Tasteless Celebrity Tie Ins 2009

Cluedo: Michael Jackson edition. There's been a murder at Neverland! Can you deduce who has assassinated Mr White from the clues you obtain? Was it La Toya with the Botox injection? Was Bubbles in the Oxygen Tank with the Grammy at the time of the murder? Baghdad Monopoly We've dispensed with the houses and hotels, and have instead gone for the pure simplicity of suicide vests and ethnic violence. Do not pass 'Go', go straight to Abu Ghraib and be humiliated by Yankee bastards. If you land on the Utilities, don't worry, because they're being continually fucked up and won't be online till 2109, when Obama's great great Grandson confirms that the battle for Iraq has been won. Land on 'Community Chest' and discover that your shop has been blown to fuck, collect $100 compensation. 

Watching Films Backwards : Part II

Cocoon

Black comedy in which a group of surprisingly spritely pensioners slowly lose their energy after mysterious hairy eggs suddenly appear in their swimming pool. Gradually, as debilitating arthritis and senility set in, a group of aliens suddenly remove the eggs and bugger off, leaving our protagonists in a sorry state.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

A silent, dignified, tall Indian delivers a water cooler to a mental asylum via a window, before rescuing a lobotomised man in the midst of being suffocated to death by a pillow. The rescued man, Randle McMurphy, while repairing his relationship with Nurse Ratched, then annoys his fellow inmates so much that they all retreat back into their shells, before Randle waltzes out, leaving them none the wiser. The Indian never speaks again.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

A complete freak ages normally, while all around him age backwards.

Moses

Lavishly produced, and with a cast of thousands, this famous story receives a new twist as Moses returns the troublesome Israelites back to the Egyptians. Along the way, he takes tablets of stone and places them on a mountain-top, extinguishes a burning bush and rescues thousands of Egyptians from the clutches of the Red Sea, before finally curing Egypt of a variety of diseases and restoring all of their first-borns to life. Sails off in a basket for a fitting and emotional finale.

A true Egyptian hero. Not very popular in Israel though.

Watching Films Backwards

While not necessarily completely compliant with reversing time, perhaps the next generation of film franchise reboots will provide originality by taking existing plots and completely reversing them. Or some shit like that. With more CGI explosions and better merchandising. And some kind of deal with Burger King involving plastic toys that really capture the spirit of the films themselves.

Titanic

A brave captain takes the heroic, last-ditch decision to repair the largest passenger liner in the world by twatting into a massive iceberg. The boat, carrying passengers returning from America to go back to their old lives, magically sucks the bloated, drowned and frozen corpses of a thousand victims from the icy grip of the North Atlantic and returns them to life.

A handsome young scamp called Jack immediately regrets his decision to engage in carnal affairs with a stuck-up young aristocrat and instantly breaks up with her.

He also spends half an hour erasing a perfectly acceptable pencil portrait of the naked trollope.

Star Wars : Retreat of the Jedi

Darth Vader begins the film by using his magic hands to suck the dead Emperor from the Death Star's reactor. Then, after welding his father's arm back on with his lightsaber, Luke Skywalker makes a heroic retreat, while bringing back to life scores of stormtroopers.

Meanwhile, his friends assemble the largest repair armada in Galactic History in a bid to completely and utterly repair the Imperial Fleet. Sadly, the most annoying race in Star Wars history (Ewoks) are also given urgent medical attention, and return to Endor to shout Beech-a-fucking-wawa at each other.

Han Solo is frozen right at the end of the film.

The Mighty Ducks

Emilio Estevez reduces a highly trained team of young hockey stars to inept, incompetent and incapable buffoons, eventually leading them to embark on an unceasing losing streak. The utter bastard.

The Incredible Hulk

A man, who's boiling vicious anger can only be placated by firing hundreds of thousands of missiles at him, runs towards armies.

Armageddon

A team of miners use a nuclear device to fuse a pile of debris that was heading away from Earth into a single asteroid. They then return to Earth. No-one knows why they bothered. Forwards or backwards, in actual fact.

Highlander

A lonely man attempts to resurrect his friends by welding their heads back to their bodies with his magic sword.

I'm running out of ideas now.

My Diminishing Faith in Smallville

After what feels like several thousand episodes and countless seasons, I'm finally getting tired of Smallville. I'm a very loyal type when it comes to my television programmes; some might say almost obsessively compulsively loyal.

After all, I was there at the bitter end of Quantum Leap, despite almost everyone having realised that Sam was destined to bounce about through time fixing past ills for ever. Taken to its logical conclusion that eventually all severe past ills would be righted, this probably would have entailed future series seeing Sam fixing ills such as a leaky pipe, a grazed knee or spelling mistakes, with Al informing him that 'Ziggy thinks there's a 78% chance that you're here to make sure Mrs Belvedere doesn't get that atrocious hairdo.'

