#2010

Hello to you, you person I likely know and who has been kind enough to humour me in my little ramblings of insanity. This is how I’ve viewed the year that’s nearly passed us by, purely in unimportant, media-y terms.

Film in 2010 was marked by the relentless behemoth of 3D marking its territory like an incontinent puppy, spoiling my love for the art form by reducing the viewing experience to a nausea-inducing gimmick. But that’s my view; here are some films that sort of made a splash, yeah?

Shutter Island came out in February, adapted from a 2003 novel I’ve never heard of, nor heard anyone talk about; Shutter Island was directed by Martin Scorsese and has quickly become one of my all-time favourite films. An absolutely gripping mystery fraught with uncertainty and self-doubt, everyone’s acting their arses off in it, even the sometimes-maligned Leonardo DiCaprio. Nail-biting stuff from beginning to end, the music’s amazing as well, making Hans Zimmer my joint favourite film composer.

In March we had Kick-Ass and ultimately flawed and tiring comic-book adaptation saved only by Nicolas Cage having the time of his life as ‘Big Daddy’. Incidentally I hate Aaron Johnson now; his acting makes me want to slit my own eyeballs open. The Film was ruined with over the top violence, I mean beyond ‘300’ levels of the stuff and completely unnecessary swearing (by which I mean it was put in purely for the shock factor and not because it is something the characters would say fuck-bugger shit-nipple) I hope that they never, ever make a sequel.

May was a mixed month for films; Robin Hood came out, proving that Ridley Scott might have just lost his magic, and that Russell Crowe is really touchy about how shit his accents are. Sex and the City 2 came out, showing us that television adaptations for the big screen don’t generally work the first time, let alone a second. It also let me know that I’ve achieved true equality in my hatred for people, I can (and do) wish harm on these women without it being about misogyny. And Four Lions was released, marking the arrival of Islamic Terrorism and suicide bombing as being fair game in humour. I, for one, am happy about this; religion shouldn’t be vaunted as an untouchable subject, fuck Mini Babybel!

In June Toy Story 3 was a spark of pure joy that reduced well-rounded and emotionally-mature audiences of all genders and ages to floods of tears at the touching depiction of the coming of maturity and death of childhood, another win for Pixar.

July, and your mind was the scene of the crime in Inception; the second entry for Leo DiCaprio and Hans Zimmer in my little list in Christopher Nolan’s ultra high-concept masterpiece of existential uncertainty and big CGI set pieces. Also in July; M. Night Shyamalan showed us why he hasn’t made a film that’s even passable since Unbreakable in 2000. M. Night Shyamatalan wrote and directed the adaptation to the cartoon ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ and made a mockery (apparently) of it. He claimed that European audiences were the only ones to get him, but proved he didn’t get them when he kept inserting reference to ‘benders’ (people who can manipulate the elements) into his script. This means that M. Night Shyamarmalade’s film had some memorable scenes and lines such as one where a man is dragged away from his father’s throne room, but on recognising a potential assassin in the room yells “He’s a bender!”, or “I always knew you were a bender.” or my personal favourite, “There are some really powerful benders in the Northern Water Zone.” M. Night Shyamagnesium phosphate, you are an arse.

The Human Centipede disgusted and delighted people with a trailer alone. The tale of a mad German scientist who wants to join people from the mouth to the anus to create a ‘human centipede’ the trailer got everyone talking about the sheer disgusting nature of it all and ultimately showed them my viewpoint on the rest of ‘society’.

October inevitably arrived and with it, ‘The Social Network’ a more or less fictionalised account of the foundation of Facebook; the film marks the point at which social networking is cemented as a real cultural movement, an artefact of the first decade of this putrid century. I’m looking forward to Twitter: The Movie, which will likely consist of some nerds looking at Facebook saying “But I want money as well!” until shifting to show Stephen Fry tapping at a keyboard for 4 and a half hours.

And in November the first part of the adaptation of the final book of the Harry Potter series, otherwise known as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out, making otherwise rational people scream like banshees. The film features a bobble-headed version of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson’s eyebrows, expect the second part in July next year.

2010 was the endpoint for a number of big television dramas; some have been almost irresistibly touted for a big-screen outing like sponsored terrorism-a-thon ‘24’, while others are simply over, either sadly or with good reason.

Arguably the biggest TV death of the year was that of David Tennant, or rather his portrayal as the supremely popular tenth incarnation of The Doctor in Doctor Who. Child’s drawing of himself Matt Smith stepped into some ocean-sized shoes and was met with immediate hatred, by me at least. Of course by about the twelfth minute of his own debut adventure I had been won round, as had the legion fans that had gathered since the show’s return in 2005.

Ashes to Ashes ended in May, revealing that the world of Gene Hunt was actually a kind of pre-afterlife specifically for the police with Gene being some sort of modern-day Charon, ferrying dead coppers to the pub…that is literally what he does.

Exercise in headless chicken scriptwriting Lost ended in similar fashion also in May with what has been one of the most dissatisfying and unwelcome endings since the Sopranos ended mid-sen-

The Tudors ended 4 series of historical lies and mischaracterisation, oversimplification and downright ‘Hollyoaks-ifying’ of the reign of King Henry VIII. Good.

And just this month, no-one’s favourite show Medium was confirmed as cancelled, alright it ends in 2011, but the announcement was this year, what do you want from me!? Arsehole.

