A Little Rumination...

Sometimes I think the reason I don't go for Soap Operas on television is that they just don't seem real to me. I mean, constant unfaithfulness? Life-threatening situations? Familial revelations? Strange coincidences? Will-they/won't-they relationships? Give me a break!

My life is far fucking weirder that that...

Cheers m'dears!

Are ad-men simply basket-cases?

The current advert for televised basketball in Sinless City has the suitably gravelly voice-over solemnly declaring that "Success awaits those who get up one more time than they fall". Sounds good... sounds inspiring... sounds butch... sounds - wait a minute! That's fucking impossible!!

Go on, try it. Fall down a few times, counting them, and also count how many times that you get back up again. I guarrantee it will be the same number. Unless you remain prone on your last fall, which will be the opposite of what the advertisement is trying to say. It is physically impossible to get up twice when you only fell once... and so on.

Stupid cunts.

Cheers m'dears!

Musical Interludes...

Can someone please tell me what the point is of all those television dramas now shoe-horning bands or musicians into their scripts for apparently little or no reason? Because I for one find it at best distracting, other times frankly tedious and nauseating. Okay, I know that comedy shows have a history of this, The Young Ones being a classic example, but that was the kind of bizarre and surreal programme where Dexy's Midnight Runners playing in the bathroom could actually be considered the norm. But The Killers playing the local bar in The O.C.?

Look, before you start, I absolutely do not watch that twattery. I was channel-hopping, okay? The point is, I know that the programme is supposed to be about a load of jumped up little rich shits who could probably hold a 'small party' with music provided by an entire Glastonbury lineup, but having The Killers play a couple of songs whilst the cast look at them dreamily and say nothing to each other just comes across as an exercise in time-wasting. You can't even blame it on the scriptwriters running out of imagination since the small bit of dialogue I did see demonstrated they didn't have any in the first place.

Unfortunately The O.C. and The Killers are not alone in this. The West Wing has once or twice managed to save themselves five minutes or so of actual drama by drafting in a past music legend, although I admit that since the U.S. Prez probably has to attend functions where these things happen the writers do have a degree of legitimacy. But he also takes a leak occasionally and possibly even takes it up the wrong 'un from Condie and her strap-on from time to time, but I don't need to see either of those either. Well, maybe the second one. Just for a laugh.

Add to the list Entourage, who did an entire storyline where one of the guys was desperate for tickets to see U2 and, sure enough, gets hold of them in the last reel. But why did I then have to sit through about 8 minutes (of a programme that only lasts about 25 without ad breaks anyway) of Bono? It's not like I don't appreciate the music but I already have it on CD. And if I wanted to see them live I would buy a fucking ticket myself and soak up the atmosphere. To cap it all Bono does a birthday shout out at the end to the character in question - I wonder how much he got paid for all that, the hoor!

The worst example I ever saw, though, was on that short lived science fiction version of Dawson's Creek (No, I never used to watch that either. Why the fuck are you raising your eyebrows at me?), the Dido-theme-songed Roswell (Okay, I admit to that one. But not religiously or anything!). Future scriptwriters, read on and learn how NOT to wriggle a musical performance into your storyline...

Imagine, if you will... something has gone terribly wrong and our heroes must find some random chick who may have the answers they are looking for. Off they head to some University a couple of hours out of town somewhere on a single-minded mission to locate her. She's not in her dorm? Bugger! Oh well, lets run around the campus frantically, with no real clue to where she may be. But wait, what's that tucked away over there in some random badly-lit corner? Why, it's a stage, with a couple of dozen studenty-folk milling about it looking mildly impressed. And who is that on the stage? Cue one of the heroes piping up... "It's Nelly Furtado!".

I shit you not.

Mission forgotten, for the duration of one song anyway, whilst they stand there dreamily watching old Nel', who (bless her!) is trying her best not to look too stupidly out of place. Of course, right at the end of the song one of the heroes turns and sees in the crowd... the girl they were looking for! Huzzah!

So there you have it. Nelly Furtado is secretly an undercover Alien using her music to assist her brethren here on earth. They don't write 'em like they used to!

Cheers m'dears!

Sense or Censor-ability!

Anyone who has watched the excellent Thank You for Smoking may remember the end-credit sequence where William H. Macy's character, Senator Orton Finistirre, is spearheading a campaign to digitally remove all scenes of cigarette smoking from old films. According to the Senator he prefers not to think of it as changing history but as "improving" it. Oh, how we all chuckled at how ludicrous such an idea is...

Ludicrous? Stop chuckling and read this article - in a nutshell, some (although to be fair, not all) smoking scenes are to be edited out of Tom 'n' Jerry cartoons. Now, whilst I understand the sentiment and the fact that these cartoons are, naturally, aimed at a younger audience I have to ask - where will it stop? Will we end up with classic films butchered to appease our modern sensibilities? Will Sandie choke on a stick of gum in the pjama party scene of the "improved" version of Grease? Will Bogey puff away on one of those white plastic Nicorette things? And why stop at the smoking? Let's get rid of all scenes of gratuitous violence from the T 'n' J cartoons... oh, wait. That would only leave the scenes of the black maid standing on a chair afraid of the mouse, which would of course also need to be removed on the grounds of overt racism and sexism.

