BEATLES 2.0
So Paul McCartney's pie faced offspring has had this idea. It sounds like a brilliant idea. He is going to form the best new spin-off band since S Club Juniors, only his vision entails the bringing together of the sons of The Fab Four to form what we're hoping he'll call "Return of The Beatles" or something equally turgid. A brilliant idea, except that, of course, it's the most ridiculous, offensive and downright redundant idea anyone has ever had. You won't find a single more wanton display of twattishness in the entire back catalogue of farcically irrelevant, bizarro money-spinning schemes.
Can't wait for the first single. Apparently it's going to be called "Hold Me Shite", an anthem for middle aged Argos customers in which Jason Starkey beats out a random selection of percussive nonsense and McCartney Jr. warbles exorbitantly for hours about how he just can't hold anymore of his own shite and asks the audience, kindly if they will take it in their hands and hold onto it for him. A fitting metaphor for the crap the will be peddling to the mindless twits who will actually buy into this already flaming train wreck. Hopefully, though, Dad will write the songs – on a ukulele – and everybody can dance all night, just like in that video that everyone fucking hated.
No doubt, they'll be playing on Jools Holland before we know it. Maybe Jools can hail them as the new Beatles or something, proving himself once more to be at the vanguard of modern music. Maybe they can do a cover of their famous fathers' biggest hits. Fuck it, a medley. Sounds great to me lads, the swinging sixties are back and they're groovier than ever baby. Or we could all just go and steal a bus, fill it up with everyone who bought their records and send it hurtling at breakneck speed over the edge of a very high cliff. We could all just dance as Jacob's Creek quaffing baldies and their high functioning micro scooting children plummet rapidly to their grizzly end.
Yeah, this news is even worse than when Linda put meat in her veggie sausages. McCartney family, only one of you has ever had a good idea and let's face it, it all happened many, many years ago. Now, if you will kindly stop being absolutely absurd, we might all be able to get back on with our lives without having this sort of apocalypse-inducing tripe to worry about.
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Words: Billy Black
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TULISA IN CHOMPING AT THE BIT: A REVIEW
One X Factor Judge, a giant cock, an iPhone and a pink velour tracksuit. No, I'm not talking about the average long weekender that is Gary Barlow's annual bangaround in the Cotswolds. No, I'm not talking about Louis Walsh and the process of elimination during the formation of Westlife. I am, of course, referring to Tulisa's standout performance in her feature film debut, starring alongside Denzel Noshington and an embarrassingly massive dick (thank fuck it's all bent and weird or we'd all be crying under our bedsheets).
The sex tape (which means dirty MP4 in old speak or publicity stunt in media speak) is six or seven precious, intimate minutes (or 'moments' as the class actress herself has described them) of Tulisa doing her best impression of Noo-Noo from the Teletubbies on the hard-on of a grime MC no-one has ever heard of … until now. The tape itself is bewitching, as Tulisa takes a slap or two on the get go and says "ow, stop it", in her undeniably charming Camden tones. It's followed by a five minute whomp and a gobble interspersed with the occasional flash of the headlights from the Greek princess before the big finish.
Following in the footsteps of her heroes (Pammie, Kardashie and Hiltie) Contostavlos, or Contie as she will now be known, has made an admirable attempt at showcasing her hidden talents as a mega guzzler all over the internet, basically though it's just a blowie and while she goes for it, all you can really think at the end of it all is: "yeah, that gave me a semi."
11/20
Words: Billy Black
One X Factor Judge, a giant cock, an iPhone and a pink velour tracksuit. No, I'm not talking about the average long weekender that is Gary Barlow's annual bangaround in the Cotswolds. No, I'm not talking about Louis Walsh and the process of elimination during the formation of Westlife. I am, of course, referring to Tulisa's standout performance in her feature film debut, starring alongside Denzel Noshington and an embarrassingly massive dick (thank fuck it's all bent and weird or we'd all be crying under our bedsheets).
The sex tape (which means dirty MP4 in old speak or publicity stunt in media speak) is six or seven precious, intimate minutes (or 'moments' as the class actress herself has described them) of Tulisa doing her best impression of Noo-Noo from the Teletubbies on the hard-on of a grime MC no-one has ever heard of … until now. The tape itself is bewitching, as Tulisa takes a slap or two on the get go and says "ow, stop it", in her undeniably charming Camden tones. It's followed by a five minute whomp and a gobble interspersed with the occasional flash of the headlights from the Greek princess before the big finish.
