Endorsements

"It was the most offended I've ever been by a Killer Whale story." Mrs. Trellis of North Wales

"I liked the video bit, that was quite good." J. Stephenson of Tucson, Arizona.

"Nope, never heard of it." Business Secretary, Vince Cable MP


Friday 18 February 2011

The AV Club...

[Note how I resisted calling it 'You're AVin' a Laugh' or something.]

The big news issue of the day is, of course, the debate surrounding the forthcoming referendum on the Audio Visual method of electing our MPs and many publications/websites etc. seem to be focusing on the battle lines being drawn not only between parties but within them too, not to mention between coalition partners.

Alternative Vote is a simple idea, albeit in a fairly complicated way. You select not only your first choice but also your second choice meaning that if your first choice is eliminated due to no-one reaching the 50% threshold your vote carries over to the second choice until eventually the least hated party/person ends up in power. Clegg, who had originally called AV 'a miserable little compromise', now leads the charge in support of it only to be turned on by David Cameron (trouble in paradise?) who claims it is 'inherently unfair' and went so far as to say that under AV we could end up with a party in charge that no-one wanted or even actually voted for. Well, phew, Dave, just as well that didn't happen in the last election, eh?

The main point is however that this is an issue where party politics has almost gone out of the window, where PM and Deputy can face off against each other, where cabinet ministers can disagree, where Prezza can be furious with Ed Miliband. The best analogy I can think of (in my tiny, nerd-culture addled brain) is Marvel's Civil War crossover comics from 2006/7, written by the incomparable Mark Millar. A government initiative demanding the registration of superheroes leads Captain America to abscond from his duty to round up the rogue masks and fall in with an anti-registration group, quickly becoming their figurehead along with other prominent figures such as Luke Cage and Cable. Meanwhile Cap's old friend and co-Avenger/Ultimate Tony Stark thinks it impossible in the current political landscape to resist this change and continue to self-police and gathers his own team of higher-profile heroes (She-Hulk, Mister Fantastic and even Spider-Man who unmasks especially) to hunt down the resistance.

As the plot develops amid much tragedy, the Human Torch and Invisible Woman side against their intrepid leader Mister Fantastic, Spider-Man turns coat after discovering some of the more unpleasant features of the act and ultimately they all cause more damage with their 'Civil War' than either the Registration Act itself or any resistance to it would have done in the first place... oh, and Captain America is assassinated on some courthouse steps.

Now, what does this have to do with AV? Is Prezza a Luke Cage, punching his way against the reform, or is he more of a Ben Grimm trying to protect the interests of civillians and keep himself in pies and insurance comparison ads? Will Cameron be gunned down on some stairs by Crossbones? Is Clegg going to don a suit of fictional metal and laser his way to some actual power?

No... or at least I'd be very surprised. The main point is that it's interesting to see individuals pitched against each other within their own groups. Public hostility to politics (like public hostility to heroes in the wake of Hulk's smashing of Las Vegas or Nitro's explosive murder of 600 people) is likely to lead to a 'yes' vote, argue some commentators, but then there are surely many who think FPtP flawed but that AV is just a way of keeping things much the same but different enough to fool most people into thinking there doesn't need to be a proper change for another 400 years.

In any case, it looks like this one will run and run (and I am in no way qualified really to talk about any of it or discuss any ramifications).

Just as a quick straw poll/trial, please comment on how you would vote (1st, 2nd and 3rd choices please) in the referendum.

1) Yes to AV
2) No to AV
3) What does it all mean? Why can't we just go home?


This week Sam watched: True Grit. A masterpiece. Towering performance from Bridges, fantastic script from the Coens and if Deakins doesn't win the Oscar for cinematography it's a crime. A masterclass in film-making.

Monday 14 February 2011

Ill Informed TV Reviews: I...

Right, here's a sort of accidental idea I've had whilst shambling around today- review TV shows, having missed the first 3/4 or so. Basically, I caught the tail end of Cookery School, Channel 4's answer to the BBC's cook-off monopoly, if the question was "can you make a sort of low-rent Masterchef in what appears to be a brick high-rise in Acton?"