Regardless, even I can belatedly tell when the reward for watching a programme is negligible, non-existent or prolonged pain.

I remember the first series of Smallville fairly vividly. To use an oft-stolen and ball-achingly dull witticism, Superman 90210 was my initial impression. It was fairly engaging though, and despite the standard filler episodes, it was enjoyable enough.

The unrequited love triangles, or rhombuses, or actually, pentagons come to think of it, carried tangible chemistry between the leads. I even forgave the cloying sweetness of Clark's apple-pie family upbringing, as it was counterbalanced fairly well by the disfunctioning enmity of the Luthor clan.

I came close to putting Smallville in a lead-lined box after the diabolically poor season four not only suspended disbelief, but broke its nose and kicked it repeatedly in the testes, before dousing it in petrol and setting fire to it.

Yes, I know, suspension of disbelief in a programme about an alien who can fly, fire heat from his eyeballs, run faster than the speed of sound and assemble an IKEA wardrobe in less than three hours is a dubious thing, but if you'd seen any of the shit-smeared episodes I'm referring to, you'd feel the same way.

Anyway, the worse part of falling out of semi-love with a favourite TV programme is the moment where you finally open your eyes to seeing its myriad flaws as a non-fan would perceive them.

The fact that in almost every single episode, Tom Welling as Clark Kent was asked to react to Kryptonite morphed from being a minor irritant to a full blown crime against humanity. I felt sympathy for the actor, who has probably been directed hundreds of times to show his 'Kryptonite reaction', falling to the floor like a sack of shit in the presence of a substance which is seemingly more common than hydrogen in the Smallville universe.

At least he can take his acting prowess into future roles that require him to fall to the ground like a sack of shit. Perhaps a film about a narcoleptic rentboy, unless it's already been done (it has).

His portrayal of continually refusing to share his secret with his nearest and dearest comes across more as a slight apprehension of being rumbled for eating the last two slices of bread in the house, rather than the crippling existential angst of having to live with a lifetime's secret that would change his existence forever should he choose to reveal it.

Fuck off Lana.

That's probably not a complete paragraph, but the trouble with Lana Lang is that the writers haven't known what to do with her since the end of the first series. After realising that the childhood sweethearts angle was getting a mite tired, they tried to turn her into a witch in one of the most abysmal story arcs ever committed to screen. They tried to turn her into a superpowered spy who feels no pain. They made her kidnap and torture Lionel Luthor. They gave her a phantom pregnancy. They finally wrote her out of the series by permanently suffusing her with enough kryptonite to shrink Clark's gonads for good. Good riddance. Twatbasket*.

After losing the best actors in the series and being left with the inoffensive plank that is Clark surrounded by what feel like cheap imitations of Lex and Co, the series is limping over the line while being harried by feral dogs and homeless people swinging sticks. And I don't think I've got any remaining patience to be there to see it.

As the ultimate rejection, I'm going to watch E4 up to the point that Smallville starts and then swiftly turn over, and then an hour later, watch E4+1 up to the point that Smallville starts and shun it for a second time. As gestures go, it's fairly futile, especially in the days when you can pause live television and shun programmes to your heart's content, but it's time to finally take a stand.

That no-one will notice. Or see. Or care about.

Ahh, fuck it, I'll probably end up watching it.


*an insult shamelessly stolen from the ever-excellent http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com

Walkers Customer Crisp Flavours Ideas that Didn't Make the Final Cut

I was intrigued by Walkers recent campaign for a customer-led crisp flavour competition, and subsequently entered some of my own ideas. Imagine my horror, my extreme mourning, the wails of agonised grief when none of my flavours made the final cut. Pain Hubris and vinegar Chaffing Ready Gritted The Broken Dreams of a Thousand Orphans and Mature Cheddar Arse and Elbow Cajun Fungus Thai Sweet Chilli and Sex Tourism Cock McFly Potato Shapes The Tears from Gordon Brown's Eye BBQ Burnt Hair Civilisation's Nadir Porn Cocktail Smokey Flesh Gout Incessant Unbearable Whining Yesterday's Kebab Morning Beer Mouth Shaved Pubic Region Pickled Mercury Tramp's Coat All I can summise is that Walkers are afraid to try anything new. Unless it involves Gary Lineker.

The Ugliness of Modern Culture

Susan Boyle. An unremarkable name for a woman with a powerful and melodic voice.

If you saw the first episode of the new series of 'Britain's Got Talent', you'd have witnessed the unedifying sight of a middle-aged Scottish woman amble modestly out onto a stage, in front of a crowd who were eagerly prepared to rip the stinking piss out of her, as soon as they'd appraised her appearance. Once she got her lungs into gear however, they were stunned into silence, presumably thinking, "Holy Ghosts of Mars, this lady can sing." They were as surprised as a cinemagoer would be to see Val Kilmer's facial expression of the last twenty years suddenly change.