Following in the footsteps of her heroes (Pammie, Kardashie and Hiltie) Contostavlos, or Contie as she will now be known, has made an admirable attempt at showcasing her hidden talents as a mega guzzler all over the internet, basically though it's just a blowie and while she goes for it, all you can really think at the end of it all is: "yeah, that gave me a semi."
11/20
Words: Billy Black
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JOSEPH KONY AND THE VIRAL MELTDOWN
We'll be the first to admit we're jumping on this bandwagon a little late, but yeah, that Kony guy does seem like a bit of a dick.
We are not trying to advocate child soldiers or cultish Christian groups, but the only thing more upsetting than his crimes against the Ugandan people is the fact that about a week ago no less than sixteen gitrillion people shared Invisible Children's hard hitting propaganda-ish documentary across various social media platforms the world over. Bummer, then, that Kony is already a wanted war criminal who has already been at the naughty for over two decades .
No-one fucking cares, you certainly don't. You might as well have posted a video of a dog riding a fucking bike to the theme tune of Thomas the Tank Engine. There is very little you can do to stop Kony being a world class jerk unless you are a paramilitary organisation capable of stopping a small army and seeking out a war criminal who can't be found by the United fucking Nations! Since when did you fucking care about politics anyway? I thought you were too busy signing on and buying nappies.
The phenomenon of things going viral can be pretty great. Remember Bunny Tap Dancer? That was lush. But it was stupid, it didn't mean anything and it didn't make me feel all guilty inside for about thirteen seconds. If you are going to make anything viral, make it something we can piss ourselves at, not a fucking sob story of proportions so huge we can't even begin to think about what we could do to change the situation so we post the fucking video on our Facebook in the hope that somehow the source of the problem will just fuck off and die.
N.B That My Little Kony meme is fucking hilarious though.
We'll be the first to admit we're jumping on this bandwagon a little late, but yeah, that Kony guy does seem like a bit of a dick.
We are not trying to advocate child soldiers or cultish Christian groups, but the only thing more upsetting than his crimes against the Ugandan people is the fact that about a week ago no less than sixteen gitrillion people shared Invisible Children's hard hitting propaganda-ish documentary across various social media platforms the world over. Bummer, then, that Kony is already a wanted war criminal who has already been at the naughty for over two decades .
No-one fucking cares, you certainly don't. You might as well have posted a video of a dog riding a fucking bike to the theme tune of Thomas the Tank Engine. There is very little you can do to stop Kony being a world class jerk unless you are a paramilitary organisation capable of stopping a small army and seeking out a war criminal who can't be found by the United fucking Nations! Since when did you fucking care about politics anyway? I thought you were too busy signing on and buying nappies.
The phenomenon of things going viral can be pretty great. Remember Bunny Tap Dancer? That was lush. But it was stupid, it didn't mean anything and it didn't make me feel all guilty inside for about thirteen seconds. If you are going to make anything viral, make it something we can piss ourselves at, not a fucking sob story of proportions so huge we can't even begin to think about what we could do to change the situation so we post the fucking video on our Facebook in the hope that somehow the source of the problem will just fuck off and die.
N.B That My Little Kony meme is fucking hilarious though.
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I DREAMED A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
Susan Boyle is a woman from Blackburn, West Lothian who shot to global fame after singing a cover version of a song – called I Dreamed A Dream – from a musical (Les Miserables). There is now a musical – called I Dreamed A Dream – that tells the story of how Susan Boyle, a woman from Blackburn, West Lothian shot to global fame after singing a cover version of a song – called I Dreamed A Dream – from a musical (Les Miserables).
I have no idea what the musical about her life is like, and I don’t begrudge her any of her success. But the incredible Russian Doll structure of the whole bizarre affair should be setting alarm bells ringing in the mind of anyone still conscious after an unrelenting decade of popular culture eating itself.
As we disappear rapidly down Simon Cowell’s rabbit hole, it is worth reflecting on why the Susan Boyle musical is more than just another lukewarm cash-in. After all, it’s not like wringing endless amounts of dirty water out of the dishcloth of culture is a new phenomenon.