And now some shows you might not have watched/heard of:

Hamlet-inspired Californian-biker epic Sons of Anarchy continued into its third season following the last remaining storyline threads, which unfortunately meant the main character of Jax Teller (played by Geordie actor Charlie Hunnam) going to Northern Ireland with all his biker friends in pursuit of the Real IRA who have kidnapped his baby son. I say unfortunately because this prompted some of the most piss-poor Irish accents I’ve ever heard; fake ones I mean, this is meant to be Belfast and it sounds like they’re auditioning for the part of a cartoon leprechaun. It’s painful to hear, which is a shame as otherwise it’s a very good show, of note is this season’s stand-out guest star Paula Malcolmson, who is, as it happens actually from Belfast.

Lie to me* began its third season; not sure how well-known Lie to me* is, but it deserves more. It’s your standard investigative show, the distinctive feature of which is, apart from Tim Roth seemingly having the time of his life playing arrogant but somehow likeable genius Dr. Cal Lightman, that the investigation is done by a team of experts and experts-in-training that study ‘micro-expressions’ in the face and body language to tell when people are telling the truth or if they’re experiencing (and trying to conceal) specific emotions. It’s better than I’ve made it sound, honestly.

On to technology and the world’s most expensive dinner tray; the iPad was announced by recently reanimated corpse Steve Jobs in January, and the press conference alone was enough to make me want to fire jets of my own scorching pancreatic juices across the Atlantic Ocean to find him and scald his fingers off. Essentially a giant iPhone, but without the practical applications of the easy to use, compact gadget, the iPad’s greatest flaw, in my eyes, is that it somehow makes Apple whores feel smug without the usual qualification of having done something to feel smug about.

The world’s top brand showed it is utterly unfazed by complete failure when it rolled out Google Wave to the public, which it claimed was what “…email would look like if it were invented today.”. Essentially a sort of Frankenstein’s monster stitching together of  e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking, Google Wave proved too technical for normal human beings to use, being far better suited to some sort of mass intelligence housed in a computer the size of the sun. Development ended in August; try not to cry too much, robots.

Speaking of social networking; the world lost its mind this year when it was revealed that that personal information you so readily entered into a website run by people you don’t know might not have been so secure after all. Facebook’s privacy debacle hasn’t done much to stop new users signing up, nor indeed to cause a mass exodus, MySpace-style. I think I’d mind more if the private, personal information they garnered from my profile was of any use to them, but, as it seems, the personalised adverts that I get, the ones tailored to my social situation and are deemed relevant to me are for Orthodox Jewish dating…I’m not Jewish, Orthodox or otherwise. When they get scary good at pulling my information, then I’ll give a shit.

Video games this year continued their trend as the most lucrative media launches of all-time, that’s in monetary terms you understand, try and talk about video games in company outside the age range of 11-29 and you’re likely to be sneered at with the kind of derision usually reserved for people who start sentences with “I’m not a racist, but…” Here are some developments I’m not happy about:

Sony and Microsoft, both eyeing Nintendo’s causal gamer audience with bizarre envy, launch their competing add-ons to their consoles. Kinect for XBOX360 and PlayStation Move are both attempts at the player using their own bodily movements to play games, sounds good to the kind of twat who thinks all entertainment should take place on a treadmill, i.e. no one. But what it serves to do is make every twat-head who uses it look like Louie Spence without the modicum of likeability or talent. Ah, feels good to get that out of my system, now, onto some titles.

Red Dead Redemption came out in May after a few years heavy speculation and proved to be one of the best things ever made out of 1’s and 0’s. The story is set in the waning days of the American Old West where you, as John Marston, are blackmailed into taking down your old gang members by a couple of ruthless federal agents, taking John from the prairie to the Mexican revolution and on to the modern society at odds with gun slinging outlaws, RDR proved to be a wonderful looking, fun, thoughtful and downright moving game that will be looked on fondly for years to come.

Halo: Reach unsurprisingly was a huge success, despite the fact that all titles in the series after the original 2001 outing ‘Halo: Combat Evolved’ have been accurately judged as self-important, stagnant crap by any gamers with more than two neurons to rub together. Halo: Reach serves as a prequel to the rest of the series, taking place on the colony of Reach, which players of previous games will know, was a massive military defeat for the human forces of the UNSC against a multi-species army known as the Covenant. Now the fact that it takes place in such a doomed scenario means that you’re playing the game with the full knowledge, especially if you’ve ever seen any war film EVER, that you, your team-mates the supporting cast that don’t appear in the main series, are all going to die…probably. Having criticised the series as a whole, Reach does sit as the bright spark in the family, a much better game than previous entries with a story that doesn’t bore you at any turn despite its collection of clichés. It’ll live on as a multiplayer relic for years, which angers me greatly, but it is a good game.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, the biggest, most over hyped of all games released ever that didn’t involve Peter Molyneux, was released in November and morons everywhere would have kicked children over walls to get a copy. The jealous younger brother series of the actually good Call of Duty games, Black Ops was developed by Treyarch, who also previously made the World at War entry. Black Ops’ campaign surprisingly consists of a series of ‘Black Ops’ taking place in various situations of the Cold War, and that’s about it really. It’s the multiplayer aspect, which I’ve never played, that is most definitely the main reason for about 98% of all purchases of the title, which in my opinion, should be seen as ridiculous as buying a DVD you’ve never seen before, melting down the film and only keeping the ‘special features’ disc.

If you want games to be taken seriously then multiplayer has to be a fun aside, not the main feature of the game.

And finally, Heavy Rain was released in February, and deserves mention here as the realisation of something promised to people my age years ago. Alright so the plot sounds like a rejected proposal for a B-movie knock-off of Se7en, but Heavy Rain, a game about a serial killer who drowns children in rain water, was presented in a compelling, new way, playing out entirely as a narrative, the player, as one of four characters throughout the game, interacts with scenes by pressing the appropriate button at the correct moment in order to progress the scene, failing to press the right button will still push the plot along, but in a slightly different way and always in a cinematic and believable way. Now, those of you in the know will know that that means it’s a game made entirely of quick-time events, but that’s not the point. The point is that Heavy Rain plays like a film, with real dialogue and proper camera-work. It is what people in the nineties used to say to older generations when trying to explain what video games were, an ‘interactive movie’.

