling, discordant tangents... Check.

Gratuitous use of the swears... Big ol' check.

Anyway, the urchin in question informed me that her class had been studying my blog in their English lessons. The ensuing emotional double whammy was a bizarre mixture of affront and flattery. It was like finding out that someone has taken pictures of you in the shower with a telephoto lens, but then used those photos to give a lecture on exemplary human anatomy.

Of course, since my blog is, after all, within the public domain I have little right to outrage. In fact, a better analogy would be parading around naked at your living room window and then being outraged at the people who take photos... And on that note I think I'll be abandoning that metaphor right there.

I am, however, somewhat bemused at the idea of my blog being held up as an example of literary merit or worthy of analysis in any way. Seriously, what linguistic devices do I have in my arsenal worth observing other than my odd metaphors and Herculean use of the F word?

Anyway I'm unsure who the English teacher in question was but I'm pretty sure that they didn't

explicitly state that the blog was mine (I can only guess some bright spark recognised some weird idiosyncrasy of mine in the writing).

Still it was another lesson to me that this is not just me ranting incoherently into a vacuum. People actually read this thing.

Once again I find myself in the centre of an ethical conundrum.

Should I start sanitising the misanthropic ravings of my online doppelganger in the knowledge that my students may be reading?

Or should I remain with my arms folded in petulant indignation, blowing raspberries at anyone who suggests that as a teacher it's incumbent upon me as a teacher to consider my profession before putting virtual pen to equally virtual paper.

Once again I jam my fingers in my ears and start screeching "I HAVE A RIGHT TO A LIFE OUTSIDE OF TEACHING!!" at the top of my voice.

Or... Do I?

10 Years On

2011-09-11T08:13:00.000-07:00

At the 9/11 memorial service outside the American Embassy in London today a brass band played Auld Lang Syne. At first I wondered at the aptitude of the use of the immortalised words of Robert Burns most often associated with drunken New Years' Eve revelry.

It didn't take very long to start to make sense to me.

To encapsulate the sense of loss felt by the families, friends and loved ones of the nearly three thousand casualties of the attack on the World Trade Centre is a task so momentous I won't even bother trying.

To do so would be an insult to all concerned.

My own experiences are so far removed from that sense of loss I recognise how ill equipped I am to describe it and how ill deserving I am to stick my oar in.

I do, however, think this is an opportune moment to reflect on the lessons learned from an event that has defined our time.

Each of us has in some way been affected by the western world's knee jerk reaction to the atrocities of the 11th of September 2001, the War on Terror.

The War on Terror. A prospect as brilliant as it is ludicrous.

No army or administration or government or world leader can hope to win a war against terror any more than they can hope to win a war against greed or anger or jealousy.

Terror cannot be bombed. It is not something you can throw any amount of drones at.

And while there have been some victories, most notably the killing of Osama bin Laden and the downfall of Saddam Hussein , a victory in a war against terror is, by the very nature of the battle, a fleeting one.

Like the Hydra of Greek Mythology, sever one head and two will spring up to replace it.
The very act of engaging in battle with forces like Al Qaeda has helped to cement these men's status in their own minds as Holy warriors and martyrs in the making.

Meanwhile at home politicians reap the rewards of the currency of fear. "Vote for me, I'm keeping you safe!" seemed to be the rationale that got the Bush administration through two terms.

Meanwhile civilians are tortured by armies funded by the tax payer. Legislation is rushed through to detain suspected terrorists without charge.

Iraq is invaded under the flimsiest of pretexts despite demonstrably having neither weapons of mass destruction nor links to Al Qaeda.

All in the name of freedom.

If you are sneering derisively at my words then I urge you to watch Adam Curtis' fantastic documentary The Power of Nightmares before you condemn me completely.

Let me be completely clear here. In no way am I trying to detract from the atrocity of what happened on the 11th of September 2011. It is a tragedy that will change the world forever.

But it is up to us to make sure that it changes the world in all the right ways.

The overwhelming message of the various 9/11 memorials is one of unity, solidarity and understanding that must transcend borders of nationality, culture and language, which brings me back to Auld Lang Syne.

While I am in no way suggesting that the loss of those three thousand people be forgot and never brought to mind it is important that we honour their memory without supporting a war that generates atrocities such as torture and the murder and sexual molestation of civilians on both sides.

As I said before terror is not something that can be dismantled with military force. We need to eradicate the political, social and economic inequalities that create terrorists.

How?

No idea.

....

Wii tennis?

Panic on the Streets of London, Panic of the Streets of Birmingham... And Nottingham... And Leeds

2011-08-09T07:03:00.000-07:00

Egypt

Tunisia

Syria

These uprisings in the Middle East are representative of the reason I continue to cling to some hope for humanity. The belief that, unified by passion and solidarity, the masses can rise against oppressive government even in the face of unbelievable repression and violence.

The image of that protester in his improvised naan bread helmet for me encapsulates the reason why we should have belief in the integrity, fortitude and ingenuity of the common man.

Maybe we can have enough trust in people and their ability to self govern for anarchy to be a viable system of government.

Then something like this comes along and reminds me that an extraordinary amount of people are really just degenerate wankers!

The rioting that started in Tottenham and now threatens to engulf all major urban areas in England is born not from a desire for social change, nor (if we're honest) through moral outrage.

It's just a bunch of people jumping at an excuse to hurt people.

Is the death of Mark Duggan a tragedy?

Of course it is! Any loss of human life is tragic.

Could it have been avoided?

Probably! And yes, of course it should have.

Should the officer responsible be held accountable for their actions?

Absolutely and they should be answerable to the Police service and Mr Duggan's family.

They should not be answerable to an opportunistic mob who use a genuine tragedy as an excuse to commit unspeakable acts of violence and robbery.

In what bizarre parallel universe is nicking tellys and X Boxes appropriate retribution for manslaughter?

These people don't want to make a political statement, they just want to hurt people and while they're at it score a nice new LED television to watch Jeremy Kyle and play Grand Theft Auto on!

Of course there will be people who regard all police officers and their actions as inherently fascist. And the force with which they have been obliged to respond will no doubt reinforce that assertion. Others will reason that the police presence is there to protect the rioters from themselves.

All I can say is that I am friends with a number of police officers who are extremely moral, genuine and decent people who embody the values that Robert Peel founded the police force on.

Which is more than I can see for the opportunistic thugs who have the gall to disguise bare faced self serving criminal activity as an altruistic political statement.

I want to conclude by offering my sympathies to the people of Brixton, Wood Green, Ponders End, Enfield Town, and the affected areas of Nottingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Bristol and Kent who are trying to live through or put an end to this nonsense.

And as for the people responsible. You are wasting the power of mass action. You make a mockery of British society. I hope you get a baton in the reproductive organs and a face full of CS gas.

And also that someone lobs a brick through the screen of your inevitably massive TV that you probably squander by watching shit like Fast and Furious and Transformers on.

I'm aware that I come across as a crotchety old git but the fact is I desperately want to believe that people are inherently good. I want to believe that people don't need government, that we have the faculties to be able to organise ourselves and help each other out.

And these utterly deplorable bellends are ruining it for all of us!

Film Review : Green Lantern

2011-07-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

"In Brightest Day In Blackest Night No Evil Shall Escape My Sight Let Those Who Worship Evil's Might Beware My Power Green Lantern's Light!"

So goes the Green Lantern oath which has pretty much summed up everything you need to know about the character since he was conceived in 1959. Cheesy and generic but also slightly poetic and (for me at least) immensely cool!

It's easy to see why the Hal Jordan / Green Lantern character has a strong fan base. The idea of an intergalactic peace keeper (sort of a cross between the Men in Black and the Jedi knights) who fights interplanetary crime with the aid of a ring powered by willpower that can bring to life anything his imagination can conceive, (not to mention being a fighter pilot in his spare time) is a power fantasy wet dream for any twelve year old boy who never grew up. Despite vanishing into relative obscurity in the 90s the character underwent a revival in 2005 when Geoff Johns' seminal graphic novel Green Lantern : Rebirth literally brought Hal Jordan back from the dead and brought the Green Lantern Corps, the extended cast and the mythology to a multitude of new readers bringing him from niche obscurity to a (at least in the tiny world of comics) mainstream recognition.

While I only recently discovered Green Lantern on the page I was nonetheless as excited as any diehard fanboy when it was announced that the character would get his own film.

In fact a lot of people were invested in this film in many ways. Warner Bros had pinned their hopes on Green Lantern as a new money spinning franchise in light of the conclusion of both the Harry Potter series this year and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy next year. Hardcore fans were delighted that their favourite character would not only get his own big screen treatment but in a way that would break the mould of what people expect from a superhero film. Science fiction buffs were hoping the film would plug the popcorn friendly gap left by Star Wars.

It seems that pretty much everyone was disappointed!

While GL isn't a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, it is a film that has bitten off far more than it can chew! And with a relatively short run time (1 hour 40 mins) it has given itself faaaaar too little time to do it. The result is a series of disparate elements that are very likeable on their own but fail to come together cohesively as a film.

It's cardinal sin is not being able to make up it's mind as to what sort of film it wants to be. Is it a superhero film? A sprawling, epic space saga? A character study of Hal Jordan? An exploration of the theme of fear? Yes, the Green Lantern books manage to be all of those things, but then they've had fifty odd years of continuous publication to be able to do that! In trying to cram several key texts' worth of Green Lantern lore into a fairly short time frame the film falls short on a number of levels.

Firstly the film tries to stuff several books' worth of plot points into its narrative and as a result the whole thing feel incredibly rushed. We get a whistle stop tour of Hal Jordan's life, his train wreck of a relationship with his ex Carol Ferris (played by Blake Lively), a very very brief introduction to his brothers and nephew and an absurdly undersold flashback of his father's untimely death, unfortunately none of this is given enough time to sink in before we zoom off into space to start spending the special effects budget.

This is a shame because in the books these are quite compelling relationships. After witnessing his father's accidental death as a child Hal believes himself fearless "when your worst fear happens right in front of you- I thought there was nothing to be afraid of" and we see that this is responsible for his brash and cavalier attitude. The film also fails to show us that he has suppressed rather than overcome his fears which would have made it all the more plausible when he bottles out of the Corps half way through not to mention giving us a reason to want to cheer him up when he finally rises to the challenge.

In trying to bedazzle us with special effects wizardry the filmmakers have seen fit to short change the characters and their relationship and this hurts the film. Sinestro (played by Mark Strong) is the coolest character in the books and stands out as the best thing about the film but even he, the Darth Vader of Green Lantern is criminally underused and his tense relationship with Hal is underdeveloped.

After (and I'm not even fucking joking) ten minutes of training with the Green Lantern Corps' porcine drill sergeant Kilowog, Hal is flying around fighting GCI baddies while anyone in the audience not Green Lantern literate sits there wondering what the buggernuts is going on.

There are two villains. To cut a long story short they are Hector Hammond (a telepathic nutcase with a giant fod) and Parallax (the big bad nasty of the GL world who is... wait for it... a giant cloud with a face!). Peter Sarsgaard does a fine job as the awkward and pervy turned evil and loopy Hammond but Parallax (a creature that is supposed to be the living embodiment of fear) looks too flimsy and ephemeral to carry any sense of threat.

The film's climactic battle is pretty cool but since we haven't really gotten to know the main character throughout the film we have little reason to root for him outside of the fact that he's the goody.

It's been over two weeks since I saw the film and to be honest I'm as clueless as I was when I left the cinema as to how I really feel about it.

Green Lantern is a decent enough superhero romp but the reason I and a lot of my fellow nerds are so frustrated is that it could have been so much more than that! While the film doesn't necessarily miss any beats it skips over a great many far too quickly.

Nonetheless there's a good deal to like about the film. Ryan Reynolds is typically handsome, witty and charming and it's impossible not to like his portrayal of Hal Jordan even if he isn't given a great script to work with. Blake Lively manages to hold her own in the acting department despite being required to do very little except look pretty and make a few cutting remarks. Mark Strong's Sinestro single handedly saves the film from descending into mediocrity and the visual effects and consistently impressive and the 'ring slinging' stuff looks all kinds of awesome (though the CGI environments look a bit too sterile and computery to convince me that I'm being taken to an alien world).

If you've seen the film by all means leave a comment because to be completely honest I haven't the faintest idea whether I liked it or not!

Yet More Excerbollocks

2011-06-13T09:53:00.001-07:00

It seems to dawn on me more and more insidiously every day... I am not immune to the aging process.

While mentally we never feel older than about 18 (or 14 for most blokes such as myself) nature likes to keep us on our toes every once in a while by throwing a few wrinkles, creaking joints and atrophied hair follicles our way.

Never is this more apparent than at the gym. Despite seeming to live there at the moment and being on a high protein diet I feel like I get less fit every time I go while the smug 19 year olds all around me look increasingly like catalogue models who could use their abs as toast racks. I've plateaued and my body's reminding me just how much it hates me and wants me to be a bandy legged, flabby failure and not a Ryan Reynolds lookalike.

In order to shake myself out of this slump I've decided to take the 300 workout challenge.

Remember 300? The film where Gerard Butler's running round in his leather pants throwing spears, kicking people into conveniently placed pits and has a six pack that should not be attainable by a man on the wrong side of 40? Well apparently in order to get in shape for that film the stars had a workout regimen that consisted of a total of 300 reps across 7 exercises.

They are as follows;

25 bodyweight pullups
50 deadlifts at 60kg
50 pressups
50 box jump-ups on 24 inch box
50 floor sweeps (ab exercise)
50 single arm clean and press (25 each arm) at 16kg
25 bodyweight pullups

Now obviously I'm not expected to be able to do this straight away. I start off on 125 reps in total and then build up to 300.