Now Cookery School is much like an ordinary school: There's an overwhelming pressure placed upon the students and at the end of tomorrow's episode someone gets evicted... Oh hang on, that's not schools, is it? That's reality television... always get those two mixed up. Not schools at all really. (Well, maybe after Gove's finished tinkering: "Once you've bought and funded your own free school, you can kick the weakest students out at the end of every week...")

I watched the last quarter as the 'students' were tasked with cooking risotto with mussels and then chastised in front of one another by chef Richard Corrigan (out of off of Great British Menu) and 'cookery mentor' (or 'chef') Gizzi Erskine. Graduate (it's what we call them now that none of them can get actual jobs) Bram (who knew people weren't only called that in the 19th century?!) was complimented on the texture of his risotto. Clearly there was a bit of history with Bram, as Corrigan was forced to reconsider his opinion of his cookery abillities. Bram, clearly a bit of a 'character', did an impression of Corrigan, explaining that he expected the Irishman to deride his humble rice dish when in fact he had let out a gutteral "mmmmm", in the post-cookery interview segments that take place on the balcony, complete with black, spiralling fire escape stairs as if the students had all popped out for a cheeky fag break.

It's the classic format. Plucky amateur cooks try and make it big and learn a few things along the way. Like Masterchef. Except not really Masterchef, shh, what did you go and mention Masterchef for?! Well, I guess it's because Masterchef have a flash new studio complete with Time Commanders-esque surveillance balcony for Gregg and John to eye the incompetence of the contestants like dodgy food emperors at an amphitheatre. "Tougher challenges" claims the voiceover... and yet I thought that Imperator Greggus Wallacius had decreed that "cooking doesn't get tougher than this" every episode for about 4 whole previous series.

Anyway, the thing about Cookery School is that it's almost a throwback to the late nineties, early noughties heyday of Channel 4, where BBC formats were slightly altered and then shoved in brick studio space in Hounslow. Who can forget the seminal RI:SE or... you know... the educational things they used to do... sort of edgy stuff... about sex and drugs? Even the camera work is reminiscent of that Golden Age of television where top media luminaries like Kate Lawler and Mark Durden-Smith could run the rule over the day's news in an edgy early morning formats... no, not like Daybreak, even edgier (if you can imagine such a thing...).

But, I only saw the last 15 minutes, so the first bit could have been shot as a Bergmanesque character study of some tragic but loveable amateur cooks set in Malmo. I don't know. Next: Outcasts, the last 15 minutes of Episode 2... possibly.

Friday 11 February 2011

Denial's Not Just A River in Egypt...

Right, yesterday saw under pressure national hate figure Hosny Mubarak pull an audacious switcheroo on the furious public assembled in Tahrir Square. A press conference was called, rumours spread that the 82 year old was about to step down. When the time of the conference arrived, Mubarak kept the world's media waiting while he stood backstage giggling. Eventually he arrived on stage and declared that, actually, the conference was all a big joke and he wasn't stepping down at all. HA! Jokes....

You see? It was all a big prank. He's going to be there for ages yet... at least until September and by then this whole Tahrir Square revolution thing will have blown over, probably and he can cling on for another 30 years...

Or perhaps not. I don't know. I try and avoid big stories like this that lots of people seem to have opinions about, frankly because it takes a lot of time and effort to get oneself to the required level of knowledge and expertise to be able to offer a valid journalistic opinion. Which is actually what today's blog is about...

Journos famously cut it fine when offering their two penn'orth on topics by not actually reading/watching/doing what it is they're writing about. It happens to all of them at one point or another. They'll drop a bollock and say something silly about an episode of The Tudors or cooking Risotto or something. Just you see if they don't. Yesterday this issue reared its inelegantly-coiffured, empty lens glasses-clad head once more after this article by Deborah Orr was printed in the Guardian G2. Now, while I don't necessarily agree with the content - while I don't think 10 o'Clock Live is the perfect vehicle for Lauren Laverne, she is nonetheless a very talented presenter and at no point have I ever heard her touted as our answer to Tina Fey before this piece - there is an obvious boob... well obvious to anyone that saw the episode of 10 o'Clock Live in question, in which a PRE-RECORDED, STAGED PIECE ABOUT CHARLIE BROOKER AND LAVERNE COCKING UP A LINK was aired and then mocked by the presenters themselves.