And that was the year in media for me. Whether you agree or disagree, I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than have an argument about it.

We wanted to go to LA but we were headed for Spain.

Patrick Kielty,

I have a task for you; when Michael McIntyre fucks off (like I told him to) can you follow him please?

I am what I am; and what I am needs no excuses.

Gay anthem there. But it's an ever-so-slightly witty reference to today's ra...well, it actually isn't a rant today.

I first became aware of it on March the 12th of this year via a tweet of Trent Reznor's (of Nine Inch Nails)

This was, of course, before I quit Twitter for the first time (I've done this twice now) but that's beside the point, the point is, one of my musical heroes was talking about something that I had never heard of, and it was, apparently, something that people thought he might be involved in. My interest was peaked, so I typed 'iamamiwhoami' into Google and Google directed me to the YouTube profile of iamamiwhoami.

I had a search around to get a grasp of what the fuss was about and found very little information at all, in fact, there was patently none. 

This was the first video I saw and also the first one uploaded.

Now please. What the fuck was that? Nice mellow trance-electronic music, and a video of a woman in black in a dark hole in a pool of water with limbs coming out of trees. Oh and what about that goat? Originally this had a video of a goat giving birth tacked onto the end but the uppity person who owned the video complained. And those numbers in the title, correspond to letters in the alphabet and spell out the word '
"educational".

Well I was truly intrigued now, as I always am by mystery, at first it reminded me of Nine Inch Nails BRILLIANT ARG (Alternative Reality Game) for their 2007 album 'Year Zero' which involved phone numbers, a multitude of websites, sonic analysis, mp3 files that had to be decoded, real life gigs, it was brilliant, and this seemed like the same thing. Well it isn't. Here's the second one.

Yeah, it's weird all right. the woman in the water is covered in some sort of mud and licks a tree, that then oozes white sap. And I don't think it's a Freudian interpretation by me that concludes that the sap is meant to look like semen and the knot in the tree is meant to look like a vagina. The animal is an owl (for inexplicable reasons as of the uploading of this video) and the numbers in the title spell out "iam"

After looking at that one I decided to look up other sites as to maybe shed some light on what I had of course assumed was some viral campaign for a new musical artist or album. Sure enough there were forums and articles rife with supposed 'evidence' that the artist behind these videos was Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, Trent Reznor, Little Boots, Goldfrapp and, the closest answer to the truth, The Knife. All of whom are not involved at all.

Here's number three.

Weirder still, strawberry cakes in a pool of water with a thrashing figure in it. This one's animal is a whale and its numbers say "itsme"

Number four.



What? Its animal is a bee and its numbers spell "mandragora".

By this point most interested people are ignoring the content of the videos with regards to what they might mean and are only concerned with the identity of the artist, who they assume is also the mud-covered woman. Here's another baffling video, the fifth.



Hooray! The strawberries are back and...we don't know what that means. What we do know is this video's animal is a llama and its numbers spell out "offiicinarum". Now that is a massive clue, when combined with the word from the previous video, 'mandragora' it becomes the latin name for the mandrake plant, the roots of which have a deep connection to folklore, because they can occasionally resemble a humanoid shape. So maybe the videos are all about mandrakes?

Here's the final of these 'prelude' videos and one that doesn't so much clear anything up as throw dust in your eyes and beat you about the head until you're thoroughly disoriented.



Yeah, I don't know either.But if you're following so far, this one's animal was a money and its numbers say "welcomehome". And did she say "Why?" or "Y"?

After this video there was a long-ish break of two weeks before the next video. Some of the more outlandish theories on who the lead singer was died away when they themselves or their publicity people denied any involvement and another heretofore unknown candidate was put forth based, of all things, on her teeth; some people started to say it was a little-known Swedish indie-pop singer-songwriter by the name of Jonna Lee.

Since the beginning of the campaign (if that is what it is) an MTV journalist by the name of James Montgomery had blogged about it. His was certainly the widest exposure the project had had so far. Creepily enough a package was sent to him at his desk at MTV that contained some chips of balsa wood, a strip of paper and a piece of human hair.

Now, Montgomery was stumped and later would criticise the entire project for being too long and too mysterious, so I call him a sour twat. But it did tell us that the animals meant something, and they meant something when put together.

A new video appeared on the 14th of March and it was unlike any of the previous ones, no animal, no numbers, and it appeared to be a full song. I'm going to put a whole bunch of them now, they were uploaded over the space of about 5 months.















Phew, that was a slog eh? So how much did you notice? Well yes, it spelled out BOUNTY and when 't' came out the faithful who'd stuck with the project began searching like mad for 'iambounty' finding a website www.iambounty.com that has displayed the same image (a drawing of a hand doing the American sign language for the letter 'b') from then until the at least the time of this post. The more investigative of them even performed a whois query and found that the site was in fact set up by none other than Jonna Lee. Well the mysterious woman's face was revealed and yes, it was Jonna Lee after all. And did you also notice that each video contained the words 'to whom it may concern'? Well that ends up being quite important.

What is abundantly clear is that music is a major part of whatever this is, but the videos aren't just there as music videos, they're just as important as the music, so it transcends being just another electronic concept album and reaches into the echelons of art. Each of these songs (or singles maybe?) have been released to iTunes by the way so if you really want them...there you go.

Over the past few weeks (as of the 18th of November) a few videos have been taken down, not for any breaking of YouTube's rules reason but for...narrative reasons. I'll do my best to explain from memory.