Part of me is excited by the challenge but another, much more vocal, part of me is concerned by the very real possibility that I might die attempting this. Humiliatingly I have to put my name on a list of people attempting the challenge, who are inevitably aged between 17 and 24, an average of 6'2" in height and call themselves things like 'Dave the Spartan Warrior'.

So, if you happen to be in my gym tonight, look out for a pitiful red faced, wheezing sack of flab and bones that wishes it had never been born. It's probably me.

I hope some serious air brushing went on here!

Pleasant Surprises

2011-06-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

Seeing the plethora of adverts all over the shops and Internet urging people to buy socks, DVDs, lager and t shirts with Homer Simpson on them for Father's day has made me a little bit depressed. It sounds incredibly trite but losing your parents is one of those injuries to the psyche that never really heals. You get distracted from it for a while and then when you least expect it, you catch something that triggers memories and before you know it you're spiralling into abject depression.

BUT....

In an effort to stem the tide of self pity I've decided to look on the bright side of things. Take work, for example.

One thing I will say for HHS is we certainly don't sit on our laurels. While every other school in the country is winding down, we're winding up. See at Haslingden High we start the academic year a half term early and while for many reasons it's a double edged sword there does seem to be a scent of positivity and eagerness in the air (along with the combined funk of Lynx chocolate and sweaty adolescents).

Furthermore this year our students are starting their GCSEs in Year 9.

Let me just repeat that. These 13 year olds who in any other school would be in Year 8 are now starting their GCSEs.

If you'd proposed this to me at the start of my career I would have snorted cynically and thrown the remains of my shepherd's pie at you but it would seem my cynicism was ill founded.

The Year 9 kids (though I suspect slightly terrified) are taking to the rigours of upper school study with aplomb, throwing themselves unreservedly into their work with a positivity that really, really impressed me.

Will they cope with study designed for children with a year of extra education and experience than them? Yes, I believe they will. Will it be easy? No, I suspect not!

Given the fact that I'm teaching to a brand new exam spec this year there's a lot to be apprehensive about but by and large I have a really good feeling about my next batch of drama acolytes!

Oh and speaking of loyal disciples, I got a visit from some former Year 11s today on their way from or to a revision session which was great. I must admit I do swell with pride when I see them in their normal clothes looking all grown up and just like real people.

Bless!

Rise of The Idiots

2011-06-04T14:54:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while it gets me down.

See, I have ridiculously high standards of myself.

The thing that terrifies me even more than the inevitable approach of middle age is the prospect of spiralling into mediocrity. It seems like I've spent the last few years struggling to find the right books, the right diet, the right exercise to achieve my physical and intellectual goals to be the best that I can be.

That's something I've striven for since I was the chubby little 13 year old who decided to make an effort to turn his life around.

To be the best student,

The best karateka

The best actor

And now the best teacher.

It irks me enormously, however, when I look out of the window or turn on my TV and see the inescapable truth.

This is a society where mediocrity rules!

Turn on your radio. Flick through a few stations. Can you find any discernible difference between the interchangable R n B acts blathering on and on about what their going to do 'on da floor' or 'in da club'? Poor Rihanna singing yet another song about how she wants to be bent over and violated up the bum on a bed of stinging nettles (because, like, sex sells innit?)? Overproduced garbage conceived by greedy men in offices and performed by clueless teenagers who made more this week than I probably make in a year of teaching.

But then I guess I'm getting old and unable to relate to new trends in music? Fine,let's leave music where it is. Turn on your television.

What do you see?

Do you see actors? If so, does it look like they were chosen for the part their playing because of their ability or their looks? If you're watching a Hollywood film, is there any actress in it who isn't stunning?

Most likely you'll see so called 'reality TV'. A format that gives a national platform to hundreds of people the world over who have absolutely nothing of value to say. Nothing! Fresh faced teenaged boys with shaggy mops of hair oblivious to how cynically Simon Cowell is about to use them. Piers Fucking Morgan still insisting on occupying the same space time continuum as me.

By far the worse offenders are those awful, awful, dreadful, monstrous, vile motherfucking Kardashians. Ugh! The very thought of those shallow, talentless moronic, vain, self absorbed, clueless, inarticulate, narcissistic scumbags makes me want to vomit my lungs out.

Why? For the love of all things decent and Holy WHY??!?!?!??!

Why do I work my heart out night and day in a job I'm deeply passionate about for literally less than a hundredth of Kim Kardashian's annual income?
These are people who don't have jobs, whose only achievement is having wealthy parents and step parents and contribute about as much to the betterment of society as the average crack whore.

The fact that the American public in their thousands tuned in to their inane, self important antics for six seasons absolutely beggars belief.

And don't get me started on this guy....

Scott Disick is the worst human being in the entire world. A man who has been cataclysmically shit at every cushy job his family has eased him into. A man who models himself on Patrick Bateman despite having never read any book let alone 'American Psycho' which has some very big words in it that would be far beyond his tiny comprehension. A maelstrom of arrogance, self importance, and chauvinism who can barely string a sentence together, yet whose shoes cost more than double what I make in a month. This guy will spunk my annual salary on a watch without thinking twice. He is despised by all who come into contact with him and by virtue of that he is famous beyond the actual limits of human imagination.

It's enough to make me want to devote the rest of my life to the exploration of nuclear fission simply in the hope that I may one day invent a weapon of mass destruction capable of destroying the world's supply of shallow, self regarding cretins who command seven figure incomes and walk around with an immense sense of undeserving entitlement when in any other time in any other place on Earth would be scrubbing Chairman Mao's toilet.

The billions of innocent lives that would be prematurely cut short as a result would be entirely worth it!

The Abyss Talks Back

2011-05-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

Around this time last year I wrote this blog post in which I voiced my concerns as a few of my students had found my blog. I was ruminating on the fact that within this jumble of words and phrases that spew from my rancid brain there may be content unsuitable for the minds of the kiddywinks.

Since the majority of student readers were in years 10 and 11 (that's predominantly 15-16 year olds to you) I thought they were mature enough to differentiate the persona that writes this blog from the one that teaches them in the classroom and so far my online activities haven't undermined the professional relationship I have with my students.

It now seems, however, that far more (and far younger) students have found the blog and recently a few of my Year 9 students cornered me in the corridor and told me how much they enjoyed the blog but wished I didn't swear quite so much!?!

Now, setting to one side the distressing role reversal going on here (at the age of nearly 30 it's quite a kick in the nuts when 14 year olds are telling to you basically grow up), I am placed right back in the middle of a sticky, smelly dilemma.

Without a doubt the blog contains content and language that I certainly wouldn't advocate the use of in the classroom and given that I seem to be picking up an increasingly younger readership I should seriously think about what I'm writing before going ape on my keyboard.

On the other hand the upstart in me resents having to censor myself for the benefit of people who shouldn't even be reading my ranty musings in the first place!

The way I see it I have 3 choices;

1- Place massive restrictions on the blog so that only followers (i.e. pretty much nobody) would be able to read it.

2- Only utter PG rated sentiments on the blog and never ever use words like 'thundercunting!'

3- Jack the whole blogging business in. I only really started it as a warm up exercise for other creative writing endeavours which have all fallen pretty much by the wayside anyway.

In all likelihood, dear reader, it's looking increasingly like option 3 might be the way to go. Teaching encroaches so much on my personal life in so many ways I can't pretend that I won't feel violated if I allow it to compromise what I'm writing.

Besides, it's not like anyone actually reads this bloody thing.

...

Is it?

2D or Not 2D

2011-05-23T01:16:00.000-07:00

My wife is awesome when it comes to presents!

For our anniversary she got me just over a year's worth of free cinema tickets. I get two tickets a month until next July which is all sorts of awesome.

But here's the rub!

These tickets are only valid for 2D screenings. Now, while my loathing of 3D is well doccumented here it is a lamentable fact that studios and distributors are now ramming 3D down our throats whether we like it or not. And the vast majority of us don't! When was the last time you heard anyone talking to you about a film they saw recently saying something like;

"Yeah, the acting was wooden, the dialogue was stilted, the action sequences were badly choreographed and the plot was all over the place but thank God it was in 3D because that made it all better!"

???

Anyway despite my initial apathy I decided that I really wanted to watch Thor. Could I find a 2D screening? Could I shite! I would have had to drive over to Manchester to make a 12:30 screening which just plain isn't going to happen on a Sunday!

Anyway, after the missus nixed my attempts to watch Attack The Block, we went to see Hanna instead which was a very stylish and enjoyable action romp. If you liked early Luc Besson films like Nikita or Subway then this is in a very similar vain! All of the ideas are pretty derivative but it does offer some well executed action sequences and some sterling performances from Eric Bana, the always good value for money Cate Blanchett and phenomenal newcomer Saiorse Ronan.

If you were looking for a plot breakdown this is basically it;

In some non-specific Eastern European forest Jason Bourne is training his daughter to be La Femme Nikita. They're both being pursued by Irina Spalko sans the accent and black bob. Anyway Nikita goes into hiding and meets the modern parents from Viz who happen to have the children from Outnumbered. Oh, and they're being pursued by David Van Day in a lemon tracksuit and several of the skinheads from This Is England.

It's a kind of Frankenstein's monster of a dozen espionage / assassin flicks thrown together but despite looking like a terrible idea on paper it's actually executed with enough flair and dynamism to make it a surprisingly worthwhile exercise.

Go see it!

Empty Chairs At Empty Tables

2011-05-20T01:36:00.000-07:00

It's been an odd few weeks.

After all the fuss, all the planning, all the rehearsal, all the exam prep, the stress, the arguments, the tears and the hugs my Year 11 classes have now completed their Drama GCSE.

And they've gone!

It's only now that I realise what an impression they've made on me. Don't get me wrong, I've always thought they've been ace but in their abscence I realise how much I have genuinely enjoyed teaching them.

When I look back at some of them and the enormous progress they've made since starting the course not just in acting ability but in their confidence and self belief I start to well up a bit. And then there are the ones who came to me fantastic actors and I've had the priviledge of just setting them on the right path and watching them do their thing.

It's been a crazy two years and whatever their results I know for a fact that each and every young man and woman in those classes did their very best in the course and should be proud of themselves whatever the letter on the paper come results day.

I don't do this job for accolades. I do not expect thanks. I do it because I care deeply about the educational experience of young people!

It came as a massive surprise then just how many messages of thanks, cards and gifts I received form them. A few lovely people (who know who they are) gave me genuinely tear jerking letters of thanks as well as a heartfelt (and slightly drunken) thank you speech at the leavers' prom from a ridiculously talented, intelligent and generally lovely person whom it has been an honour to teach. A young man (who also knows who he is) told me that I have inspired him to become a drama teacher. And dammit, I have every faith that he'll be a bloody good one!

It was also a delightful surprise to see this on my whiteboard when I came back from my lunch break one day!

In many ways I feel that I should be thanking them. So here goes,

"Thank you ALL for making me realise how much I love my job!
Thank you for mking all the nonsense of teaching worth it!

Thank you for helping me see past the endless meetings,

paperwork, planning, evaluation stress and late nights

and realise what's really important.

The time I spend with young people in the drama studio

and the difference it makes to my life and yours."

You've been amazing!"

The place won't be the same without them but nonetheless, now's the time to take stock, have a breather and wait for the next bunch to arrive!

Due to obvious child protection issues I can't post any pictures of the little darlings on here but here are some of them in white board doodle next to a chubby grinning tit head!

Bat Humour

2011-03-18T14:25:00.001-07:00

Only teenagers, lazy bastards and idiots reblog pictures but these made me do so many geeky ROFLs I couldn't help it;

A Message To Nicholas Cage

2011-03-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr Cage,

Remember when you used to be good? Like, about the same time Leaving Las Vegas came out?

That was 16 years ago!

Now I'm not entirely sure what you're playing at, Mr Cage. I'm not entirely sure whether or not your career is one big in-joke between you and your agent or a genuine series of catastrophic career missteps but one things for certain... You, Nicholas, are stealing a living!

I'm not angry, I'm just... disappointed!

A performer of your talent should be earning their money and not sleepwalking their way through lobotomised schlockers like those awful National Treasure films and that ridiculous Jerry Bruckheimer phase you went through, scooping your $20M payload as you go.

And Knowing.... Ugh!

I spent two hours waiting as patiently as a child on Christmas morning for that film to stop sucking only to be horrendously let down again! Both you and Alex Proyas should have known better.

By all accounts Drive Angry 3D is a real piece of shit. And not in the knowing, ironic Tarantino / Rodriguez grind house sort of way.

You need to make more of an effort mate, and by that I don't mean just dusting off your stock 'manic' performance a'la that remake of Bad Lieutenant.
It's not even that you've lost your mojo. You proved in Kick Ass that you can still create characterisations that are witty, charming, a little bit kooky and genuinely endearing. In fact, you were easily the best thing in Kick Ass (alongside the phenomenally talented Chloe Moretz). It's just a crying shame you won't be back for the inevitable sequel.

This isn't a rant! I'm not having a go for the sake of having a go. I'm writing this because I like you, Hell I'd even consider myself a fan, but you're doing your fans a great disservice churning out this back catalogue of gunk.

For every moment of genius you've shown us there have been a dozen crushing disappointments.

This must be what it's like supporting Newcastle.

In fact I believe Nicholas Cage's might performance might actually be this;

Gove To Hell!

2011-01-27T15:15:00.000-08:00

It seems that every day the new Coalition government does something to remind me how comparatively little I hated New Labour.

As terrified as I am that they're blaming a 0.5% shrinkage of the economy on the weather and their increasingly vociferous attempts to re brand control orders (and still use them as an excuse to restrict the civil liberties of people who pray to a different God than them) I'm still more terrified about the state of education.