But hey, it's just a bit of lazy journalism, happens to the best of us, right? Wrong. Twitter went 8 shades of mental about this. First with some quite personal attacks on Deborah Orr, then people defending Orr, then people attacking the people who attacked Orr and then people who attacked Orr attacking the people who defended her on the basis of their defence. Now, aside from a cheap dig at the format which might concern the production staff and presenters, the only person who should really have been 'offended' by the article is Laverne herself. I can sympathise there. I hate reading criticism... and as a writer, that's, well, a bit of a massive pisser. In fact, if you leave a comment, there's a good chance I'll track you down/humiliate you with my lucid prose... or just cry... one of those two...

I'm sure that after reading my spot on dig at Mubarak at the start there you will have realised that I didn't even watch the press conference- I was busy writing something else at the time- but you have to fill the column inches somehow. And that I suspect is what happened to Orr. She wanted a quick piece to demonstrate that she too loved critics' darling 30 Rock (which is very good, to be fair) as well as having a quick pop at the fairly divisive 10 o'Clock Live.

It was Brooker himself who first drew my attention to the article in question via Twitter. Now, I love Brooker, the man is massive influence on my writing and general miserable approach to life, he has magnificent hair and all he did was indicate the mistake, but in doing so he inadvertently created somewhat of a monster (at least on Twitter between about 10 o'clock and sort of late lunchtime-ish) where people got really quite angry about this little journalistic slip-up.

The article was just a clear opportunity to make a cheap snide, which we all love as writers, let's face it. I made a cheap snide about Mubarak, perhaps the week's most obvious target, at the beginning of this very column. Orr, a respected social and political commentator, was just padding out her double-page spread in the G2, it was an honest mistake, she's not an abominable, controversy-hungry, bile-spouting harridan like Melanie Phillips or Jan Moir, she's just an ordinary journo. I honestly think that in a world where the Daily Mail continues to be published there are journalistic issues that people should be more worried about than one columnist cocking up side-piece about Tina Fey/Lauren Laverne.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm defending Orr- she's doing a job for actual real money, that I've been doing free for what seems like an eternity- but some of the things that people Tweeted about it were needlessly offensive. Many of the commenters, I suspect, had not even read Orr's article in the first place and were operating by hearsay. I love Twitter, but we Tweeters are, all of us, guilty of some quite staggering hypocrisy sometimes- whether it's denouncing racism on Question Time and then laughing at some gypsies getting married (which I'll happily admit I've never watched and will never attempt to write a piece about) or attacking a journalist that wrote an article they've not read about a show that she hadn't watched. Not to mention whoever was subbing that day let this mistake slip through the net, but then they might/probably have better things to do on a Thursday night than watch live topical comedy shows, I don't know.

So maybe we can cut people some slack. It must be bad enough being a Guardian journo where every Tom, Dick and Harry can take the phrase 'comment is free' a little too literally and leave a borderline-insane/worthless opinion on your piece for all to see on its website... in fact, my favourites are those like John Harris who go after malicious commenters and keep commenting on their own pieces getting angrier and angrier or Sarah Ditum's games reviews where she isn't afraid to embarrass commenters for being overly dramatic with their sort of half-critical arsey remarks. Because these people only leave these narky, niggling little nuggets of criticism (probably born out of self-hatred in what I believe is known in the trade as 'the Frankie Boyle Method' of being funny) because they think that the authors will somehow not care enough about their work to take issue with them.

I can't speak for the writers I've mentioned, but I certainly take some pride in my pieces (I mean, not all of them, obviously, some of them were bordering on utter shite - as is this one, some would say) and it hurts to see them attacked by angry office workers trying to avoid having to fill in a spreadsheet about the Hamburg files. Writing in the G2 in an extract from her book on the very same day as Orr-gate, screenwriter/director Nora Ephron described the pain of seeing your work flop. It's 'mortifying', 'lonely' and 'sad'. And that's from a triple Oscar nominee, so imagine how shite it is for us downtrodden hacks.

So maybe, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't tweet/leave a comment on the Guardian website... Mkay?