On the 1st of October a video titled "20101001" was uploaded calling for one volunteer from the YouTube community. This volunteer would be our representative who would give their name, telephone number and home address by the 8th of October. The video also gave us a link to http://towhomitmayconcern.cc/ (now dead) that appeared to promote an upcoming live performance.

Three days later a new video appeared, now this one hasn't been removed so I can put it on here you lucky shits.



If the previous videos had not convinced the community, then this has to be utter confirmation that the 'story' of the videos is that of the myths of the mandrake plant. In that video we see a hanged man, his semen dripping into a plant pot (representing the ground) from which springs a person. This comes from the folklore of the mandrake whereby a mandrake is made by the semen of condemned men, as people had noticed that it can happen that the hanged involuntary ejaculate. Of course Michael Hutchence and David Carradine knew that as well.

The next video, entitled '20101109' continues right where 20101104 left off, the woman descends the spiral staircase until she reaches a phone, above it is a printed out letter from the YouTube representative 'Tehhills' informing iamamiwhoami that she couldn't attend because she didn't have a passport (amongst other reasons) and that she endorsed the user 'ShootUpTheStation' in her place. Scrawled underneath that was ShootUpTheStation's (or SUTS as the community have dubbed him) phone number. The woman dials, slowly, then twirls the cord in her finger while it rings. A man answers and the woman tells him to turn on his camera, the scene shifts to that of a low-quality webcam and we see a young man, faced away from the screen, blonde, apparently German, this is SUTS. The woman asks him about himself and his beliefs, she then tells him he must record his journey and hangs up.

Over the next four days the videos are all in the style of a webcam 'vlog'.

101112 shows us SUTS' journey from Germany to Sweden. On arrival he gets in a car and is driven...somewhere.

101112-2 Shows us that 'somewhere' was a hotel. SUTS enters his room and reads an envelope addressed only 'to whom it may concern'. In the envelope is a piece of paper, an itenerary, each day is busy with 'Visits' and a 'Talk.'

In 101113 SUTS answers the phone in his hotel room. Music plays in the background and there is a knock at the door. SUTS answers and the camera shows us only his bed, the sound of plastic and masking tape is heard, we hear a camera go off and the video ends with an arm that does not belong to SUTS turning off the camera.

In 101114: A bearded man with a blurred-out face teaches SUTS to waltz and bow. In complete silence. After the man shakes SUTS' hand and leaves.

In 101115: A man arrives with a plastic bag of clothes, which he lays out on SUTS' bed, he leaves. SUTS shows us the dark clothing.

The next video was not a SUTS vlog style video. It was entitled http://towhomitmayconcern.cc/ (a link that is now dead) and, matching the background of a cork noticeboard that was present on that website. A woman's voice (presumably Jonna's) speaks, "At 12:01 AM Swedish time we act in concert on the wish to evolve. We will present you with a plausible path available for 6 hours on 'It Is What It Is'."

One more video appeared on the iamamiwhoami YouTube channel, it was called 101115-2 and showed us the now-familiar sight of SUTS' hotel room, SUTS can be heard talking on the telephone, telling whoever is on the other end that his webcam is on. There is a knock at the door. The video ends.

And that is all I have to tell you about iamamiwhoami. The mystery continues, since December of 2009, nearly a year, these videos have plagued my brain, my dreams, my waking thoughts, even my nightmares. I'm left questioning everything. Is it a marketing ploy? Is it art? Is SUTS in on it? Or is he a real, normal person?

I'm starting to think I may never know the truth. What the story is. What it all means. What it's for.

But I've enjoyed the ride.

P.S. the story isn't over. Just after the promised time of 12.01 Swedish time, a concert appeared on http://towhomitmayconcern.cc/ it was up for two hours less than the promised six hours. I was unable to see it 'live' but I did see it the following morning via download. If you like what you've seen on this blog post, if it interests you and you want to know more, there is something I can give you. Something I am not responsible for you seeing. The concert.

Something's on my mind; it's been for quite some time...

Michael McIntyre,

Please fuck off.

Stay away, you'll never know what you'll catch.

Readers of a sensitive disposition are warned that this rant contains some strong language and frequent bloody cynicism.

I really do wonder about that little warning you hear before certain shows on TV. I wonder what they're actually for; I mean, I know there are those out there who are going to be of a certain disposition and who don't want to see such things in programming, and that's fine if that's why those warnings are given, I just don't believe they are.

If you sit down in the evening and watch a gritty drama (usually the forensic ones, like 'Waking the Dead' or 'Silent Witness'), and you hear '...contains scenes of graphic violence' then, even if you don't want to admit it, a part of you is pleased, sits down (in your head) and says, "Ah, good. this is going to be a good one." Now, that's fine, again; I have no problem with people who like a good drama that doesn't pull any punches, I myself am one of those people who does get a sort of excited anticipation when I'm told I'm going to hear 'very strong language from the start' or see 'distressing images', and those who know me, or even you reading this, will know that I am truly appreciative of swearing. No, my problem is that the people in charge of said shows and TV stations know that's what they're doing when they put out these 'warnings'.

It's just a cheap trick, the television equivalent of adding the word 'shocker' (actually, normally it's something more like 'SHOCKER!!!') to the front page of Take a Shit magazine or Who's Vacuous Weekly. Because the kind of people who can't live without those magazines are drawn in immediately, like a fly to one of those blue zappers in a chip-shop (I could have said 'like a moth to the flame' but what am I, fucking Dickens?).