Michael Gove is without a doubt the worst thing to happen to education since the cane was abolished. I'm quite certain that if I'd put a mortar board on a macaque monkey, got it off its furry tits on absinthe and let it into a GCSE Chemistry lesson it would do a better job at managing the learning experiences of today's young people.

In case you were wondering who Michael Gove is, Michael Gove is the worst kind of Tory. The kind that went to public school and has absolutely no professional experience in the business he manages at a national level.

Think about it.

Would you let a chef run your software company?
Would you let a punk rock guitarist manage a high end interior design outfit?

Then why is a former journalist who had never set foot in a school in a professional capacity in his life telling thousands of heads, teachers and educational staff how to do their jobs?

Especially one who's made such a rancorous string of ill conceived balls ups in less than a year in office. To compound maters, he even looks like a caricature of a Tory. Have a look;

Chinless milk fed gimp!

God knows, I wasn't the biggest fan of Ed Balls but at least he seemed to genuinely value the needs of today's youth rather than trying to pursue his own fundamentalist agenda at the expense of their educational experience.

First he scrapped BSF funding for 712 schools that sorely needed it! In fact, in one particularly embarrassing case, funding was even denied to a Central London school to carry out work that meant the school failed its basic health and safety requirements.

He then did away with specialist college status creating a massive schism in schools' ideologies that will have massive implications for schools all over the country.

Now the tedious toff is trying to garner armchair pundit support by touting a 'back to basics' approach to education, which I'm sure will appease Daily Mail readers who think that all we do is teach kids how to put condoms on bananas all day.

In short, humanities, science, English literature and languages are the order of the day. Artsy fartsy subjects like my own are treated with derisory sneering from the galleries, as are things like design and technology and PE has lost the respect and importance as a subject that it has fought for in recent decades. Music faces the very real threat of being wiped from the National Curriculum altogether.

I'm aware that this sounds like sour grapes.

Let me make it clear that I'm absolutely for engendering a fondness for classics of literature. I used to be a member of a theatre company whose mandate was doing exactly that.
And it is a cultural embarrassment that our command of languages pales in comparison to that of our European counterparts.

I do, however, strongly believe that ramming these subjects down young people's throats is absolutely the wrong way to go about it.

I also believe that as a generation of graduates stride, proudly clutching their degree certificates, into the forbidden gloom of the sparse job market education needs to have a vocational bent. Students need to build a portfolio of multifaceted skills that can be applied to any vocation. This includes the ability to express themselves in a range of capacities.

Who in their right mind then, could deny the educational and vocational importance of drama?

My tongue is only ever so slightly in my cheek here.

Of course education is, and needs to be, in a constant state of self evaluation but this conservative revisionism seems suspiciously like Gove pushing his own personal agenda for education and not considering the learning needs of today's youth.

This is unacceptable!

As I frequently tell my students, we are here for them not the other way around.

And to Gove and his fundamentalist agenda I say this.

Self expression is not a frivolity.

Culture is not a luxury.

And unless your government is prepared to consider a more holistic approach to education that balances academia, vocational training, physical exercise and artistic expression... Well expect to see a lot of PhDs discussing Ulysses in the dole queue!

Film Review : Black Swan

2011-01-23T12:16:00.000-08:00

Dance.

It's often said that dance is the truest form of expression. The distillation of emotion, thought and primal urges into movement is an anthropologically fascinating tenet shared by all cultures the world over. We have been dancing long before we learned to draw, write and read.

It's interesting, then, to consider the cinematic treatment that dance has had in recent memory. From Dirty Dancing to Billy Elliot to Step Up, dance has been treated as a sublimination of sexual or violent urges in a fairly superficial and perfunctory way. Sure, we've seen some wonderfully choreographed movement, and if people have been motivated to pursue dancing in whatever capacity by watching Street Dance 3D then that's fantastic, but there is a whole psychological (and indeed psychosexual) subtext to dance that has been relatively neglected in cinema.

Or, at the very least not brought to the attention of mainstream American cinema.

Enter Darren Aronofsky.

A consummately independent filmmaker with a rare gift for commanding blockbuster budgets, with Black Swan the director has woven a compelling tale of obsession, jealousy and desire that manages to present a visual essay that is alternately erotic and disturbing.

Of course, Aronofsky is no stranger to tales of obsession, just check out his caustic debut Pi. Nor is he afraid to tell uncompromisingly visceral tales that embrace and subvert our baser urges, as any of the fight scenes from the The Wrestler or that scene with Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream will attest.

Black Swan is the story of Nina Sayers (played by the eerily beautiful and talented Natalie Portman- more on her later) an impoverished ballerina on the cusp of stardom. She lives in a tiny rundown apartment with her mother (Barbara Hershey) and trains relentlessly to realise her dream of being the prima for her company. For all her technical ability, however, she lacks the raw passion to convince her charismatic teacher (the ever impressive Vincent Cassel) that she has the chutzpah to play the dual roles of the white and black swan in his visonary production of Swan Lake.

Black Swan benefits from a director who appreciates and understands his subject matter. However much Aronofsky may or may not know about dance his understanding of the primal and psychological impulses that motivate the dancers' movements is undeniable.
The dance scenes are beautifully choreographed and shot with superb sound design. The camera spins and tilts and sways with Nina in extreme close up and we share every gasp of breath, every creak of joint and bone with unparralleled intimacy and intensity.

Having hooked us in, Aronofsky makes us follow Nina on a journey of obsession, seduction, betrayal and (without wanting to give too much away) on an eventual descent into madness.

Black Swan isn't perfect. It's symbolism is often on the nose to the point of being trite (Nina, for example, always wears white to symbolise her innocence until she embraces her darker impulses) and its plot twists are ever so slightly on the predictable side but it is nonetheless one of the most compelling films of the year. This is due in no small part to the cast.

The cast are uniformly excellent! This has been described in most circles as the performance of Natalie Portman's career and I think I'd be inclined to agree. Ever since I saw her in Closer I knew there was more to Ms Portman than a pretty face and it's wonderful to see that she's been given a vehicle to really demonstrate her range. I bought into every facet of her characterisation which is no mean feat given the fairly predictable bent of the narrative.
Mila Kunis exudes sexuality from every frame she's in and is a mesmerising screen presence as Nina's minxy rival Lilly (no small achievement for an actress who was previously best known as the voice of Meg in Family Guy).
Vincent Cassell is his usual alpha-male self as the dance teacher and director Thomas Leroy, casually secreting charm and so much testosterone through the screen that several women in the audience instantaneously grew beards.
There's also a surprise cameo by Winona Ryder as an embittered and self destructive former prima ballerina and favourite of Leroy's.
Barbara Hershey is also phenomenal as Nina's has been mother who walks the fine line between being consumed by an obsessively protective love for her daughter and an equally obsessive yearning for her own dance career which was cut short by her pregnancy.

Black Swan finctions perfectly as a compellingly visceral psychological thriller. When a director can make you wince at someone having their toenails cut you know they have your undivided attention. While there are a few cheap 'make you jump for the sake of it' moments that seem to plague all contemporary thrillers Black Swan takes you to the edge of your seat and keeps you there and as such does fulfils its remit with aplomb.

There's sure to be Oscar buzz for the film, Aaronofsky and Portman alike if this film can tunnel its way out from under the shadow of the brazen Academy bait that is The King's Speech.

Now, look at her swanning around like she owns the place!

The Story's Over.

2010-12-14T14:18:00.001-08:00

The lights have gone down.

The last steps have been danced.

The last lyrics have been sung.

The last lines have been spoken.

The set has been dismantled.

The theatre looks like a teaching space again and not an urban cityscape.

Yes folks, after a term of planning and a rehearsal schedule that damn near killed us Haslingden High School's production of West Side Story ended last weekend.
The more I look back at the play's run (which sold to capacity every single night) the more I'm staggered by the scale and ambition of the production. When we first began rehearsal my head of department Andy Anderson said;

"We don't do school shows here. We do professional productions."

I'm sure every drama teacher probably says that to their casts before starting work on a school play but, fuck me bumways he meant every word!

Every single person who's seen it has been bowled over by the scale and ambition of the production. The complexity and vibrancy of the dance, the quality, intensity and sincerity of the acting, the dexterity of the music and the singing. Even the set (an audacious piece of engineering pissed all over your preconceptions of a typical school show.

My only regret is that I can't post any photos on here for obvious child protection issues (we all know that the internet is full of nasty paedos!).

Don't get me wrong. This isn't an exercise in self congratulation. I'm not wanking off about how brilliant I am.

Truth be told I did chuff all, relatively speaking.

The purpose of this blog is to accredit in my own way the wonderful people who made the show what it was.

The phenomenon that is Jonathan Gleason did an amazing job with the music as did Kevin Gibbs and Gavin Peel and thanks to all for lending your musical expertise. You all made it look sickeningly easy.

Liza Barrett and Stephanie Addison choreographed dance sequences of such sophistication and ambition that I couldn't help gyrating like a spazz in the wings every time I saw them.

Martin Guppy, Nick Smith, Tom Aston, Jack Prince et al on the technical team did a phenomenal and often thankless task and weren't the bunch of whinging bastards that they were certainly entitled to be.

Lizzy Anthony did such a spectacular job as assistant director and propsmistress that I felt spectacularly inept and disorganised whenever I worked with her. I also felt like a belligerent crotchety shit juxtaposed with her ever-present smile and effortlessly breezy persona.

And Andy Anderson is an inspiration in every sense of the word. His incredible dramatic vocabulary, imaginative and ambitious vision and effortless ability to inspire the kids and us teachers alike have me in absolute awe of the bloke. It was, is and will always be a pleasure and a privilege to work alongside him.

Finally I want to acknowledge the cast.

Holy Motherfudging Monkeys, what a cast!

While there are far too many to name here they are quite simply the most talented bunch of young people I could ever imagine working with.

Thanks to everybody.

It's been an honour!

Goodbye, old friend.

2010-12-04T13:04:00.000-08:00

This is not a rant.

You will find no bilious raving here. No copious profanity or verbal assault on pop culture. If you're waiting for me to launch into an over-long onslaught on some public figure, someone who is unaccountably richer or more successful than me, then you're in for a let down. I'm not going to get all lefty and self-righteous.

I will not be using the word twunt in this blog.

This is a eulogy.

The Friday before last I had to put Molly down.

It's taken me this long to be able to bring myself to blog about it. While I realise how little entertainment or benefit readers may derive from this blog (if anyone actually still reads this thing) this is, nonetheless, a significant event in my life and I don't feel like I can resume my normal repetoire of sweary wordplay until I address it.

So, apologies if this departure disappoints you. You are no obligation to continue reading.

This is more for me than it is for you.

I'll keep it brief.

I have lost a good and loyal friend and I will miss her. I have also lost a link to my childhood and my mother. I finally realise that both are gone forever.

I've done the crying. I've done the mourning. I'm over it.

I'm fine!

But I miss my doggy.

A Message to Moyles

2010-11-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Porcine Ego-Juggernaut,

Would you be so kind as to take a sabbatical? Or better yet, give up on radio broadcasting altogether? And television broadcasting? Oh and also, don't write any more books. Or better still, smear your ample physique in bacon fat, roll around in gunpower and catapult yourself directly into the sun!

Quite simply I've had enough.

Enough of your self-indulgent monologuing about such banal topics as the quality of the sausages in your breakfast or the brisk walk you went for today.
Enough of your pathetic attempts to sound young and cool, particularly since your frame of reference appears to be Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. Chris, you're thirty six years old! Stop calling people "Dude" and telling them to "Like, get over it!". Thirtysomethings become incrementally cooler the less they attempt to assure everyone that they are 'down with da kidz'.

I'm getting just as sick of your sycophantic lackeys as well. 'Comedy' Dave was once vaguely entertaining, now it seems he only lives to kiss your arse. Dominic Byrne seems doomed for all eternity to be the brunt of your bald jokes because he hasn't the guts to call you a self-indulgent fat talentless cunt! And Aled Haydn Jones is obviously too busy conforming to every existing negative gay stereotype to possibly put you in your place.

Seriously how the fuck did Aled Haydn Jones succeed in getting any job, let alone one as high pressured as producing for BBC radio. The man could fuck up a glass of water! Has his ditsy charm really carried him all the way into his position?

I guess if making a living making up erroneous facts about provincial towns and knowing fuck all about football were easy everyone would be doing it!

Of course there's the very real possibility that I'm getting old.

Maybe my increasing fuddy-duddiness is inhibiting my ability to consume the 'yoof'-centric offal that now clogs up our prime time broadcasting. But if listening to a vanity bomb spouting off about himself, interspersed with obnoxious sounding, overproduced fluff from bands called things like MONKEYSTRINGAH and BUMFINGAZZZZ is cool then I'd rather be sad and old thanx.

LOLz

The Worst Place in England is....

2010-09-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

Burnley.

Seriously, it's official!

Cinemarse!

2010-07-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to watch Toy Story 3. It was one of the most infuriating experiences of my adult life.

Not the film, you understand. the film was beautiful, intelligent, genuinely funny, deeply moving, beautifully acted and animated and all the other accolades we've come to associate with Pixar films over the years.

No, the target of my bilious secretions in this blog post is the cinema itself!

Now, obviously with a film like this I expect big cues and small children, especially when it was the film's opening weekend as well as being the first weekend of the school holidays. In fact, the children at the screening I attended were all wonderfully quiet and well behaved. Or maybe I'm just betting more tolerant of the ankle biters in my old age. What really spoiled the experience for me wasn't the horrendous queues, the cramped screening or the really crappy location of our seats. It was the sheer bare faced cheekery of Odeon's pricing policy!