Friday 4 February 2011

Everything That's Wrong With...

There comes a time when every right thinking columnist must write his/her 'everyone else is basically an idiot' column. This was perhaps most brilliantly illustrated in the seminal satire of modern idiocy 'Nathan Barley' when put-upon, jaded hack Dan Ashcroft (portrayed with stunning ennui by Julian Barratt and, one suspects, heavily based upon writer Charlie Brooker) pens his legendary 'Rise of the Idiots' polemic, only to be beatified by the very idiots he sought to shame. Well, I have a strong inkling that this week is the time for my 'Rise of the Idiots' (see, it's a bit like Brooker's 'Dawn of the Dumb', you see where I'm going with this?).

There are two main triggers for this vitriolic brainsplurge that I will be inflicting upon you all today: The first is the maiden series of Channel 4's living sexual health nightmare The Joy of Teen Sex and the second is this article by John Harris, appearing in yesterday's G2 (think of it as further reading... you don't have to read it all... even just the title will do)

"So, what on earth could be wrong with a show titled 'The Joy of Teen Sex'?", you may well ask. Now, I'm no prude, I've cracked many a hearty innuendo and penned thoughts (admittedly for comic effect) that would make the Marquis de Sade... well... I don't know... have a sly wank(?)... but one that he felt really guilty about afterwards...; I have no issue with graphic nudity or a heavily trussed-up 'sex coach' removing a frankly terrifying looking piece of carnal paraphernalia from a chest of equally daunting vibrating trinkets; but what I do have a problem with is a ludicrously trite television show. Teenage sex is doubtless an issue worthy of exploration and is certainly worthy of a far less flawed format than 'Joy', which somehow manages to treat fairly harrowing issues with a childish contempt and light-hearted frolicking with a kind of po-faced nagging. Some moments leave you expecting Graham Chapman to march onto screen and halt proceedings for them becoming 'too silly' whereas others have perfectly innocent, balanced young women having rancid A2-printed genitals thrust in their faces until they cry.

Now, what does this have to do with 'the rise of the idiots', I hear you cry, well aside from the people frequenting the 'Sex Advice Shop' and the voxpops which wouldn't look out of place in 'A Bit of Fry and Laurie', a regular feature is the thoughts of 'teen journalist' Billie JD Porter. [deep intake of breath and sigh] There's nothing particularly wrong with Miss Porther per se... but I can't help but feel that she's a 'journalist' in the way that I'm a Hollywood actor... Yes, she says fairly sensible things when being pressganged into watching someone get a Prince Albert or a 'vajazzling', but then so would any sane person faced with watching a man have a needle thrust down his urethra and, yes, she seems fairly game, posing for a slightly dodgy middle-aged 'glamour model photographer' and venturing onto Chatroulette (which, incidentally, if the latter makes you a journalist, makes me eligible for last year's Pullitzer...) but I want to see her pen 2,000 words on Tahrir Square and hand it into me by the end of the week, you know? I've trawled the internet for evidence of 'journalism' but her blog (http://www.billiejd.blogspot.com/) doesn't offer any clues (I won't link properly in case she sues for defamation... after all she seems like a modern woman... one who would sue for defamation...).

Take this week's episode. Porter appeared, flanked by two impossible hipsters, all with vacant expressions on their faces, staring into the abyss of depravity that is Chatroulette (for when you stare too long into the Chatroulette, it too stares back unto you...) and gurgling various childish platitudes into the webcam (not to mention later making 50 dirty internet pounds by not adhering to age-old ((albeit very flawed)) internet rule of 'tits or GTFO'). And it is exactly these people that I'm beginning to struggle with. You know the sort, the kind of people who say they're 'dressing ironically' and button their shirts all the way up, who think/know they're better than you because they have the right connections to make into television/fashion/journalism, whose voices resemble a mixer-sodden whinge with a rising inflection. In Ashcroft's 'Rise of the Idiots' he points out how the idiots are "oblivious to the paradox of their own uniform individuality" and that is just it- you're not being ironic anymore when everyone is doing it. Just admit that you actually like bowties and Neil Diamond and that you do actually need those NHS spectacles and that you're not really a 'journalist'. It's fine, you know, you don't have to be a 'journalist', it's ok just being on television because you're a hipster and your parents know some people... mostly... yeah, it's nearly almost fine as long as you accept that that's the case. I know what you're thinking: 'Oh, Sam, you can't cut everyone down to an archetype, some of them are probably fine... what are the underlying causes, why can't you explain all that? EH?', well I'm getting there, ok?!