Lucrative merchandising opportunities characterise everything from the death of a Princess to the birth of genuinely important ideas – Jay-Z’s badly judged ‘Occupy All Streets’ t-shirts being just one recent example. Splitting a simple idea into a thousand different pieces and then selling each one furiously has been a fundamental feature of modern capitalism since Walt Disney realised that Mickey’s simple silhouette was as good for selling tickets to theme parks as it was for movie theatres.
But the difference now is that the original source material is so dangerously low in actual physical content the whole house of cards starts to teeter under its own re-mortgaged weight. What was already a pretty unremarkable piece of human ingenuity – Les Miserables – has now been used repeatedly as the basis for increasingly more bizarre and subsidiary forms of entertainment.
And this is the problem: we’ve always had an endless appetite for the familiar, and longed for the comfort of a story we already know. But now that fame has become something to aim for in its own right (rather than being bestowed on lucky folk for a rare talent), keeping the turnstiles of spin-off opportunities moving has become an ever more surreal task.
ITV’s TV Burp is a perfect example of this. Every week, host Harry Hill incorporates a couple of the week’s more insane ‘characters’ to come and act as court jesters at the end of the show. It's usually side-splittingly funny, make no mistake. But you can’t help but wonder why people are so willing to take part in a pretty ruthless parody of…themselves. Why are they so willing? Perhaps it’s because being on TV was their only aim in the first place – and so any more TV time (even as a spoof of themselves) is a step in the right direction. When fame-for-fame’s sake becomes the norm, there are some bizarre tragicomic consequences.
It's easy to sneer, but that misses the point. People have always had differences of opinion about what makes for good entertainment, and there are plenty of weird perpetual motion machines ticking over at the more highbrow end of the spectrum. Arch observers of the celebrity melee – culture critics like Marina Hyde – are only too happy to froth articulately from the sidelines, always stunned by the new depths to which popular culture has sunk, but always on hand to offer weekly analysis with just enough detail that more discerning readers can share in the fun without having to endure the original incident. But they are dragging the comb of analysis over increasingly sparse material. They too are running on empty.
And meanwhile, like the closing scene in Inception where everyone comes perilously close to forgetting not only where they are, but what they were doing there in the first place, the musical story of a woman who covered a song from another musical winds its way through the nation’s larger theatres.
The dangerousness of radioactive particles is measured in ‘half lives’ – the length of time it takes for the particle to lose half of its radioactive power. The longer the half-life, the more radioactive it is. When a piece of musical theatre can spawn not only a global megastar for covering a song from it, but a whole new show about that process – in the space of two decades – you have to wonder what’s happened to the half-life of light entertainment.
Words: Adam Corner
Susan Boyle is a woman from Blackburn, West Lothian who shot to global fame after singing a cover version of a song – called I Dreamed A Dream – from a musical (Les Miserables). There is now a musical – called I Dreamed A Dream – that tells the story of how Susan Boyle, a woman from Blackburn, West Lothian shot to global fame after singing a cover version of a song – called I Dreamed A Dream – from a musical (Les Miserables).
I have no idea what the musical about her life is like, and I don’t begrudge her any of her success. But the incredible Russian Doll structure of the whole bizarre affair should be setting alarm bells ringing in the mind of anyone still conscious after an unrelenting decade of popular culture eating itself.
As we disappear rapidly down Simon Cowell’s rabbit hole, it is worth reflecting on why the Susan Boyle musical is more than just another lukewarm cash-in. After all, it’s not like wringing endless amounts of dirty water out of the dishcloth of culture is a new phenomenon.
Lucrative merchandising opportunities characterise everything from the death of a Princess to the birth of genuinely important ideas – Jay-Z’s badly judged ‘Occupy All Streets’ t-shirts being just one recent example. Splitting a simple idea into a thousand different pieces and then selling each one furiously has been a fundamental feature of modern capitalism since Walt Disney realised that Mickey’s simple silhouette was as good for selling tickets to theme parks as it was for movie theatres.
But the difference now is that the original source material is so dangerously low in actual physical content the whole house of cards starts to teeter under its own re-mortgaged weight. What was already a pretty unremarkable piece of human ingenuity – Les Miserables – has now been used repeatedly as the basis for increasingly more bizarre and subsidiary forms of entertainment.
And this is the problem: we’ve always had an endless appetite for the familiar, and longed for the comfort of a story we already know. But now that fame has become something to aim for in its own right (rather than being bestowed on lucky folk for a rare talent), keeping the turnstiles of spin-off opportunities moving has become an ever more surreal task.