Ten frigging quid a ticket to see the film just because it was in 3D, and on top of that now you have to pay for the glasses now?!? What the flipping cock is that all about. They're ripping us off twice and what's more they're giving us very little opportunity to do anything about it.

Now, just in case I haven't made my policy on 3D absolutely clear, I loathe 3D. It is not the future of cinema. It's not even contemporary technology. 3D is nearly as old as film itself! History has shown us that it functions as nothing more than a passing fad, a shallow spectacle that people are marginally impressed by for a few minutes and then quickly get bored of. And why? Because it contributes nothing! It offers nothing other than a little more depth of field, mild headaches, a few cases of nausea and irritation at being two quid out of pocket for having to purchase a pair of ridiculous and uncomfortable glasses.
If Avatar was the film that was supposed to show us what 3D was capable of then I, like anybody else with two brain cells to rub together saw it for what it was. A multi multi multi million dollar blank squib. A turd with so many layers of polish and varnish and technical wizardry that it almost looks like a conker or a walnut but on closer inspection is still a turd. Furthermore it infantalises cinema and could potentially open the gates for more moronic summer gawp fests and further stifle the creation of anything with any more intelligence than your average spermatozoa.

3D, my lovelies is nothing more than a cynical ploy by incredibly wealthy people to part us with even more of our hard earned cash. Which is all the more annoying when cinemas don't give us an alternative. Out of more than a dozen screenings of Toy Story 3, only two were in regular 2D.

if multiplexes were run by anything other than money grubbing whores they'd give us the option of a 2D screening for every 3D screening but then it would be much harder for them to use the box office figures to create a feeble case for 3D being popular.

I'm sorry folks but great acting, a clever script and intelligent, artistic visuals will always be far more immersive than the latest techno fad that a bunch of deplorable cash counters are telling us that we want. Case in point- just look at Inception. Inventive, clever, wonderfully acted, brilliantly paced and had me on the edge of my seat from start to finish.

I'm also extraordinary hacked off with Blockbuster but that's a story for another day.

Now I'm off to listen to Rage Against the Machine while having a Nescafe. Chew on that, dichotomy fans!

A Funny Thing Happened To Me In Waterstones Yesterday...

2010-07-11T04:27:00.000-07:00

Not funny like seeing some dog poo shaped exactly like male genitals or funny like finding out that your mother is actually a robot. The other kind of funny!

Amid muted protestations I found myself hauled out of bed and flung into the car today in order to worship at the altar of greed and inanity (that is, to go shopping). Yes, my betrothed had decided that we were going to the Trafford Centre. That mocking dome of fibreglass turrets and faux marble statues with its leery emulation of Roman decadence, oh how I loathe it!

After an hour or two spent amidst ambient pop trance, thumping bass and smug shop assistants reminding me just how old and fat I'm getting I headed to the Waterstones for a little oasis of calm in the skull fuckingly dizzying world of contemporary retail.

Making a bee line for my usual nerdish cove (the sci-fi/fantasy/graphic novels section) my eye was caught by an unmanned little desk adorned with copies of a paperback with a neat little black cover. There was a printed note explaining that the author would be signing copies. I slowed but didn't stop, the author clearly hadn't arrived yet.

A disembodied voice asked me if I liked the cover. I picked a copy up and turned it over in my hands.
I did like the cover, though the novel was clearly outside the geeky realms of my usual genre of fiction. In fact in the past twelve months I doubt I've read more than two or three books from outside my usual fantasy, science fiction or horror camp. Methinks I need to expand my horizons, dear reader!

The book was called The Reluctant Mullah and the disemodied voice belonged to its author Sagheer Afzal. After a little chat about the book, a comic sideways glance at Islamic tradition and dogma with clearly cautionary undertones I decided that I could do worse than step out of my nerd hole and give it a go, so I bought myself a copy which Sagheer was only too happy to sign. As we continued our chat about the book and the author's influences Mr Afzal revealed himself to be very gracious and articulate and I decided to risk asking the question that every author must get asked ad-nauseum;

"What advice would you give an aspiring writer"

Sagheer would have been perfectly within his rights to rattle off some platitudes about believing in myself or to elbow me in the solar plexus and tell me to find my own way into the industry. Fortunately he did neither of those things and spent rather a long time jotting down a list of publishers and contacts to pester as well as giving me his permission to drop his name wherever and whenever it would be helpful to do so.

Bless!

To cut a long story short he advised me to prepare a hundred page sample of work with which to mither the prospective publishers. Of course I've spent the last twenty four hours dredging up all the unfinished, un-proofed or abandoned projects from over the past five years that have sat festering in my documents. Needless to say to my critical eye they're all shudderingly embarrassing nuggets of foulness but I live in the hope that I'll be able to polish a hundred page turd and serve it up on a nice silver tray with a doilie and hope to pass it off as a Black forest Gateaux.

In any case I'd like to sincerely thank Sagheer for giving a doe eyed newbie the time of day and to urge you all to cross your fingers. I'll let you all know when I get around to sending the pleading e mails to those publishers!

A Message to Jason Derulo

2010-07-11T04:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Jason,

Stop it!

From
Dan

John Redwood is a Knobend!

2010-06-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

"Make do and mend, peasants!"

Like many a doe eyed liberal I died a little bit inside when I came to the dawning realisation precipitated by the new coalition government. The instantaneous selling out of nearly ALL the ideals extolled by the Lib Dems' campaign was a bitter demonstration that the Lib Dems are nothing more than tories painted yellow.

Let's talk immigration. Nick Clegg went on public record as lobbying for a fair and sensitive immigration policy. Yet once he gets a whiff of power we're told that the government is literally shutting the door with permanent caps on immigration. Daily Mail readers must be jizzing in their pants! And the next person who tells me that we're 'too soft on immigrants' is going to get a sharp kick in the reproductive organs. Too soft? Tell that to the fucking ten year old asylum seekers getting segregated from their parents, interrogated to the point of harassment then unceremoniously booted out of the country. If the reactionary armchair pundits thought about it for a second then they'd realise that the more difficult we make things for genuine, legitimate immigrants then the more trouble we're likely to have with people trafficking and illegal immigration and all the horrible debasement and suffering that they inevitably entail.

Now Tory MP John Redwood is saying that we all need to 'turn the thermostat down and put a jumper on' and 'eat more vegetarian dishes'.

Fuck you, John!!

This isn't the blitz! At least those poor sods with their ration books had a moral justification for their austerity. They were trying to help the nation try to overthrow a despot!
What moral justification do we have for tightening our belts?

To perpetuate a multi billion dollar massacre in the middle east just to save political face?

Because you don't have the bollocks to come down hard enough on the Sloane Millionaire Boys Club to stop them from giving themselves multi million pound pats on the back?

I'm not bothered that my pay is being capped. Really! I earn enough to live off in relative comfort and that's really all I ask. I have everything I want. But it really raises my hackles when other public sector colleagues of mine (non-teaching staff, catering workers, Learning Support Assistants) are facing greater pay cuts that really will make their lives harder.

Nick Clegg can fuck off and all! I bought his schtick hook, line and sinker. I almost, almost believed that that reptile Cameron was the new, left leaning face of the Conservative party.

What happened to taking it off the top Nick? What happened to taking the revenue from the recession back to the greedy bankers that created it by exploiting loopholes in the tax system for personal gain?

No, no, no! It makes far more sense to take it back from the dedicated workers that pay your wages.

Business as usual for the Tories eh? The age of NeoThatcherism is truly upon us!

"I'll do it all again!"

The Abyss Gazes Also...

2010-05-30T07:01:00.000-07:00

For months I thought I was ranting into an abyss, howling into empty space at the world's petty injustices like a two year old bawling their lungs out on the naughty step.

But it seems I have an audience.

The other day a colleague said to me in conversation that he liked my blog.

After the first flush of gratification came a vague sense of dread. My online persona was leaking into my 'real world' activities. This would be fine if my online persona weren't such a self righteous, vitriolic, cantankerous old twatbag spouting off semi considered rantings about matters he only superficially understands. The howling defamation I reel off without a second thought when blogging might be elevated from 'a bit of harmless fun' to 'potential trouble' if linked to my personal or professional life.

My spider sense really started tingling when said colleague informed me that he was directed to my blog by a girl I teach in year ten (you know who you are, traitor!) who sent him a link.

Now this presents me with a dilemma.

Do I abandon blogging altogether so as not to risk the potential repercussions of cranking out murderous bilge over the internet? This certainly seems like the most sensible thing to do, although the (rather massive) part of me that's riddled with inferiority complexes and insecurities would miss the warm, glowy feeling that comes with knowing your work is being read and (seemingly) enjoyed.

Do I carry on and sanitise my blog, taking the time to have a really good think about what I write and who it might offend before I assault the keyboard? There's a modicum of sense in this too, but inevitably my writing would be at best tepid and at worst painful to read if it were robbed of the venom that makes it what it is. I'm not sure I'd want to be castrated by the burden of being considerate.

I suppose I could have the best of both worlds by abandoning this blog and starting a new one under a different name, one not to easily accessible to my students, but the logistical cock ache of all that is one I can do without. Not to mention the fact that I could well be robbing myself of what may be my only readership.

Whatever I do (which will more than likely be absolutely nothing), the caveat here is that I now know I have an audience and that audience represents a potential clash between my online and professional personas.

The abyss gazes also!

Cross (at) Examinations

2010-05-27T12:34:00.001-07:00

"GCSEs and A Levels are getting easier!"

Every time I hear this sentence or read it in print I want to punch the person who write it really hard in the genitals. Then burn every existing copy of the sensationalist jizz rag they work for. Then blow the ash up their bumhole with a trumpet!

Are some people really so arrogant that they can't possibly concede the possibility that the new generation might be working harder than they did in their student years? I wouldn't mind but these are usually exactly the sort of self opinionated tossrags who whinge about the state of education and bellowing at the top of their voices about results.

After a term of killing myself to ensure that each and every student I teach gets the best possible grade they're capable of it really irks me that two years' combined efforts of my students and myself as a teacher will be reduced to an entry on some league table to be scrutinised by people who have no conception of how teachers sweat blood to help their students achieve.
Worst case scenario, they don't do as well as statistical projections indicated and I have to put up with a year of scrutiny and patronising lesson observations.
Best case scenario, they do really well and the arm chair pundits start bleating on about 'dumbing down' of the exams.

It's enough to give you an itchy trigger finger.

It's like running a marathon on an empty stomach and being greeted at the finish line by a morbidly obese bloke who sneers that he 'expected you to do it faster than that' then buries his face in a pork pie!

It's a total fallacy too because if anything exams are a damned sight harder than they were ten years ago. The stuff I'm currently teaching my A level students, I'm still struggling to comprehend and that's after studying drama at postgraduate level. Moreover my A level and GCSE classes contain some of the most intelligent, perceptive, diligent and hard working young people on the planet who certainly put in a fuck's sight more effort than I ever did at school.

Hopefully they'll achieve more as a result and not end up a flabby embittered failure like yours truly!

Lib Lab Lib Con Blah Blah

2010-05-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

Foreword: You might wonder at my restraint for not blogging at all during the election. This is partly because of being busy, partly because of intellectual fatigue, and partly because I am slowly coming to the realisation that nobody actually cares what I think. Nonetheless I am sufficiently irked to launch another tirade even if I am ranting into a vacuum!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You've all seen Lethal Weapon 2 right?

Picture that ever so climactic scene. Danny Glover sits quivering atop the explosive-rigged toilet seat. Mel Gibson and his elite team of bomb squad experts meticulously and sweatily attempt to coax the delicate and complicated trigger system into submission.

As the bomb squad's shaky hesitant pliers approach the green wire Danny Glover suddenly starts thrashing his legs around and screaming;

"Hurry up, hurry up! For fuck's sake I'm sick of waiting. My ass has got pins and needles. Waaah Waaahhhhh!!!!!!!!"

The bomb explodes reducing Messers Glover, Gibson et al. to a roiling cloud of fire, barbecued flesh and sewage.

Well... Perhaps that's not what happens in the film but it is a distressingly apt allegory for the current state of the nation.

I'm sick to the hairy tits of hearing people whinge about how long it's taking the Lib Dems to come to an agreement with either the Labour or Conservative parties.
For fuck's sake! Do you seriously want decisions that will affect the political and economic landscape to be made arbitrarily or under duress?

I have to admit to a degree of self satisfaction at Nick Clegg's arguable position as Kingmaker in the face of what appeared at first to be an embarrassing under performance on election night.

Part of me is really holding out for a red and yellow coalition in the vain hope that the lib Dems could help return the Labour party to its socialist, egalitarian roots instead of being the most archetypal Tory government since the Thatcher years, wrapped up in a red flag.

I mean come on!

The Labour Government was at best complacent and at worst complicit as the wealthy feathered their nests in solid platinum throughout the Blair years to the point where the economy collapsed under the strain of all the upper class self service.

I'm less enthusiastic about the (far more likely) prospect of a Lib Con coalition but this is mostly fueled by a deep seated distrust of the conservative party coupled with my growing certainty that David Cameron is a robot.

Maybe I'm being too harsh or letting my views become unduly clouded by prejudice. I think you could make a solid argument that David Cameron is the most left leaning Tory leader in recent memory.

Mind you, that's a bit like saying Freddy Krueger is the most entertaining child murderer in recent memory!

"Big society!!!"

A letter to Tim Burton

2010-03-13T10:31:00.000-08:00

Dear Tim,

I never thought I’d have to write to you in this way. I never thought that I’d be driven into this position, but I’ve decided that as much as it pains me to admit it…
I’ve fallen out of love with you!
Now, I wash I could say that it’s not you, it’s me but I’m afraid that the truth is quite the reverse. You’re not the director I fell in love with any more. You’re no longer the whimsical maestro who juggled fantasy and reality dextrously with a wry wit and a quirky visual sensibility. You’ve become an impersonation of yourself, a pastiche of visual flourishes and cinematic quirks that fuse together jarringly, if at all, with about as much substance as a vegan double cheeseburger.