Amanda Holden, the lady filling the role of 'the compassionate judge' turned on the tears, driven to them by the overwhelming sight and sound of a fairly plain looking woman singing well. The crowd and judges gave her a standing ovation for her performance, while secretly feeling like complete cunts for equating her looks with the expected inversely proportional quantity of talent.

A question - why would this sight drive someone to tears? Is being ugly the new autism? Is Susan Boyle an 'ugly savant'?

Somewhere along the line, and I'm not saying it's a new phenomenon, one of those strange unwritten rules was erm, unwritten, which states that 'ugly people can have no talent'. To be of less than supermodel looks and make it in today's showbusiness, you have to have an inordinate amount of talent, or appear on a reality TV show, or be a loud and vacuous polemicist.

And even if people of unglamourous appearance do somehow make it into the public eye, they run the risk of being patronised to death. 'Aw, the blind woman can sing', 'Aw, there goes the ugly bastard who can play a piano', 'Awww....Awwww...AWWWW.'

Still, I suppose it's better than being an attractive celebrity being harried at all hours of every day to satisfy the morbid curiosity of people for who's looking fat, who's looking thin, who hasn't got make-up on, who has cellulite, who has a spot, who was caught mid-blink and looks like they've had a massive stroke, and who is suffering from debilitating diseases. The obvious next step for these abysmal weeklies, is poublications devoted to highlighting particular 'flaws'.

When I see 'Celebrity Acnewatch' and 'Anorexic Rib Revealing Death-Verging Star Shots', I'll know it's time to do a Bill Bixby and hitch-hike to sad music up and down A-roads and motorways for the short amount of time before the planet finally gets bored of us and eliminates us.

And it'll be richly deserved, because let's face it, the human race and the noxious stench of modern mass Western culture have no place in a universe where we can view the ethereal beauty of a stellar nursery, of the divergent range of natural phenomona that the Earth has provided, but choose to watch '50 Celebrity Meltdowns' again instead. Hosted by Paul Fucking Ross. FFS.

Eggheads

Is there a more consistently annoying programme on television than BBC 2's 'Eggheads'?

It's hard to think of one.

The basic premise of the show is that a pub team of five friends challenges a team of 'Eggheads' who are former winners of other quiz shows, such as 'Millionaire', 'Mastermind' and the like. There are five rounds altogether, the first four of which are head-to-head battles between one of the challenging team and a nominated 'Egghead'.

The loser of each head-to-head battle is eliminated from the final group head-to-head, where the two teams go against each other for three questions each, followed by sudden death. A fairly bland, generic quiz format, if ever there was one.

The presenter is either Dermot Murnaghan, a fairly capable and affable chap, or Jeremy Vine, the Radio 2 lunchtime show idiot-baiting host, with a voice that can only be described as someone who sounds like they're permanently in the middle of having a particularly difficult butternut squash-sized shit.

The Eggheads look as you'd expect human encyclopaedias to look, and far be it from me to decry others' physical characteristics, but a couple of them wouldn't look out of place with pewter tankards full of home brewed mead in their hands, one of them looks a bit like Mackenzie Crook's tanned foreign cousin, another looks like a cards-in Women's Institute member and the last was the uber-posh winner of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'.

She was the lady who invoked ire from the angry uneducated masses because she didn't really need to win a million quid, but thought that she might as well, seeing as she knew a planetload of useless information. Fair play to her really.

On to the quiz then. During the one-on-one rounds between an Egghead and challenger, either Dermot or Jeremy will ask a multiple choice poser, and here is where the problems begin. Rather than simply answer the question, I can only presume that the Eggheads are encouraged (I resisted the urge to say 'egged on') to elaborate on their answer and make themselves look like massive cunts by elucidating at great length about why the capital of Peru is not Cerro de Pasco because that's a city in the Pasco region of the country and was formerly a great exporter of silver, and at over 4,000 metres up is one of the highest cities in the world.

The challengers then carry out the same trick, but, by dint of not spending their childhood reading Encylcopaedia Britannica and Schott's Miscellany every night, generally fumble their way through by excluding Chris de Burgh on the basis that he doesn't really ring any bells and Curtis Stigers is far more likely because the random firing of a few neurons in their tattered brainbox says so.

If you took out the stultifying banality of the contestants giving their answers in this way, the show would probably only last ten minutes. Which would be good all round, as that would be exactly twenty minutes less Jeremy Vine, and a short snappy quiz where the viewers wouldn't want to hammer nails through the eyes of each and every participant.

A severely strange aspect of the show is the giant screen behind each team. During the final round, the giant disembodied heads of the eliminated appear on the screen, leading to a surrealistic scene reminiscent of having really clever BFGs sitting behind the remaining contestants. See here - http://tinyurl.com/ck2fbp

I guess this blog is a really really long-winded way of saying that nobody likes a smart-arse.