I realise that there is likely some regulatory reason for them to put out warnings (Ofcom fisting them so hard they can use the stations as glove puppets), but to me that's about as damning as one of those 'Parental Advisory' stickers on albums, to a lot of people (ok, impressionable youths) the Parental Advisory sticker is like proof of quality. The 80's metal bands like Twisted Sister were ecstatic their albums got the sticker.

People are told they're going to see what they're not normally allowed to and that means that, more often than not, they'll sit through the 'talky bits' just to see the promised stabbing, shooting, nudity, sex or swearing that they've been 'warned' about. Bums on seats, money in pockets.

As you can see this was a tad on the small side compared so some of my other aired grievances on here. A 'micro-rant' perhaps. Still, I think I managed to put my opinion across all the same.

Incidentally, check this out: over-sensitive, fearful cowards.

With a haversack and some trepidation

Oh the delusional self-aggrandisement! I never considered I'd write a post about myself when starting this blog. But, what with my other posts being about my petty little hatreds, it was pretty much inevitable really.

I've come to the conclusion of late that I am a boring person. What I mean when I say that is not that I make other people bored just by being around; at least, I hope I don't. Indeed if this was the case then it is safe to say that no-one is in fact is reading this, and, if that is true, then simply; bugger, shit, fucky wank bollocks.

Still with me? Good, that means I'm not 'that' sort of boring person then. You know, the kind of boring twat who makes you actually dread the day that your one mutual friend has to leave the room to have a piss or something, because then you're left listening to them drone on and bloody on about how their new Subaru Seatsniffer has seventeen more cylinders (it's always about fucking cylinders) than their Vauxhall Shitehawk ever did. Or the terrible situation of having to listen to one of their pissing holiday stories; now there's nothing wrong with a holiday story that actually contains something interesting; a funny situation, an amazing coincidence or just something that would hold the intended audience's attention. No, in fact these are the holiday stories that I do want to hear. What I don't want to hear are those holiday stories that tend to go "...and of course with my psoriasis we had to find a place that did that special sun cream, the one that smells of prunes but all they had was the one that smelled of olives and I don't like olives I like..." Because even though I still smile politely, inside I'm wishing several different bad things would happen to the person I'm looking at: 'maybe next time they'll get sucked into the engine...' 

What makes me boring is that I do...nothing. I don't go out, I don't mean I'm agoraphobic I mean I don't go on 'nights out', or at least my understanding of the accepted definition of the term. That is tied, in part, to the fact that I don't go out and get pissed. I mean that in the British way of course, I get 'pissed' in the American way (meaning angry or annoyed) on such a frequent basis that someone confusing the two definitions would have to assume that I was an alcoholic. There's no righteousness behind it I just haven't liked any of the different alcoholic drinks I've had thus far and as such don't want to try any more. 

People tend to have a hard time accepting that. They'd much prefer it if I didn't drink for a moral or religious reason. And I would be fine with that too if it weren't for the fact that I don't have a religion (and I'm not very 'moral' either...) So they take it upon themselves to 'help' me find an alcoholic drink that works for me, as if they've decided I'm missing out, so I must need assistance of some kind. Well let me tell you something you possibly weren't aware of: I'm perfectly happy (shut it) with being a non-drinker. 

I'm a terribly self-conscious individual with little in the way of confidence, and while there are many people who feel the same way, they tend to be ones who utilise alcohol as a 'social lubricant', a term that makes it sound like a KY jelly dispenser that compliments you when you use it. Well without said alcohol I limit my attendance to social occasions to the minimum acceptable level. Bloody friends with their concern for my mental well-being and a general desire for my company, what awful, awful people... 

Now that sounds like a case for being a drinker, except I value my ability to recall why I wake up with black eyes more than my inability to remember vomiting on a bouncer.

I think, at the root of it all, it is my abundance of contentment that is to blame. Not in a Zen, 'inner peace' way but more in an 'it'll do' sense. I'm happy just drinking orange squash or something to that effect, so I don't look for something else to drink. The idea of travelling terrifies me, so I stay put. And it goes on and on, I'm not spontaneous; if I haven't known about an impending social event for at least two days then I just can't go. I'm happy with routine; it's safe. It's predictable.

Or in other words; it's boring.

Pop Muzik

I am a low-culture junkie, I've never seen a play, cannot identify a piece of classical music and I have never read the classics, but I take offence at the terms 'high' and 'low' culture. While there is an obvious distinction between the compositions of Beethoven and the Pokémon theme tune and their relative importance and influence, to attach such weighted words to the distinction implies some sort of intrinsic value to one over the other. As such I won't be comparing the styles of Chopin and Schubert today. No, today's rant is going to be about pop music, and by that I don't mean 'popular music', I mean 'pop music' and there is a distinction.

When I became a teenager, I hated pop music. 'That's not so odd' you might think, but that's because you, like me, know what 'pop music' means now. It does not mean 'popular' music, it means music that's created and marketed towards the impressionable and the young. It is lowest common denominator music, typical and unchanging. It's boybands and girl groups and individuals who are pushed out onto television with no other goal than the selling of records, in short; it's all about money.

Back in the day (whenever 'the day' was; it seems to be an ever-shifting date that exists nowhere and everywhere at the same time and you can fuck off with your philosophical cats), pop music meant little more than Rock & Roll, the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who etc. then later, in America, it was Motown; Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and the whole gang.

Except Britain didn't have a soul and funk influence from within. No they were still trying to cling onto the Rock & Roll of the Sixties. The only problem being that the musicians that made that music (if they had managed not to die through their own excesses) moved on without them, far away from the wide appeal of their early music and into the realm of experimentation or, if we're talking about Pink Floyd, outright pretension. Now there's nothing intrinsically bad about that, but the repercussions, with regards to pop music, were great. Without the Rock & Roll the British public (in general of course; there's always going to be groups of people that like the esoteric) were poised to receive the corporate products of pop music; the Osmonds, the David Cassidys and the Bobby Shermans of the world. The wildly popular, but tame and hollow music that, much as all pop music seemed to until my mid-teens, wanted nothing more than to make money for the company that produced it.