Of course, I should have seen this coming. Our relationship’s been on rocky ground for years. Should I have called it quits after Planet of The Apes? Should I have noticed how tired you seemed when doing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Mind you, I was a kid when we first met! Remember 1989? What a wide eyes tousle headed sprout I was when you first bamboozled me with your first Batman film. Then when I was a little bit older I discovered Beetlejuice. Sure, I barely had the faintest idea what was going on but I knew that this brand of grotesque and yet still non-threatening surrealism was exactly my cup of tea… or glass of Vimto to use the appropriate age : beverage ratio.

As I grew up, so did you, churning out films of increasing complexity and substance behind the sublime visuals such as Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow and, surely your finest moment… Big Fish. Never had I seen a film that danced so nimbly along the borders of reality and fantasy in such an involving and moving way.

Then of course there was your animated work, which championed the virtues of stop-motion animation. How admirable of people like yourself and the excellent Nick Park to remind us all just how impressive and valid stop-motion animation remains in this world of computerised jiggery pokery. Yes, I know you didn’t direct The Nightmare Before Christmas but the characters, themes and plot were all you, and it is to the DVD of that film that I owe my thanks for introducing me to your wonderful early shorts Vincent and Frankenweenie.

What made you lose that magic, Tim? What made you stop being that middle aged little boy who saw the world through a child’s eyes with the bluish blackish tones of cynicism and wit that could only have come with adulthood? Was it money? Contentment? Parenthood? What made you loose that fine edge?

I realised that the end was nigh last week when I saw Alice In Wonderland. Or, to rename it more aptly, Alice in Meh-land!

Dammit, Tim! It should have been perfect!!

Everything about Lewis Carroll’s surrealist classic clearly marks it as prime Tim Burton fodder.

Juxtaposition between fantasy and reality? Check!

Retreats from an arbitrary and impersonal society into a much more personal fantasy world? Check!

Quirky and interesting characters? Check!

Potential for stunning visuals? Big old Check!

Then why did the end result look like a third year film production student trying to make a Tim Burton film. I wanted to grab that non-existent bum fluff faced tax dodging auteur-in-training and scream;
”SPINDLY TREES DO NOT A TIM BURTON FILM MAKE! THE PRESENCE OF JOHNNY DEPP DOES NOT A TIM BURTON FILM MAKE!!!”

And while we’re on the subject, you are aware that there are other actors on the planet right? Don’t get me wrong, Mr Depp is a fine actor and you did him a great favour in lifting him out of the teen heart throb bargain bin and making a respectable actor of him but you’ve miscast the man so many times it’s getting frankly ridiculous.

I know you began your career as an animator for Disney. Was this some sort of ‘fuck you’ to the institution that snubbed all those lovely concept drawings you did for straight to video snore fest The Black Cauldron?

Well, at least I can say I saw it in 2D.

Maybe I’m being unnecessarily harsh. Perhaps I’m just sore that one of my greatest childhood influences has become an avatar for angsty, pierced-nosed 14 year old girls who characterise themselves as “like, alternative?’ and define their existence by what sort of Nightmare Before Christmas pencil case they got from the Disney shop.

I’m afraid you’ve delivered one disappointment too many and, while I will still continue to pay to watch your films it will be without the child eyed optimism I once had.

You’re going in my over brimming cynicism bin!

Take a break. Watch your children grow. Spend a bit of quality time with the lovely Helena. I’ll come back when Tim Burton films feel like Tim Burton films again!

Dan
x

My Old China (Big Up-China Mieville)

2010-03-06T02:32:00.000-08:00

Spring is on the way folks.

The increasingly persistent presence of natural light and a gradual end to the nightmarish snow and frost are having a warming effect on even my perpetually grey and drizzly perspective.
Concurrently, I have stumbled upon several things which I think are genuinely excellent that have genuinely added to my quality of life. The first (nerd alert!) is Batman : Arkham Asylum on the X Box 360 which contains all the fun, excitement and sadistic scaremongering a Batman game should have. The second if Charlie Brooker (*sigh* Charlie Brooker)'s wonderfully bilious current affairs satire, Newswipe which is easily the best thing of it's ilk since The Day Today.

The Time Traveller's Wife, which I though was going to be complete bilge was surprisingly excellent and very moving indeed (both the film and the book).

Then of course there's my big discovery, China Mieville, who is fast becoming one of my favourite authors since the other week when I devoured his anthology Looking for Jake and Other Stories and yesterday I began to bury myself in his 2000 opus Perdido Street Station. Not since Jeff Vandermeer has a writer of science fiction / fantasy so impressed me with such a brilliantly unique imaginary world that, for all its surrealism offers vistas of history, culture, art and technology simultaneously utterly divorced from our own and exactly the same. Mieville's prose is alternately witty, moving and terrifying and roughly forces the reader to veer between emotional states with aplomb.

If you haven't read his work I heartily reccomend that you give it a go!!

Well I'd best be off now as I'm off down the gym and to get what little remains of my hair cut.

Toodles!

Telemiserable!

2010-02-23T11:27:00.000-08:00

Every now and then I dip my toe back into the waters of Lake Television just to see if there's anything worth looking at swimming about in there. Of course I quickly withdrew it when I realised it was the exact same stagnant swarm up bile and turds that I remember it being.

Neither Katie Price nor Peter Andre are particularly interesting or amiable people. They have no valuable insights, thoughts, dreams or reflections that are likely to change the face of humanity. They are, in fact, two cretins swept up in a twisted whirlpool of their own misplaced vanity and the fundamentally exploitative nature of the media. The idea of spending air time inflicting both of their tawdry lives on us now that they occupy different branches of the space time continuum is utterly beyond me.

All soaps are awful and anyone who watches them is a fucking idiot!

Cheryl and Ashley Cole have ended their farce of a marriage. Good for them, but really what business is it of ours? The fact that we appear to care so much about what these beautiful idiots do with their genitals is almost as worrying as the fact that it took up more news space than a deeply worrying story about a vulnerable man with learning difficulties in Luton was tortured and beheaded for fun! I actually think Cheryl Cole is fairly harmless (if you're not a toilet attendant) and seems quite pleasant but there's no way she should command the wealth and power that she does in her industry. Mozart changed music forever and dies penniless. All she's ever done is make some nice sounds with her mouth!

Even a potentially interesting BBC Three documentary about vampires I investigated on i-player turned out to be a massive let down; an endless parade of whip-pans around a sexxxy young historian to a throbbing background of ambient technopop. After a few token nods to the roots in central American and eastern European myth and a passing tip of the hat to Bram Stoker's genre defining Dracula the doc moved straight into more teen-friendly fare like Interview With The Vampire and the odious Twilight saga. Bella Lugosi and Christopher Lee were rendered little more than a footnote in a documentary that seemed far more concerned with plugging the current series of Being Human and reminding me just how beautiful and pale Robert Pattinson is.

Actually, perhaps I'm being a trifle harsh. I actually rather liked Interview With The Vampire, Robert Pattinson is a fine young actor (in fact I don't even know why I view him as being in a completely different generation, he's only 4 years younger than me). And I hear from reliably tasteful sources that Being Human is, in fact, excellent which brings me to my next point.

Because of the shittness of TV in general I find myself missing nuggets of greatness because of my inability to wade through the dross to get them. The sublime Charlie Brooker's zombie Big Brother shocker Dead Set completely passed me by, as did the first series of the aforementioned Being Human, and there's no hope of me ever getting the opportunity of catching up with The Wire so I wish everyone would stop telling me to 'give it a go'!

New Years Revolution

2010-01-04T13:13:00.000-08:00

"Hi everybody,

Well with the dawning of the New Year (indeed New Decade!) I've decided that it's time for a change!

No more bad food for me. No more frozen ready meals or large double whopper meals.
No more evenings osmosing into the sofa in front of property shows arising only to fetch the large tub ofMinstrels left over from Christmas.

I'll buy some new shorts and sports towels. That'll make me fitter instantaneously. Ooh and trainers too!

I've decided that I'm going to completely change my life! Hell, I think I'll learn a new language. Perhaps I'll get one of those books that comes with a CD!

Ooh and I'm quite certain my brain could be fitter. Perhaps I'll buy a Nintendo DS and one of those brain training games. Or one of those delightful books by Carol Vorderman?!

This time next year I'll be a completely new person in mind and body. In fact, I think I'll throw out my entire wardrobe and buy a new one in which everything is a size smaller. You know, to motivate me and that? Hmmm.... Perhaps I'd better make it two sizes?"
...................

Aren't people who come out with stuff like that utter deplorable cuntwipes?

Let's face it. If you haven't got the willpower or presence of mind to change your reality TV centric parody of your life on any of the other 364 days of the year your chances of achieving Nietzschean perfection on the 1st of January seems remarkably unlikely.

I've had to endure a whole days' worth of bleatings from educated men and women who really should know better!

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for self-improvement and I've written enough whiny blog posts about how I'm struggling to attain my hopelessly unrealistic goals to know when I'm sailing dangerously close to being a hypocritical twunt.

In fact what really irks me is the increasingly cynical market in 'resolutionism' with a slewth of new exercise videos, diet books and brain training devices with ludicrously crass celebrity endorsements.
I look forward to falling about with contemptuous laughter when the inevitable 'Katie Price's Brain Training' or 'Kerry Katona's Twelve Step Detox' makes its way onto the market. Perhaps we're only tewnty four months away from Nadya Suleman's Baby Fat Buster?

Trite and mawkish though it sounds, I'm steadily coming to the realisation that there are very few problems in life that can be solved instantaneously and fewer still that we can buy our way out of.
...
Other than not having a new 5.1 blu ray home cinema system with TrueHD surround and DTS HD, which is the quandry I'm in at the minute!

Kestrel Swilling House of Mystery

2009-11-22T13:55:00.000-08:00

A neighbour opposite me moved out some years ago. he has since let his property out to several tenants who have come and gone over the last twenty four months. At the risk of sounding all Daily Mail and elitist (thereby exposing my latent snobbery) the people that have moved in over the years have become incrementally chavvy with every new lease. Before the current tenants moved in there was a very young couple who churned out babies at a rate that directly contravened the minimum human gestation period.

And three months ago the mystery man or woman moved in.

I'm not sure who the mystery man or woman is but I know for a fact they they're a heavy smoker, enjoys strong cheap lager and is probably unemployed. The reason for this is that every morning when I leave for work and every afternoon when I arrive home there is a man or woman sitting on the front doorstep smoking and swilling from a can of lager while staring vacantly into teh middle distance and thinking no doubt anti-social thoughts.

Now, here's the thing!

It's always a different man or woman sitting on the step. Always!

Nonetheless, the cigarettes and alcohol and setereotypically chav like appearance are consistenty present.

Can anyone help me out here? Has some sort of shapeshifter taken up residence on my street or has a very small community centre opened in the house opposite? Is my mysterious new neighbour some sort of crack dealer or escort and all I see is their carcinogen imbibing clients. I certainly hope not as I often see a number of them pushing prams as they smoke drink and exchange ringtones.

Can anybody help me out here? I genuinely haven't got a fucking clue!

P.S. please don't bother to point out the irony that for all my socialist rantings the above post might as well have been written by Richard Fucking Littlejohn.

Re : Kindle

2009-11-09T09:53:00.001-08:00

For quite some time now, I've been getting spam e mails encouraging me to pre-order a Kindle.

I have to say it's nice to know that the people responsible for distributing spam mails are aware of my interest in literature as well as my enthusiasm for attaining 'l0ng3r lasting 3recti0ns' and having 'expl1cit dates with H0T local s1ngles'.

Having had a look at the product it strikes me as the most inherently pointless and redundant appliance a human being could ever spend two hundred smackers on!

Kindle, (if you didn't know already) is an e-book reader and it's selling point is that it has the weight and dimensions of a paperback book. Wow! So I can read an e-book just like an actual book for a mere forty times the price!!

Of course it defends itself by boasting to hold up to 1,500 books within its sexxxy digital memory and through some sort of miraculous wireless networking allows you to download e-books from almost anywhere in the world. Effectively this offers you a vast portable library where ,theoretically, a vast catalogue of titles are never more than a click away.

While this sounds impressive, has anyone ever attempted to lug over a thousand books around with them on holiday? Does anyone even need to?!? It often takes me at least 2 or 3 days to get through a decent sized book and the chances of me being able to get through more than five or six for however long a jaunt that I'd propose to take a Kindle on. And I certainly wouldn't want to read more than one at a time, now, would I?

The way they're trying to market it, Kindle is trying to be to books what the i-pod was to music. When you think about it, though, that's all a complete load of rancid penile discharge!
The average pop song is 2-3 minutes in length, necessitating a good few tracks to be on demand if it's being taken out for any longer than ten minutes. Why, oh why would anyone need hundreds upon hundreds of books on demand?

It's not like the downloadable e-books are cheap either! Bestsellers and new releases average at about $9.99 when most of the exact same books are available as hardbacks for around $6.99 USD on Amazon! To convert my existing, shelf warping library into sexxy ephereal e-books would bankrupt me. Not to mention the inevitable piracy shitstorm that arises from the wealth of torrent websites from which e-books can be downloaded for free.

In short, I surmise that Kindle is the most pointless and redundant invention since the penis flavoured condom and I shall certainly find better things to spend nearly two hundred quid on this Christmas!

Tempestuous Times

2009-11-03T13:15:00.000-08:00

Well violate my puckered sphincter if it hasn't been an inordinately long time since my last blog post. You will forgive me for this, but my diminished online presence has been the result of being occupied with many varied occupations too dull to go into here. Highlights include marking year 10 coursework and redecorating my in-laws' bedroom.