Television and film are the cave paintings, scrolls, works of art, first folios of the 20th Century. They depict who we were at a particular moment of time, in all our glory and in all our disgusting, violent, bigoted filth. If these cartoons are no longer suitable for kids then don't show them any more, create new works which better reflect our modern times, but have the decency to allow our history to stand. But having said all that how about we step back for a moment, stop viewing the situation through adult eyes, and give kids a little benefit of the doubt... do we really believe that a cartoon will make a 5 year old smoke? Kids may be (mostly) innocent but generally speaking they are not fucking stupid!

Now, I know an 8-year old nicotine addict who smoked since he was 5, but was it cartoons that got him started? Of course not! It was a combination of family situation, pressure from older kids he hung out with, and a variety of other social issues. To be honest even at 5 he would probably have described Tom 'n' Jerry as "wanky kids stuff", preferring to watch Schwarzenegger films and the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Parenting issues, yes. A cause for censoring - sorry, 'improving' - televisual history? I don't fucking think so!

This is not the first time retrospective censoring has been considered in the UK. A couple of years back the BBC were looking at editing classic sit-com Only Fools and Horses to remove a handful of references to "Paki's" or "Poof's". Yes, these terms are offensive. Yes, they grate with me when I hear them used in these programmes. But that's the point - let me be reminded of what life was like for the non-white and gay communities in the UK only 20 years ago, and let me see that despite my own personal attitudes differing there are still many who would happily still act in these ways. It's one of the ways in which we learn and move forward.

So listen up, Ofcom, and put your fucking scissors away. Let's be frank for a moment - if you follow through with this plan you are just one step away from Nineteen Eighty-Four's Ministry of Truth.

Cheers m'dears!

Televisual Tossery

So what happened to the good old days of the BBC? Auntie Beeb, giving us slice by slice of glorious British life through those twin delights of Comedy and Drama... astounding us with documentaries explaining just how bizarre and un-British the rest of the world was... and, of course, informing us of how wonderful our country was and what rotten Johnny Foreigner was up to through its unrivalled news service. An era when programming started at 8.37am sharp and ended at bedtime, 6.02pm, with a pride-inducing blast of 'God Save The Queen' (followed by a rousing chorus of 'Knees Up Mother Brown' on every third Sunday). An innocent age when the licence fee cost thruppence and ha'penny and the Radio Times came with a digestive biscuit each week as a free gift... *Sigh*, the good old days...!

Of course that was all back in the days of my childhood when we only had BBCs 1 and 2 and their ruffian of a neighbour, ITV. Nowadays there is Satellite, Cable... you name it. And even those Neanderthal-minded technophobes who can still only receive terrestrial channels have had their quota upped with the emergence of Channels 4 and 5. All of which has sadly led to a demise in programming, leading us to be force-fed such travesties as Pop Idol and Big Brother whilst inanities like "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" are laughingly bestowed the rank of 'Comedy'. Even the Grand Old Soap Operas, once the bastion of British Televisual Entertainment, have had the credibility of their storylines stretched far too far by an insistence that they air 27 times a week.

Surely things can get no worse? Surely there is no more room for utter shite on television? I mean, surely the only way broadcasting could stoop any lower would be to show, oh... I don't know... a marathon masturbation session, for example - literally, a load of wank.

Oh no they wouldn't...!?

Oh yes they fucking would!

Channel 4 - the land that good taste ran like buggery from...

Cheers m'dears!

BBC? Bemused By Cockup...

Over on Thumping The Tub our friend Michael runs regular polls on various topical events. His current open musings ask what we think of the BBC - something I briefly touch on in this ancient post. And the reason I mention that?

Well, it seems that in its efforts to reach out to the common man the BBC has adopted the unusual approach of asking ordinary folk for expert opinions. For example, in debating the pros and cons of the Apple .v. Apple case BBC 24 opted to seek out the views of... a cabbie. Well, I suppose anyone who has travelled in a London cab before will know that the drivers aren't short of an opinion or two...

In this case, however, it was an almighty cock up. The intended interviewee was an expert named Guy Kewney. The bloke brought out on international TV? The cabbie who had come to pick him up after the interview whose name just so happens to also be Guy. Taxi for Auntie Beeb...

But at least the BBC are having a sense of humour about it - you can read the story on their own site, which will also let you watch the baffled driver gamely attempt to answer the questions posed to him...

Cheers m'dears!

Update: It appears that early reports that the Guy (ahem) was a cabbie were incorrect. He was, in fact, at the BBC for a job interview and had assumed that this was all part of the interview process, not realising he was live on air!