Punk did its part, trying to rebel against the mediocrity of Seventies pop music as well as the bloated self-importance of prog rock. They even denounced their supposedly sacrosanct predecessors, "No Elvis, Beatles or the Rolling Stones in 1977!" the Clash shouted in the same year the 'King of Rock & Roll' died. But even Punk didn't last; it was popular for, at best, a few years before sinking into mainstream obscurity.

It did achieve something lasting though; in being a simple music that you didn't need a lot of ability to play (that means you did still need some ability, I mean, put it this way; I'd never have made it as a punk) it opened up the possibilities of music to a new generation, a generation that the synthesiser had just been waiting for. Listen to Donna Summer's 1977 hit 'I Feel Love' and if you're like me; you'll agree that it is one of the greatest songs of all time. Well others agreed, and by the end of the Seventies electronic music was ready, willing and able to deliver a new form of pop music that wasn't going to make you want to drive a hot compass into your ear and then seal up the wound with raw sewage.

Taking cues from German social-outcasts Kraftwerk and the shiny glamour of disco and David Bowie-style glam rock; electronic music was sublime. Gary Numan, the Human League, Ultravox, it was all great and it all did it with a DIY punk ethic. More often than not, these musicians were not trained, they had to program the synthesisers, which wasn't simple, but it was still a lot easier than learning to play the guitar only to find that that twat from across the street can already cover Purple Haze perfectly and he started three months after you.

But the grimy world of the music industry just couldn't leave it alone. It was popular, and as such a high-potential money-earner, which in turn meant they could churn out a diluted form of the original music with all the soul taken out of it because the lead singer would get teenage girls in a bit of a lather. This kind of thinking is responsible for the Eighties shite of Kajagoogoo and Howard Jones. That should be a capital offence.

But the Eighties weren't done in providing us with musical hate figures. The Triumvirate of Crap were just around the corner; Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. 

Stock, Aitken and Waterman were a trio of songwriters and producers that were responsible for hits by Rick Astley, Banarama and Mel & Kim amongst others. You know I could just leave it there and you'd know that they are bad, bad people. Their only redeeming feature, as I see it, is they also gave Kylie Minogue her first hits. Not that I'm a fan of Kylie's music, more I'm a fan of her...um…well let's move on shall we?

Stock Aitken Waterman or 'SAW' were roundly criticised in their heyday, and again by me now, for their repetitiveness, not their ability to create hit songs again and again, that at least has to require some skill, even if it is a bad skill to have. No it was the repetitiveness of their songs, they all follow the same song structure, which is fine if you can get away with it (which they did) but the same song structure was used for any artist they worked with. I'm amazed that people fell for it, it's almost inconceivable to me. Anyway, SAW serve (in my mind at least) as the real starting point for truly shit pop music. They worked with the record company Fanfare Records, creating hits that kept the company afloat. One of the partners in Fanfare Records was none other than the absolute shining emperor of pop tripe, Simon fucking Cowell.

But we'll come back to the nipple-high-trouser-lined twat later. When SAW finally (and mercifully) started to become obsolete in the early Nineties, a number of music managers created fully artificial groups with whom they wanted to have a series of hits as SAW did, but with just the one group (by 'artificial' I mean each member was chosen individually from the rest, usually for purely aesthetic reasons. Occasionally they would also have some talent, but it wasn't required). Nigel Martin-Smith created Take That, Louis Walsh created Boyzone in response, and Bob and Chris Herbert created the Spice Girls as a female alternative to both.

Now, you may expect me to, at this point, rail on them for the low quality of their music. But that's hard to do, as most of their songs were covers of earlier artists that, while they aren't to my taste, can't be called bad songs. Or alternatively they're written by professional songwriters, not the same kind as SAW but ones that actually differentiate each song they write. No, my problem is the commercialism of it, I mean, obviously, a record company wants and needs to make money, but with the boy bands and the girl groups it was all about making money, there was no creativity at all, pop music was stagnant. The whole marketing element is almost depressing; the 'boy band' as a marketing product is so transparent it's almost insulting; get a bunch of good looking guys to sing old love songs and get them onto kids' TV, gee, I wonder who the market was.

The corruption of 'pop music' was complete, and until around the early-to-mid 2000s it remained that way with Simon Cowell as the orchestrator behind its continued relevance. Cowell in fact furthered the reach of pop stagnation, bringing television shows to chart success (Robson & Gerome, the Teletubbies and Mr Blobby, and they're just the ones off the top of my head) and then reversing the trend and using television to create his next successes.

I can scarcely believe how he's managed to get away with it, through Pop Idol and X Factor Cowell has actually shown us the formulaic pop process at its core, yet he still makes millions and people eat it right up.

The only thing that keeps me from giving up hope is the influence of American pop music, that's right; America is a force for good when it comes to modern pop music.

In recent years there has been a small, but growing, number of British acts that achieve pop success without Cowell and his ilk. Their musical influences come from across the Atlantic, not from the desk of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. You see; American pop music evolved differently to British pop music. America had Motown which launched a multitude of careers and brought soul and funk into the mainstream consciousness. And it's that Motown influence that became the driving force behind pop music in America.