The Monday before last, however, was the day my hard working and wonderful (though smelly and spotty) cast of adolescents performed The Tempest at the Shakespeare Schools Festival which was hosted by the Preston Charter Theatre.

Both myself and my fellow director (the lovely and talented Lizzy Anthony) entered our kids (our students, not our illegitimate love children) into the festival thinking it would be a great way to get young people to engage with Shakespeare in an exciting and dynamic way.

On observing our competitors' entries into the festival it seemed that we were totally wrong in our belief!

It turns out that the actual aim of the festival was to offend the ancient, decomposed corpse of the bard to the point where he actually rises from the grave and destroys his collected works in shame!

To say that the other schools' entries were shit would be like referring to the bombing of Hiroshima as a minor impediment to the city's public transportation network.

Having said that, I harbour no blame against the students who did their best despite their oh-so-evident apathy and the fact that they'd probably much rather be sniffing glue and cranking out bastard babies. No, my venom is directed entirely at the teachers who conducted themselves with so little sense of occasion, enthusiasm or team spirit you'd think they were there to sort and colour co-ordinate Nick Griffin's cum-stained underwear.

They'd clearly applied this attitude to their rehearsals as well since in the dress rehearsal students frequently fluffed their lines, called for prompts, chatted amongst themselves, fidgeted and committed all manner of sins that Lizzy and myself would have cheerfully disemboweled our students for doing.

First came A Midsummer Night's Dream, or more aptly A Midsummer Night's Doze. Dead eyed students went languidly through the motions with only the animated and charismatic young boy playing Bottom giving the play anything like its much needed comic appeal.

Then came a rendition of Hamlet that was about as respectful to the memory as Shakespeare as exhuming his corpse and pissing into his empty, wasted eye socket. First of all, Hamlet is not a play suited to strong scouse accents! After the third or fourth rendition of "What 'o 'amleh!" I became sure that my brain would implode with rage. But that was before the completely out of place and unneccessary street dance interlude.

You heard me!

A fucking street dance interlude!

In cunting Hamlet!

Our students, however performed with professionalism and aplomb and even drew comments and compliments from the theatre's tech and management staff. Lizzy and I were filled with quasi-parental pride as were the great many other teachers who'd turned out to the theatre to support our students.

For all the pissing and moaning I do about my job it really is a priviledge to be working with such hard working, dedicated and talented kids. I'm immensely proud of them and really grateful that they showed me so aptly what it is I love about my job!

P.S.

Apologies for the stock image but a) I didn't take any photos of the performance proper and b) since the internet is used almost exclusively by paedophiles I didn't want to put myself in an awkward position of putting photos of minors on t'interweb!

BNPeeved!

2009-10-22T14:10:00.000-07:00

Apologies for having two consecutive political rants on these blogs but you can blame the world we live in for being so ludicrous!

In just under half an hour the curmudgeonly far right countenance of BNP leader Nick Griffin will be filling my screen as he attempts to hold his own against actual politicians on Question Time.

The news today was deluged with reports of protesters picketing the studios and spewing pints of roiling bile at the BBC for allowing the self deluded Nazi onto the program. Now, as you may have guessed, I'm not a fan of Nick Griffin and I find the BNP to be a loathsome, hatemongering sham of a party that represents a vast fecal stain on the Union Jack. I do, however, feel a twinge of sympathy for the largely elderly and ignorant masses who have voted for the party having been fooled by their empty promises to get Britain back to 'the way it used to be!'.

Of course this conservative argument for returning Britain to some sort of elusive glory of yesteryear is complete bollocks but I can't blame those who feel alienated from their current time to find comfort in the idea of a returning, comfortable bygone year, even if it is one that never necessarily existed!

What really makes me die laughing is this notion that there was ever a monocultural Britain that Griffin keeps alluding to. Trying to enforce racial purity on a nation that the Celts, Romans, Norse, Normans and countless other peoples and cultures have dipped their toe into over the centuries is utterly ludicrous!

As much as I loathe Griffin I'm not at all impressed by the footage I saw of militant lefties being dragged out of the studio by BBC security staff squealing 'Pig' and 'Nazi' at anyone wearing a badge. The camera crews couldn't have chosen to lock their lenses two more stereotypical backpack wearing leftie students that looked like something out of a Viz strip either! Such petulant protestation can only damage the left's credibility.

As much as I sympathise with their sentiment, we have to trust in the people to recognise bigotry and hatred when they see it and to try to sensor Griffin's voice on television only adds to his smug assertion that he's the voice of Britain's silent majority.

I'm sick of hearing the bloated racist cunt bleating on about how he's saying what the people of Britain are thinking but that he is quashed by a media overcome by 'political correctness gone mad'.

So fuck him!

Let him have his say. I seriously don't think his presence on question time will lend the BNP any sense of legitimacy.

Quite the opposite, I think such a forum will allow the people of Britain to see him for what he is.
We have to face the fact that wherever people have differences we must be prepared to face prejudice, but sensoring people like Griffin out of awkwardness or fear isn't the way to combat it!

Tory Blair

2009-10-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

I see that fucking reptile David Cameron, smug and secure in the knowledge that he's inevitably going to be my Prime Minister, is going out of his way to rub my nose in it!

Thanks to the Tory twat and his Eton entourage (Etontourage?) hogging Manchester City Centre for their party conference, the center of Manchester is now even more harrowing and incomprehensible to drive around!

How can anyone who claims to have the best interests of the country at heart cause such wanton disruption?

Why can't they use the conference facilities at the Oldham Road Holiday Inn like everybody else? Don't they do the chocolate eclairs in the shape of crying orphans that you like, David?

Actually I'm quite surprised that so many people act with astonishment when I voice my loathing for Cameron.
What really irks me is the party's relentless attempts to depict him as an atypical Conservative Party candidate. Saying that David Cameron is the new liberal face of the Tory party is like saying that Katie Price is then new cerebral face of English literature!

And their slogan, Time for Change?!?

Bollocks! have you actually sat and read their policies?!?

Look at all this shite about getting people on incapacity benefit back into work. New Labour have been banging that draconian drum for ages! Not only that, but such a policy really encapsulates the loathesomeness of both parties!

Say on TV that you're going to get the incapacitated back into work and you'll immediately draw applause from right-of-centre armchair pundits who assume, without a shred of evidence, that everyone on incapacity benefit is a flea bitten dole scrounger who occasionally complains of a bad back and sleeps on a huge pile of money watching Jeremy Kyle on his plasma screen.

The truth is that the vast majority of those on incapacity benefit are on it for a reason! Its not like doctors sign people off work for life if they collect enough fucking Benadryl coupons!

And where are these people going to work? I don't want some poor sod with cerebral palsy to endure agonising discomfort and humiliation just so he can make me a McFlurry!

Even is you completely overlook the human rights side of things and look at it from a purely practical point of view, these people are not going to be able to do these jobs as well as someone who isn't in crippling pain or enduring repetitive stress injuries the whole time.

Besides which, where are these thousands of jobs going to come from? Isn't unemployment at its highest in nearly two decades?

Are Eastern European immigrant workers now going to be struck off, to find themselves sipping beer and slurring over This Morning about the monopends who took their jobs?

The Long, Hard Road

2009-10-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Due to nearly all films being shit these days, I'm not as up to date with up-coming movie buzz as I once was. I have, however been aware for quite a while that a big screen adaptation of Cormack McCarthy's melancholy post-apocalyptic masterpiece "The Road" is in the works.

"The Road", for all you illiterate ignoramuses (or is it ignorami?) out there is the story of a father and son's increasingly desperate attempts to survive in the aftermath of an apocalypse (the nature and cause of which are hinted at but never explicitly mentioned)

I must say, without hesitation that I love that book. I cried like a prepubescent girl at the ending (not just a little bit either but loads and loads, like a prepubescent girl who's just been forced to watch her Dad raping her entire collection of teddybears!). Despite my love for those bittersweet 307 pages of abject misery I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to make a film out of it.

For one thing, nothing happens! Seriously!

The relentless, even oppressive monotony of the characters' day to day lives is part of what makes it work so well. While this makes for compelling reading, where we're privy to the character's inner turmoil it makes for a pretty fucking dull celluloid experience.

In fact, how long's the screenplay? I can't imagine how it's more than 2 pages at the most!

In fact, here you go 'Hollywood', have this screenplay I've just written myself in 3 minutes!

FADE IN:

EXT. CHARRED REMAINS OF SOME NON SPECIFIC AMERICAN TOWN

FATHER AND SON ARE WALKING DOWN 'THE ROAD'

FATHER

Let's get something to eat.

SON

There isn't anything.

FATHER

Okay.

THEY WALK SOME MORE

FATHER

Let's eat our shoes!

SON

Okay

THEY EAT THEIR SHOES AND WALK SOME MORE

SON

My feet hurt!

THEY WALK SOME MORE

FATHER

Uh oh, bandits!

A HORRIBLY ANTICLIMACTIC ENCOUNTER HAPPENS.

THEY WALK SOME MORE

SON

We're going to die, aren't we

FATHER

Probably!

SON

Okay.

THEY WALK SOME MORE

FADE OUT.

On the plus side, the always excellent Viggo Mortensen is in it. When i was reading it I thought to myself;

"If this were to be made into a film, Viggo Mortensen would have to play the father. But nobody would ever make this book into a film because that would be mental!"

Anyway, I'll probably give it a look, but I simply can't see how it would work!

In the meantime, everyone watch No Country For Old Men, then read the book, then watch the film again! That's definitely the best way to experience it!

Potterphillia

2009-10-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

Taste. It's a funny old thing (not to mention completely transient).

For years I was perfectly happy to allow the cultural phenomenon that was / is Harry Potter completely pass me by. The books first emerged when I was in my teens and I was peripherally aware of them, but of course the real 'Potter boom came in 2001 with the release of the first film.

By then I was a newly anointed undergraduate and (despite my growing collection of comics and graphic novels) undergoing a massive literature-snob phase. At the time my impressions of the franchise were fairly derisive. The premise seemed a little outdated, effectively Jennings or Just William with superpowers. I imagined the series to be some drawling 'growing pains' allegory and I couldn't have given a ha'penny jizz for the adolescent yearnings of yet another scruffy haired pubescent angst valve!

Of course there was an inherent hypocrisy in this. My love of all things superheroic clearly demonstrates my taste for adolescent power fantasies. I suppose the beginnings of the grumpy twat I was about to become were first stirring and I didn't want to jump on the band wagon of a younger (and obviously inferior) generation's cultural iconography.

I attempte to watch the original film once or twice. I saw very little that wasn't being done better in The Lord of the Rings. And so it was that I left Harry Potter, Hogwarts and the various other registered trademarks well alone and was none the poorer for having had nothing to do with them.

But then, people change and my newly emerged enthusiasm for Harry Potter came with my newly emerged enthusiasm for another figure whom I had previously reviled.

I used to think of Mark Kermode as a self important, pseudo-intellectual cad, who disparaged popular cinema purely because it was popular cinema. but as my cinematic tastes (and bloated sense of self righteousness) evolved I found myself becoming more and more wont to concur with 'the good doctor' to the point where I am now a regular listener to the podcast he shares with the amiable but dull Simon Mayo.

Anyway it was through Kermode's review of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince that my interest in the franchise was peaked. Hints at certain plot points and references to some of the set pieces made me realise that there was perhaps meatier, more mature fare contained within the books than I had given J.K. Rowling credit for. I had been vaguely aware that the series became progressively darker and more mature with each instalment (presumably to service it's maturing audience) and resolved to rediscover the books and films, even if I had to wade through the more juvenile opening instalments to get to the good stuff.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I fell in love with the first book within 20 pages.

Despite my way to push my way past the kiddie's table to get to the bar (how's that metaphor working for you?) I found that the very innocence and wholesomeness I thought I'd rail against made the book infinitely charming and wonderful. Fond childhood remembrances of hunching over the Narnia books, The Hobbit and Just William with a duvet cover over my head came flooding back and the pleasant sense of nostalgia and wholesome fun remained with me throughout the book.

I'm now just finishing The Prisoner of Azkaban (book 3 for the uninitiated) and am awaiting the second and third films in the series in my Lovefilm queue.

Rather than railing against a power fantasy out of the reach of my age demographic I found myself caring about the characters, not because I identified with them (or aspired to be them, as I would have as a younger reader) but I had come to see them as almost surrogate nieces and nephews, not unlike my reaction to some of the very young kids I teach.

The 'growing pains' sections of the books I enjoyed not with aspiration or identification but a sort of knowing, fond remembrance and for that reason, I'm quite glad I came across the series approaching my 30s and not approaching my teens.

Of course, the books present very little in the way of new ideas and pretty much everything is re-appropriated from some other branch of popular mythology, with references to gryphons, the philosopher's stone and even cerberus abound in the books. Then again, this is nothing new and nto a criticism that the likes of Tolkein or CS Lewis are above!

The Potter books have an inherent wholesome charm like the works of CS Lewis and the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve and are a welcome addition to the pop culture canon to which I'll be forcefully exposing my unborn children.

Nobody Puts Swayze In The Coroner's!

2009-09-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that by now news of the death of the 'Swayz has reached your ears and / or eyes!

While it would be tokenistic to posthumously elevate Patrick into the pantheon of great actors of our time there was something intrinsically likeable about the man, despite his often less than inspired career choices.

Nonetheless it was Swayze's affable persona and undeniably tongue in cheek screen presence that led to him being the sole redeeming feature in a great many terrible films (Road House, Tiger Warsaw etc.)

And, let us not forget that Pat did turn in some really quite good performances!