ITV’s TV Burp is a perfect example of this. Every week, host Harry Hill incorporates a couple of the week’s more insane ‘characters’ to come and act as court jesters at the end of the show. It's usually side-splittingly funny, make no mistake. But you can’t help but wonder why people are so willing to take part in a pretty ruthless parody of…themselves. Why are they so willing? Perhaps it’s because being on TV was their only aim in the first place – and so any more TV time (even as a spoof of themselves) is a step in the right direction. When fame-for-fame’s sake becomes the norm, there are some bizarre tragicomic consequences.
It's easy to sneer, but that misses the point. People have always had differences of opinion about what makes for good entertainment, and there are plenty of weird perpetual motion machines ticking over at the more highbrow end of the spectrum. Arch observers of the celebrity melee – culture critics like Marina Hyde – are only too happy to froth articulately from the sidelines, always stunned by the new depths to which popular culture has sunk, but always on hand to offer weekly analysis with just enough detail that more discerning readers can share in the fun without having to endure the original incident. But they are dragging the comb of analysis over increasingly sparse material. They too are running on empty.
And meanwhile, like the closing scene in Inception where everyone comes perilously close to forgetting not only where they are, but what they were doing there in the first place, the musical story of a woman who covered a song from another musical winds its way through the nation’s larger theatres.
The dangerousness of radioactive particles is measured in ‘half lives’ – the length of time it takes for the particle to lose half of its radioactive power. The longer the half-life, the more radioactive it is. When a piece of musical theatre can spawn not only a global megastar for covering a song from it, but a whole new show about that process – in the space of two decades – you have to wonder what’s happened to the half-life of light entertainment.
Words: Adam Corner
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SEAPUNK
Some people who use tumblr are idiots, therefore "if you use tumblr you are an idiot" is not a sound conclusion. But my God there are is some serious guff on there. Among the maelstrom of turgid faeces the internet has spewed from its twisted guts, the trends and fads that appear as a result are probably the most abhorrent result known to man, and tumblr is full of them.
First there was witch house and now there is seapunk, a music scene that is little more than a hashtag. The premise of the 'scene', as far as I can tell, is this: it's remixed whale song (you read that right) created by adolescent hipsters who apparently have more time on their hands than a thief in a herb garden. They seem to spend ALL their time superimposing themselves onto "hilarious" marine-themed landscapes and situations. 'Oh look, it's a turquoise-haired scenester on a beach/with a mermaid/getting tossed off by a dolphin.'
I can't help thinking they must have been emos not too long ago who got depressed by My Chemical Romance breaking up and it led them to daytime T.V, which led to the constant repeats of Free Willy and it's awful sequels prompting them to reinvent themselves in the image of the first fucking thing that came into their field of vision.
Please be directed to the two foremost architects of Sea Punk above, Albert Redwine and Shan Beaste and their lovely, lovely hair.
Anyway, I'm off to the aquarium to sample a porpoise. Bet you can't fucking wait to hear what I can do with that and an hour of practice on GarageBand.
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/sea-punk?before=1329972237
Some people who use tumblr are idiots, therefore "if you use tumblr you are an idiot" is not a sound conclusion. But my God there are is some serious guff on there. Among the maelstrom of turgid faeces the internet has spewed from its twisted guts, the trends and fads that appear as a result are probably the most abhorrent result known to man, and tumblr is full of them.
First there was witch house and now there is seapunk, a music scene that is little more than a hashtag. The premise of the 'scene', as far as I can tell, is this: it's remixed whale song (you read that right) created by adolescent hipsters who apparently have more time on their hands than a thief in a herb garden. They seem to spend ALL their time superimposing themselves onto "hilarious" marine-themed landscapes and situations. 'Oh look, it's a turquoise-haired scenester on a beach/with a mermaid/getting tossed off by a dolphin.'
I can't help thinking they must have been emos not too long ago who got depressed by My Chemical Romance breaking up and it led them to daytime T.V, which led to the constant repeats of Free Willy and it's awful sequels prompting them to reinvent themselves in the image of the first fucking thing that came into their field of vision.
Please be directed to the two foremost architects of Sea Punk above, Albert Redwine and Shan Beaste and their lovely, lovely hair.
Anyway, I'm off to the aquarium to sample a porpoise. Bet you can't fucking wait to hear what I can do with that and an hour of practice on GarageBand.
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/sea-punk?before=1329972237