Of all the artists that began on Motown, Stevie Wonder is perhaps the one that has had the longest-lasting success. His particular style of soul and funk influenced music had such an impression on Joe Jackson (the overbearing, possibly abusive father of the Jacksons) that he made his children in the Jackson 5 cover Stevie's songs. The young Michael Jackson soon found success due to his charm, good looks and amazing talent. So that when he became the 'King of Pop' he had an ingrained style that echoed parts of Stevie Wonder's music.

Michael Jackson was truly great back at his Eighties zenith, and his enormous success was bound to engender followers. Now I'm not saying Michael Jackson is responsible for all of modern American pop music, but you'd have to be a special kind of moron to suggest he wasn't a massive part of it. Artists that followed in Jackson's pop footsteps include Usher, Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé Knowles. To the closed-minded theirs might sound like the most awful and generic sounding music ever. But they actually incorporate a long and varied history of differing musical styles; there's a heavy contemporary R&B influence on their work of course, but they also utilise elements of hip-hop, Michael Jackson's brand of disco-influenced pop, Stevie Wonder's funk and the soul of Motown. Pop music in America doesn't mean what it means in the UK, it doesn't mean generic shite marketed towards teen girls because America already got through that phase. The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC anyone?

The success of these artists in America has ensured a large following in Britain, and it's a fantastically broad definition of pop music that exists today. Much more broad than it ever was with Rock & Roll.

However, Lady Gaga is still shit.

"Wow, it's like the disappointment is happening right in front of my face!"

Charlie Brooker said that once about an internet gig that Keane put out in 3D. So you may have an idea what today's rant is going to be about.

3D films; I don't get the draw of them. I must be one of a small percentage of people who'll freely admit that they enjoyed James Cameron's Avatar, but then I'm a fan of Jimmy's work; (Terminator and Aliens, not Titanic). But I didn't see it in 3D, oh the incredulity on people's faces when I said that. "Yeah, it's only really good if you see it in 3D." I have to disagree. I thought it was a well-acted affair with an easy to follow soft science fiction plot, clearly characterised figures and some top-notch action scenes, oh, and a particularly sweet love story in there. Now people criticise it for its plot being unoriginal, in that 'outsider becomes an insider and changes his ways'...way. Yes, this plot has been used before, it was done spectacularly in 'Dances with Wolves' for example, which is surprising, considering Kevin Costner's not only in it, but he directed it as well. But I think this is a hollow criticism, films have been doing that for decades, I'll use the first (admittedly poor) example that comes to mind; the 2008 film 'Taken' starring Liam Neeson, uses a near-identical plot to the vastly-superior 2004 remake of 'Man on Fire' starring Denzel Washington. Both are very enjoyable films, but if you mention Taken to people you don't get vehement diatribes against it for reusing the ol' kidnapping storyline.

Now, before I carry on I'll have to point out that I have, in fact, never seen a 3D film and I have no desire to. I'm arguing from a weakened position in this rant, there you go.

Looking back, I can see that Avatar (as a film, not a marketing product) didn't play up to the 3D element, there's no bit that stands out as a 'LOOK! IT'S COMING OUT OF THE SCREEN!' bit, unlike say, 'Clash of the Titans' which managed to ruin a perfectly good 29 year old film and slap some 3D gimmick on it. There's a part where this magical 'Djinn' creature throws a coin for Charon's ferry, all well and good as a plot point in a telling of an ancient Greek myth, but the way they set up the scene was for the Djinn to toss the coin towards the camera. In 2D it looked like an odd choice of camera angle, but I immediately realised that, like so many others, this film was being marketed on the weight of its 3D content. To audiences watching it in 3D the coin would be flying right towards their face. Wow! What a spectacle!

Except it wouldn't be really, it would be distracting. I'll use another example before I go on about immersion like a wankerous disciple of Mark Kermode. The fourth (and hopefully, final) Resident Evil film; 'Resident Evil: Afterlife' stars, as ever, Milla Jovovich as Alice. The plot is pretty much the same as it's been since the second film; Alice wants revenge against the corporation who blah, phmeh, snuh. You get the picture; but it's not the plot that bothers me. The film is in 3D; in fact chances are it's in "eye-popping" 3D, which differs from other 3D techniques used in films because it, at some point during the film, makes the audience's corneas explode.

In the advert for the film, you see some shots that make that one gratuitous scene in Clash of the Titans look as subtle as a fart in a hurricane. I saw:
A split-headed dog leaping at the screen,
a Second World War-style aeroplane flying towards the screen,
some arbitrarily trenchcoat-wearing darkly-dressed people throwing a pair of sunglasses at the screen,
Alice kicking a tray of surgical equipment at the screen
and an enormous hammer/axe spinning towards the screen.
This was in a 34 second advert. I mean, how poor must the film be if they're pushing the 3D gimmick so heavily? It's not like you can even see the 3D effect on the advert, so it just looks like the director has this odd 'let's fuck up the fourth wall' fetish.

My other gripe with the 3D craze is how it affects how films are being made. Let's create a fictional scene in a film now:
There's a young mother, she's mentally disturbed and she's not been taking her medication, she sneaks out of bed, takes her child and escapes from the hospital, she steals a car from the car park and drives down the road at night, crying, her baby cries on the seat next to her. Back at the hospital the police realise she's gone and they spring into action, police cars peel out of the hospital car park with their sirens blaring. The girl parks the car and gets out, carrying her baby, who's still crying. The police eventually catch up to the girl who is by a river and attempt to talk to her, "It's alright, just put the baby down." The young girl is still crying as she tosses her baby into the river.
OK? An upsetting and unequivocally serious scene I hope. Except if the film was in 3D, eye-popping or no, then the only thing that the scene would be pushing would be, "CHECK OUT THAT FLYING BABY! IT'S LIKE THE INFANTICIDE IS COMING RIGHT OUT OF THE SCREEN!"