His turn as the uber cool, amoral armed robber / extreme sports enthusiast / armchair philosopher Bodhi elevated Point Break from being just another early 90s buddy picture.
Mind you, I could probably train a pomegranate to steal a scene from Keanu Reeves.
Not to mention his surprisingly moving performance as murdered yuppie banker Sam Wheat in Ghost! Even if you didn't burst into tears at the end I defy anyone not to give a toss about that character by the end of the film.

But it's as Johnny Castle that Swayze stole the hearts of generations of hormonal adolescent girls the world over. In Dirty Dancing, Swayze proved that not all male dancers are homosexual (and that some are even macho enough to wear leather jackets!). Although I can't help hating him a little for all the unrealistic expectations his character would create for generations of would-be suitors of the afore mentioned hormonal adolescent girls.

Smug, impossibly handsome dancing twat!

Shakespeareience!

2009-09-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

I wonder how many times people, on average, look back on a working day and announce cheerfully;

"I love my job!"

It's certainly taken a long time for me to clamber amongst the ranks of those happy few but today has provided an experience that has rendered all the toil, stress and hair loss of the last two years completely worthwhile!

Y'see, a select few of the unsightly rabble of self absorbed, preening adolescent luvvies that I teach have been entered into the Shakespeare in Schools Festival. Both my fellow drama teacher Lizzy Anthony and myself have worked our tits and testes respectively off, staging a (massively abridged) production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

As anybody who's tried to direct tired, cranky taurine saturated teenagers will know, the rehearsal process can be a nightmare and there have been many times when we (or certainly, I) have lost perspective of how good or bad the end product is.

Not that we haven't done our best with the material, mind!

We've tried to make the production as visually and aurally rich as possible incorporating lots of physical theatre and soundscaping to create locations and atmosphere, and there are a few moments and concepts that we feel were genuinely inspired (yes the two-headed Caliban was my idea!) but there's always been that nagging feeling that what we were rehearsing might not be as good as our egos convince us that it is. This gets especially worrysome when you're up against other schools. Not that the festival is a competitive event, but that sure as shite wouldn't stop us from wanting to put on the best production on there.

Anyway, we travelled to the Preston Charter Theatre at the Guild Hall for the kids to workshop some of their / our production for some lovely people from the National Youth Theatre.

And, fuck-me-bumways, I've never been so proud or impressed!

Not only were the kids polite, co-operative and supportive with each other and kids from other schools but the small extract they performed from our production was played with such aplomb, focus, conviction ans sheer luvvie-darling-stage-swaggering-panache it was all I could do to restrain myself from hugging them all individually, so hard their vital organs shot out of their ears.

I was impressed by the scene and I've seen it hundreds of times. The kids and teachers from the opposi- er, other schools really seemed to enjoy it too!

The experience was vaguely bitter sweet, however! I did get the familiar twinge that self indulgent thesps like myself get when watching others perform and it did remind me that it's been a long time since I've directed or acted in anything that wasn't school related.

Still, there's life in my arthritic old bones yet and I'm not quite at the age where *choke* *sob* I shall never play the Dane!

Nonetheless all the cast should give themselves an enormous pat on the back before they go out to sniff glue and have unprotected sex behind the recycling bins in front of Tesco!
They've done me proud!

Honeymoon Bleatings Part 2: People, Pandas and Engrish

2009-09-06T12:30:00.001-07:00

Jasper Carrott once said;

"Imagine Oxford Street in London on Christmas eve. That's hong Kong at 3am on a Sunday morning."

While far from being a street savvy urbanite, I've been in enough big cities to have developed a tolerance for bustle. I arrived expecting Hong Kong to be busy, but still the density of the steaming, thronging masses that clog up the connovation's concrete arteries far surpassed even my expectations. Its a minor miracle that the children of Hong Kong make it all the way to adolescence without being swept away from their parents on a tide of sweaty, work weary bodies.

Hong Kong is is an amazing place to people watch. The teeming masses negotiate the streets and catwalks between the tightly packed skyscrapers with what can only be explained as some sort of internal radar.

Nobody ever looks where the fuck they're going!

And yet they weave amongst one another with seemingly inhuman agility, with only tourists and the mentally infirm being trampled in their hurried wake or twatted about the head by the umbrellas many people carry to stave off the oppressive heat.

By way of common courtesy I usually do my best to learn a smattering of the local tongue whenever i go away anywhere but the tonal nature of Cantonese completely eluded me and thus we spent our first few days being bustled from pillar to post without being able to squeeze by with a meek; 'excuse me', 'pardon me', ' I beg your pardon, but your umbrella's in my eye', or a firm but polite; 'I don't want to have to bludgeon you to death but I will', or even a curt but civil; 'get the fuck out of my way, Cocktonsils!'

On observing the populace, though, a delightful potential hobby soon reveals itself.

Engrish spotting!

It's a well established fact that all those billions of westerners who get tattooed with the asian characters for 'Warrior', 'Love', 'Peace' and 'Dragon' are a bunch of utterly pretentions cunts! In fact, it would be poetically just if those tattoos actually said, 'Gout', 'Smegma', 'Herpes' or 'Mister Floppy' without their owners being any the wiser.
Well it turns out that it works the other way, except the residents of Hong Kong are at least smart enough to apply this dynamic to their clothing rather than getting it indellibly etched onto their bodies. Thousands of people strode the walkways of Hong kong and Kowloon wearing t-shirts adorned with bizarrely mistranslated English slogans from the opaque to the utterly meaningless. Amongst them were;

"Okay Robot, go!"

"Love touch it here, man!"

And my all time favourite;

"Guns don't kill people... People with the badness ideas kill people!"

Delightfully, though, we were able to find a few vistas of total calm and tranquility easily accessible on Hong kong island. By far the most charming are the Botanical and Zoological Gardens, which are free to enter and offer a delightful reprieve from the clammy urban crush amongst the soothing sights and scents of nature.

The park boasts a dazzlingly beautiful and comprehensive variety of plant life as well as an impressive assortment of monkeys, primates, reptiles and other furry, crawly, scaly things. Oh, and (freakishly) the stuffed remains of the park's dearly departed resident jaguar.

Here's a picture of Lauren chilling amongst the foliage.

Within equally easy reach of the civic centrum is a tram which offers an unsettligly vertical trip up to Victoria Peak which offers breathtaking views of the city.

And, of course, a wide variety of unimpressive shops and disproportionately expensive restaurants. Here's a photo of Lauren with some staggering altitude;

Being, in my teen years, a huge fan of Golden Harvest / Shaw Brothers chop-sockey flicks I was ludicsourly impressed by the ostentatious Avenue of Stars where the streets are adorned with the hand prints of some of China's biggest film stars. As such, it was a point of some personal pride, being the only white man there at the time to stop and marvel at the hand prints of lesser known Hong Kong stars such as Yuen Biao and jimmy Wang Yu. Although, I wasn't so much of a snob that I didn't queue for ten minutes to pose like a twat beneath the statue of Bruce Lee like everyone else!

But, the undisputed highlight of our visit to this glorious Chinese metropolis was a visit to the famed Ocean Park, which is essentially Blackpool Pleasure beach with pandas.

No witticisms or cynical musings on our time at this place of wonderment, I'm afraid! Just giddy childlike excitement at the prospect of seeing adorable creatures in a man made approximation of their natural habitat.

So, in lieu of cranky mutterings, quirky wordplay or gratuitous swearing let me just say;

PANDAS!

PANDAS!!

PANDAS!!!!!!

And, for the connoisseur who prefers a bit of variety in their panda there were also two Red Pandas! Red pandas are adorable lazy, happy, fuzzy tree creatures and easily my favourite animal. Obviously they're completely unrelated to their gigantic counterparts (I believe the raccoon is their closest relative) but still they're wretchedly adorable.

Check them out!

Big Bravo

2009-08-27T02:38:00.000-07:00

Very few things instill in me any sort of faith in humanity.
Fewer still are the instances in which I want to fall to my knees and weep with joy at the apparent redemption of my fellow man, and emphatically renounce all the times I've labeled the general public a bunch of "characterless cack swilling cunts!".

Still, yesterday the decision makers at Channel 4 reaffirmed my faith in humanity by axeing the narcissistic lunatic parade that is Big Brother.

Big Brother has (for better for worse) become something as a cultural zeitgeist, encapsulating the face of popular culture for the best part of a decade, transcending its televisual roots to become a media phenomenon.
When a new gaggle of self absorbed simpletons are shepherded into the Big Brother house to argue about milk and attempt to fuck eachother, a news hungry member of the populace can't help but be assaulted with images and editorial plastered all over the printed and electronic press of these conceited shits and their various forms of outlandish hair.

The fact that it has become the very institution that it has raises some very serious questions about our cultural palette.

Nonetheless, it seems that the proletariat aren't quite the thoughtless, autodidactic shitmunchers I had presumed them to be because slowly but surely they've been coming to their senses and tuning out of Endemol's progressively crass attempts to get colourful, bubbly morons to fight and fornicate on live television.

Personally I couldn't be happier, although I'm not naiive enough to assume that this is the beginning of the end for the reality TV phenomenon.
Perhaps the Hydra's biggest and ugliest head has been severed but the beast is still alive and writhing perversely at my snobbish artistic sensibilities.

Perhaps one day people will also tire of moderately talented and attractive young ladies who think that the only way into the music industry is to win it on The X Factor.

...

I can but hope!

"WANKERS!!!"

Honeymoon Bleatings- Part 1 Films, Farts and Food

2009-08-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

Picture the following scene!

You're visiting your dear and seldom seen Aunt who lives in the Cotswolds or Devon or some shit. She makes a big fuss of you and after some tea and Dundee cake you feel right at home. Just when you're kicking off your shoes preparing to vegetate in front of count down and update your Facebook status on your Blackberry you hear the old crone's reedy whine;

"Oooh, did I show you my holiday snaps, dear?"

If such a scenario makes your bowels spontaneously void with dread, or conjures up visions of you gnawing off your own metacarpals in disdain then you may want to skip by this blog post.

Essentially I'm going to be providing a brief account of our honeymoon travels with intermediate pictorial illustrations. While I'm aware of how banal and uninteresting it can be to read people's self-referential wanking on about their holidays I'll try and make the following as entertaining as possible.

Furthermore, given today's fast paced climate of instantaneous literary gratification you probably don't want to read anything too long and taxing so I'll break it down into short, concise episodes (obviously this quite long and elaborate introduction notwithstanding).

Part 1- Honk Kong

Personally I find flying long haul only marginally less uncomfortable than having my finger nails removed with pliers while a quintet of midgets rub powdered glass into my scrotum.
Breathing in several hundred people's recycled belches, sneezes and farts for twelve hours while a cataleptic stranger dribbles at your shoulder and digs their elbow into your ribs is not the ideal start to anyone's holiday! Nonetheless I was prepared to endure this torment as a necessary evil in order to experience the wonder of the orient.
Moreover we'd tried to blag our way into a free upgrade as the doe eyed honeymooners we were but the hard faced Cathay Pacific official glibly informed us that the flight was full.

Poo!

Suffice to say I didn't get a wink of sleep but fortunately the airline had a fine selection of films to keep me going. I whittled away the hours with;

* A frustratingly sanitised version of Watchmen- An adequate attempt to bring Alan Moore's iconic novel to life that (like V for Vendetta before it) lacked the depth and scope of its source material.

* Gran Torino- Trite, heavy handed and bordering on caricature at times but thoroughly entertaining nonetheless. While I'm not the biggest Clint fan he had some devastatingly cool lines here.

* Valkyrie- Tom Cruise manages to hold his own alongside such heavyweight thesps as Tom Wilkinson, Ken Branagh, Terrence Stamp and Bill Nighy (oh and, delightfully Eddie Izzard's in there as well). Reminded me that Tom Cruise is actually pretty damn good at his job even if he does believe that all negative emotions are caused by the ghosts of aliens that were dumped into volcanoes. The film's depiction of Klaus Von Stauffenberg was a little blinkered and why they didn't act the whole thing in German was beyond me as Cruise's accent and pronunciation are excellent in the opening scene!

* No Country For Old Men- Despite the meandering prose you can't take your eyes off it. Sterling performances all round and a profound reminder of why I love both the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy as much as a heterosexual newlywed can love another man.

Jetlagged and irate we arrived in Hong Kong after rigorous H1N1 screenings. By rigorous screenings I mean a card that essentially said;

"Do you have swine flu?

Yes /No"

When leaving the airport and arriving in town I'd like to say that the first thing we noticed was the monumental beauty of the architecture, the hurried but easy charm of the locals or the ruthless cleanliness of the streets.

It was, however the near crippling heat and humidity that first assailed us, coupled by the indefinable, sweetish, vaguely sweaty meat smell that seemed to permeate everywhere, emanating from innumerable restaurants, stalls and vendors.

Upon arrival at the hotel we had a little more luck blagging an upgrade and managed to rate a "superior room" (it had a heated towel rack!). After a quick nap to acclimatise to local time and shake off the jetlag we set about to explore and investigate.
Our hotel was situated on Kowloon bay and before entering Honk Kong island proper we had a scout around the locality;

A fifteen minute walk led us to a thriving marketplace where everything from

cheaply made fake designer t shirts to cheaply made fake designer watches could be obtained, and the trendy youngsters of Kowloon assembled to pass the time, shop and purchase foul but intriguing smelling snacks from less than sanitary street vendors.

Amongst the bustle of the marketplace were numerous sportswear, designer clothes and electronics outlets which we avoided, favouring the cheerfully tacky charm of what was called the ladies market. Excellently, we were also able to detect an undercurrent of sleaze with 'by the hour' hotels sharing space with sporting goods outlets and shoe shops.