It's distracting, the last thing I want when I'm watching a good film is to be reminded of how it's a film. I want to get lost in it, to care about the characters and the plot and how the situation will be resolved. And to me that would seem much easier if random on-screen shit wasn't appearing as if it was going to twat me in the face.

But it's not just films that are in danger here. Television is soon to 'go 3D' as well. Except it won't, television as well as film has been three dimensional since its invention, all that's happening now is it's going 'a bit sticky-outy'. Now, I can understand why a film-maker or a television producer would want their production to be in 3D, it's a lucrative craze, and cinemagoers expect it nowadays, so to expect it at home is, at the very least, likely. But I saw an advert (adverts tend to get right under my skin) from Sky about their plans for sports broadcasts to be in 3D and the news as well! How the shitting hell do they expect seeing football in 3D will enhance the viewing experience? And the news, well, let's see, if Eamonn Holmes was on Sky News and was telling us about the number of people who died in a gas explosion in, oh I don't know, Peckham, I wonder how I'd feel if he was telling me in 3D and I have to think it would be the same if he had told me in 2D; fucking awful.

"...teach me the way my soul should walk."

These are the words of Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest who was in control of Florence in Italy from 1494 to 1498. His great contribution to the city of Florence was to make homosexuality a capital offence (how very Christian of him) and the burning of items associated with what he called 'moral laxity', such as; mirrors, cosmetics, lewd pictures, pagan books, immoral sculptures, gaming tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments, fine dresses, women's hats and the works of immoral and ancient poets. Through him we lost several pieces of Renaissance art, some painted by Sandro Botticelli, who threw them in himself.

You may be wondering why I'm bothering to tell you this, he was not the first person to organise a book burning, nor was he the last, but he is one of the most infamous, and his organised libricide (look it up) has a decidedly religious tone that sets it apart from most of the other book burnings in history.

A Christian group in Florida, called the "Dove World Outreach Centre" plans to hold an "International Burn a Koran Day" to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks. Now to a godless heathen like me that doesn't seem very "love thy neighbour"-ish, nor does it seem very "turn the other cheek"-ish either. Now of course I'm not a follower of any religion, I think that followers of many different religions are capable of and have carried out some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind in the name of their god or gods, but what benefit would there be, to absolutely anyone, in burning copies of the Qur'an?

You might be sat there agreeing with me that this group is generalising in the worst possible way and is actively courting controversy and hate; you may be sat there thinking that they have the right idea. If it's the latter, then please, fuck off from this page and never bring your hateful eyes or fingers here again. But if, however, it's the former then please, read on.

Also in their capacity as fascist theocratic crusaders, the Dove World Outreach Centre protests against homosexuality wherever it can find it, their actions have drawn the support and endorsement of everyone's favourite hate-mongers the Westboro Baptist Church, you know them, they're the ones that picket the funerals of American servicemen with signs sporting such bright and cheery slogans as "God hates fags".

Now clichéd as this may be, I'm going to have to prove Godwin's law right here. The actions that the Dove World Outreach Centre plan to carry out on September the eleventh this year are highly reminiscent of the Nazi book burnings in the 1930s; where books written by Jewish authors or by intellectuals, or indeed any book that did not conform to Nazi ideology were burned.

So let me close this entry with a quote from the nineteenth-century German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose works the Nazis burned, "Where they burn books, they will also burn people."

All aboard for funtime

Oh what a world we live in. I am Martyn the Great Ignoramus, Loser of Marbles, a cynic to my very core and a member of that most excruciatingly disappointing group of individuals we call 'people'. The supposedly witty name for this blog, 'Hypocritical Cynicism', is a sign of my own pretension, a trait I find so infuriatingly pompous in other people that I can't do much more than burn the word 'twat' into my forearm with a pair of stolen hair-straighteners as a reminder that I am no better than those I want to complain about.

I'm not going to lie here and try and tell you what I think should be done to solve the world's problems. I just want to chart the inexorable rise of the idiot. A special kind of...person? I suppose they do count as members of the human race on some mucus-coated bottom rung of the cultural ladder.

It's just so easy to hate them that I take to it with relish, their favourite words are 'epic', 'fail', 'lol' and of course 'random'. Because yes Jemima it is so 'random' for that broken egg to be in the kitchen. And yes Toby it is 'random' for someone to wear Converse.

They trudge around town centres wearing uniform skinny jeans and t-shirts with ironic logos on them, because they're far too outside the mainstream to shop anywhere except New Look and Topshop.

Their favourite band is someone you've never heard of and on the off chance you do manage to track down their rare Indonesian live EP then they've moved on because that band 'sold out'. "I've moved on from neo-classical baroque electro-folk-pop, it was going way too mainstream, I only listen to Nepalese arse flautists now."

They tell ironically racist/sexist/homophobic (hey, pick your prejudice) jokes that are so funny they offend you exactly as if they weren't ironically racist/sexist/homophobic.

They don't use MySpace anymore; they've moved onto Facebook,
They don't use Facebook anymore; they've moved onto Twitter,
They don't use Twitter anymore; they've moved onto that one social networking site you heard was 6 months off a full release and was being developed by three eighteen-year-old boys working out of a college dorm in Ohio because everything else is just too mainstream for them.

They make articulate and thought-provoking critiques of the most popular films of the moment and disguise their words brilliantly as complete ignorant idiocy. But of course they do this at peak efficiency when they've never actually seen the film they're currently giving a 35 minute lecture on.

They're everywhere, they're in your towns, in your cinemas, in your supermarkets, in your pubs, your clubs and your bars.

See if you can spot them; and if you do, don't say anything, don't even give them a dirty look. Just be content that you know that they are idiots.