It was from here that I purchased a Mooncake- a festival delicacy of Hong Kong (which, though out of season I was able to pick up quite easily). A Mooncake is a pastry delicacy about the size of a pork pie filled with lotus seed paste and the dried, whole yolks of salted duck's eggs. Eating Mooncake is an experience I can only liken to dining on a pastry covered brick made out of equal parts sugar, salt and fucking sand! How the Chinese make it to adulthood at all chomping on these as a matter of course is a mystery for me.

Speaking of food, Hong Kong is an essential visit for the gourmand. The famous Chinese saying 'If it has it's back to the sun, we'll eat it" is in full effect here and if a menu boasting jellied pig's knuckle or pickled goat's scrotum is likely to make you queasy then there are a great many blander alternatives more suitable to the western palate.
Those expecting sweet and sour chicken or beef satay may be in for a rude awakening, though and visiting China is a jarring reminder at how homogenised what we consider Chinese food actually is.
By rule of thumb one's enjoyment of a meal is in directly inverse proportion to how much one considers the ingredients that make it up, and I can honestly say that abiding by this I never had a bad meal there.
There is one staple delicacy, however that always eluded me and that was the simple Congee (a porridge of rice usually including eggs, seed pastes, vegetables, fish and / or meat) which I avoided devoutly purely because of the fact that it looked like a bowl of semen with bits of dead animal and green stuff floating in it.

Meh. No thanks!

There's still a great deal to appeal to the unenlightened though. Such western favorites as Peking duck are abundantly available and you've never tasted char siu until you've been to Hong Kong!

And if, like myself, you're a dim sum fanatic then you can find exquisite steamed balls of delicious non-specific meats pretty much everywhere you look at more than reasonable prices.

Our first two days were spent simply taking in the vastness in scale and grandeur of this unique and disparate country.

Indeed, our first visit to Hong Kong island itself (easily accessible on the cheap-as-chips Star Ferry) was spent wandering the streets agog, staring in wonderment at the sky tickling monuments to wealth, commerce and finance that towered over us.

Hong Kong is a paragon of finance, industry and wealth in stark contrast to the relative poverty traditionally associated with mainland China.

The very opulence of the island makes it hard to imagine the time barely half a century ago when the British colony was a hotbed of crippling poverty, organised crime, drug pandemics and prostitution.

NEXT

People, Pandas, and Engrish!

Perpetual Jetlag

2009-08-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back from my honeymoon! A delightful twin-centered romp first in the incomparable metropolis that is Hong kong, and then the infinitely more sedate Mauritus.

Actually, if truth be known, I've been back since last Friday but since returning I've been plagued by a near crippling lethargy. With all the inevitable nonsense that comes with being away from home for prolonged periods of time (simply sorting through the post took a whole afternoon) my brain's atrophied through long periods of doing wither nothing at all or really tedious, monotonous chores.

Any attempts to write anything of substance have fallen tits up and on their arse!

And that's before I even begin to consider the mountainous pile of planning and resources that need to be sorted out well in advance of the new term.

I'm also really becoming concerned about how atrocious my short term memory is getting. I'm finding that I'm increasingly unable to trust myself to retain anything important in my sieve like bonce. Resultantly I've taken to writing down EVERYTHING that comes into my brain on little scraps of paper like Guy Pierce in Memento.

Expect me to have "John G. stole my tricycle" tattooed across my abdomen by this time next year!

Still, not to worry. Come the end of the week I'll be boring you all rigid with an overview of the non-conjugal aspects of the honeymoon with (equally non-conjugal) pictures.

Oh, and I've also got a new Supersillyous comic strip that's abotu 60% complete that I'll try and have up by the end of the week.

Toodle Mcpip!

Still alive and resuming blogging.... Now (ish)!

2009-07-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

Well my loves.

I shudder to think at how long it's been since I last updated this blog.

In fairness I haven't updated my Myspace blog in months either. Perhaps even a year.

I am, however, with the advent of the summer hols afforded a little free time to pursue bloggy endeavours.

The first of which is my new superhero parody comic strip Supersillyous
I'll be doing my damndest to ensure that this blog is updated more often than.... never and while I'm at it I'll be giving this blog an overhaul as well.

This blog will be far more generalised from here on in and less specific to my acting and writing activities (which have been tragically scant since I started teaching to be honest).

Still I have stacked the following under my belt since I last updated here;

Written and sold 2 plays;

I'm not Here (a semi-biographical exploration of young carers dealing with alcoholism which has now been performed by a Wigan Youth Theatre group) and ToyBox Story (a lighthearted parody of Toy Story which has not yet been put into production).

Moreover I've written a ludicrously detailed and saturnine article on Batman Forever (1995) for sour faced giggle site The Agony Booth. You can read it by using your eyes and brain... here!

Anyway, I'll be seeing you all later. I'm jetting off on my honeymoon tomorrow so you won't hear a peep out of me for three weeks (oh yes, I got slightly married!).

Toodles!

And Now This Happens!

2008-01-03T08:56:00.000-08:00

I wanted to have something to show you from the Beans On Toast Monologues but my attention has been divided between several other writing thingies that have been on my enormous (and very very dusty in places back burner). Let's face it inspiration is such a rare commodity one has to grasp it when it's hovering around the immediate vicinity however divergent it may be to any self imposed schedule (thank God I don't have any deadlines to think about at present).

Below is a snippet from a short story that is quickly turning into a novella called Super - Fluous.

Enjoy;

_____________________________________________________________________

We open with a paradox.

The paradox is this.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing so spirit sappingly mundane than being Captain Amazing.

There is not a single person amongst the living populace whose vocation is less admirable, whose company is less sought after.

If lifts were still necessary to travel directly upwards at speed then most would rather die a slow and terrible death from eating drawing pins in a sulphuric acid coulis than share this small cramped transport vestibule with anyone whose existence is so tragically mundane.

Captain Amazing is a superhero.

But then again who isn’t these days?

I’ll tell you who isn’t. Absolutely no one!

There was a time when the ability to leap into the stratosphere, break the sound barrier at will and shoot beams of pure photon energy through the nostrils carried an air of prestige. Today it’s like walking into a busy barber’s shop wearing an enormous orange toupee.

Superheroes were once Demigod-like figures that walked amongst men. Revered, adored and regarded with hushed awe. People would point up in the sky and scramble amongst themselves to catch a glimpse of the benevolent and majestic figures clad in colourful tights as they soared above them.

But as time passes, genitals collide and genealogy weaves its slow but inevitable patterns amongst the populace the superhuman population rises, then spirals and finally encompasses every man, woman and child on the planet.

Remember that thing about power and responsibility?

Well there comes a time when that stops being a nice little mantra and becomes a piece of iron-clad legislation.

A time when those who wield superhuman powers are legally obliged to behave with heroism that is directly proportionate to their abilities.

The result?

A world so secure, safe and utterly reassuring that everyone is a legally deputised protector with no one but those with the most feeble powers (the power to retain the normal colour of their urine after eating asparagus, for example) to protect.

A world where skulduggery, vice and avarice are so rare their very manufacture is the only black market.

A world where the exceptionally gifted are bound to highly unrealistic government enforced quotas for acts of heroism and opportunities to protect and rescue are so infrequent that the superhero on the street can do the most unscrupulous things in their pursuit.

This is the world inhabited by Captain Amazing.

Bless him!

The Beans On Toast Monologues

2007-12-28T10:08:00.000-08:00

Let's face it, there are no original ideas.

So with that in mind I've begun writing a series of short, Alan Bennett style monologues featuring myriad different characters and settings, all revolving around the consumption of Beans on Toast (right now you're probably drawing on Coffee & Cigarettes comparisons. Just fuck right off, okay? I just said there's no such thing as an original idea).

This idea has been born less out of genuine inspiration than the undeniable compulsion just to fucking ACT! in something. Yes, it's partly an experiment in finding out the true extent of my "range" (which I always tell myself is massive), and of course I hope that people will watch and enjoy them but mostly its the creative equivalent of playing with action figures, a mimetic knee jerk rather than an attempt to communicate anything particularly profound to anyone. Perhaps if I were trying to communicate anything profound it would be in the form of a less obviously second hand idea.

I intend to write, act out, film and post one or two these on Youtube or Myspace film or whatever within the next week or so. I have a few ideas for characters kicking around and hopefully if these work out well I'll write some more monologues involving other actors and actresses.

Expect updates soon(ish).

Rest assured I will be pimping the absolute fuck out of them when they get done.

Welcome Back

2007-12-28T10:02:00.000-08:00

To Silent Hill.

Chapter 4 of The Mirror In The Basement is now online.

Gush in my general direction......... Now!

I'm Not Dead (Or Pink)

2007-12-16T14:43:00.001-08:00

Just on the off chance that anybody anywhere reads this ever, I'm not not posting on here because of negligence or succumbing to the ever present desire to burrow into my mattress and eschew human contact of any sort forever.

This blog was intended to chronicle my writing and acting work and if truth be known there hasn't been any with teacher training being such a mind body and spirit (and time) sapping process.

My non-posting has been fairly deliberate as I didn't want to fill this blog with sappy "Sorry about all the non posting" gubbins (even though this is exactly what this post is) and so have left it well alone.

I will however have two weeks off at Christmas and I intend to use that time to do a bit of work on the sitcom and all the fan bollocks.

May also be some acting work bubbling to the surface at some point in the future.

Now leave me alone.

..........................

Don't go!

Sitcom-Municate

2007-08-29T02:10:00.000-07:00

I have an idea for a sitcom. At the moment it is a tiny little protoplasmic germ of an idea that could flower into something beautiful or something utterly unfunny and shit so I'm pitching it to my readership and whether I develop it or not will depend entirely on their (your) feedback!

I was watching a documentary about Spaced and realised that the good thing about Spaced is that it was of its time.
I wondered how I could create something zeitgeisty and it occurred to me that I hardly ever conversed with any of my friends anymore without the aid of some sort of web based intermediary.
Even more tragic was the fact that when I did speak to them it was usually about Myspace and Facebook.

Now obviously I couldn't make an engaging sitcom about an internet forum or social networking site so I came up with the following premise tentatively titled

MMORPG;

Our hero is BEN. BEN works in SALES. Like all good protagonists he is educated, hates his job and he feels he should aspire to be something great but he's not sure what. His only outlet is online gaming where he assumes the persona of a blue armoured knight and mercilessly hacks new players to pieces and hurls colourful INSULTS (which become more elaborate and vivid as the series progresses)at the majority of other gamers. He evidently vents his frustration at work via his online persona though often picks fights in which he is out of his depth resulting in his being beaten, bludgeoned and dismembered in new and exciting ways as the series progresses.

His best (online) friend is SIMON whose online persona is a red robed wizard. Simon lives at home and is more dynamic and amiable than his counterpart. An enterprising and ambitious fellow without the pressure of maintaining a household that BEN endures he fills his days with web based Get Rich Quick schemes. He has a new one every episode and they often collide with his online persona e.g. he runs a gay chat line and accidentally mixes this up with his gaming resultantly telling an evil dragon moster how much he loves rimming while yelling at a horny middle aged closet case to "Die you fat purple pulsating fire breathing bastard!" The program revolves around them going on missions together and hanging out at the virtual pub, overcoming cultural barriers with Americans, arguing over who gets power ups "PICK UP THE CHICKEN, PICK UP THE CHICKEN OH BLOODY HELL IT'S DISAPPEARED NOW!", getting roundly twatted by the evil Black Knight (inevidably a 12 year old fat ginger American boy) and basically learning social graces by being antisocial.

So anyway, that's my premise. What d'you reckon?

Delicious Surprises and Tempramental Muses

2007-08-23T04:12:00.000-07:00

Well now.

You'll have to forgive the fact that I hardly ever update this blog but since I didn't think anyone ever read it and I cover pretty much all the ground I want / need to cover on my Myspace Blog I thought updating here would be slightly pointless.

Not to mention the fact that having two blogs made me feel like a bit of a pretentions twatbox.

Still, having received some compliments on my writing over the last few weeks from people I didn't pay / bribe or extort to view my fiction completely out of the blue in completely unrelated places, it dawned on me that I actually have a following for some sort.

Indeed I have been called a "pretty good writer" by TV's Mr Biffo as well as having the infinitely wonderful Richard Wright subscribing to my blog.

If this is the extent of my fandom then I owe it to them (you) to continue spooning yarns from the convoluted soup kitchen of my mind into your imagination bowls with my literature ladle.

Now there's a metaphor!

Anyway I have some serious projects kicking about as well but I have been working quite a bit on my fan fiction.

In fact I have just added new chapters to The Fallen and Daredevil : Schism which have thus far proven the biggest stumbling blocks for some reason. Particularly the former, for all my adoration of Superman I find him an extraordinarily difficult character to write.

Things are looking up on the acting front too, more about that later.

And with that news I shall love you and leave you

I shall see you all here again much sooner than last time!

Young gifted and pouty

2007-06-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

I've replaced the image on this blog with one which makes me look marginally less like a sex offender. Instead I look like the kind of angsty twat who discusses poetry loudly and obnoxiously whilst queing at the bank for an extension on his overdraft.

Which just so happened to be exactly the look I was going for.

I have just now linked this blog to my FF.net profile which means that this blog should hopefully get a little more traffic than the previous, truly Herculean hit count of seven.

B : 2 Blogment Day

2007-06-10T10:50:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone.

This is the blog I will be using to document my acting / writing work.

I plan to use this predominantly in conjunction with my account at Fanfiction.net
so that my fellow nerds may keep abreast of my Superhero based literary tomfoolery.

For incoherent, sweary ramblings based on a profoundly ignorant and skewed perspective on minor events of very little importance please refer to my Myspace Blog.

I love you all.

Toodle. Pip.