Essentially the underlying causes are those raised in John Harris' article. It's suddenly become acceptable to be Tory in pop culture. Well, I'm here to echo Johnny Marr's sentiments. It's not 'ok' to be a Tory creative, because creativity is our only defence against them in the first place. The arts are ours, dammit. Why can't you go back to your braces and stock-broking and leave our arts alone?! I don't need both Gary and Ken Barlow telling me how good Cameron is, I don't want to hear it anymore. They're selling off our forests and now their taking our arts from the inside. I didn't absorb all the social realism I could so Gilbert and George could tell me 'socialism wants everyone to be equal. We wanted to be different...' (a factually inaccurate statement anyway... the two aren't mutually exclusive) or for some Harrow/Eton/Russell Group University tosspot could tell me that they shouldn't have to apologise for their privilege. Yes. Yes, they should. 'Oh, but I was born into millions and millions of pounds' doesn't really cut it excuse-wise with me. You should have to apologise because there are millions with the same aspirations as you who have had to work a thousand or more times harder to get any closer to realising it and even then, bar a handful of notable exceptions, remain more distant from it than you would ever experience. Ok, so you might argue that they, on some level, must want to better themselves in the same way that you do by going to Oxbridge/JP Morgan etc., but there is just an inherent value in actually working to get there. Using your rationale, let's imagine a child in Ethiopia born into poverty. That's fine is it. We shouldn't bother offering help to that child because it's been born that way, is that it? Yes, you should have to apologise, because you are responsible, at least (if you insist on the excuse of birth allowing you to be non-culpable) for the fact that many a decent, hard-working, ordinary employee has lost their job/missed out on promotion/achieved so little of what they wanted in life that they've been driven to suicide, you short-sighted, self-serving oik.

Ahem...

Anyway this is more about arts and less about me being a bit like Geldof...

As several commenters on the article point out 'oh but Thatcher was good for the arts, Sam, wasn't she? Look at all the arts we done under Thatcher, eh? What about music and drama... all that we done under Thatcher, eh?'. Here's the rub- yes, The Smiths happened under Thatcher, yes, Boys From The Blackstuff happened under Thatcher but they were both epics of utter despair but also of steely defiance under a regime attempting to choke originality and creative freedom as well as handily getting rid of all the actual jobs that would otherwise have been available too. To credit Thatcher with Bleasdale's magnum opus or Strangeways Here We Come is like crediting Hitler with 'the marvellous courage shown by the French Resistance'. They existed as anathema to the Tory government, reminding them just how much we hated what they stood for and exactly how we can overcome it.

Speaking of Boys From The Blackstuff, Liverpool City Council is fully aware that it doesn't want another generation of Yosser Hughes'- beaten by police, battered by the despair of the Dole and all but killed by the government- and has pulled out of Cameron's Big Society, already denounced on this very blog last year as basically 'don't like how things are? Then you sort it out and we can blame you when it inevitably goes tits up' politics.

Now, as bad as 'Uncool Britannia' is, I wasn't particularly enamoured with Cool Britannia either (It's responsible for Damien Hirst, after all, who is responisble for making obscene amounts of cash from extortionately priced botched taxidermy or human remains), perhaps it's wrong to make this a political thing as Harris has done, but it just so happens that you're friendly neighbourhood over-privileged pop-culture figure (surprise, surprise) just happens to be a Tory more often than not.

I don't wake up in the morning with the sole aim of inciting class warfare, honestly I don't. This was supposed to be about the arts and about terrible, privileged ironically-dressed hipsters and I've turned it into a massive go essentially about how I've put in actual effort into the things I've wanted to do and got zero reward like so many honest people, who would be part of the appallingly patronisingly-titled 'Alarm Clock Britain' if they didn't lie awake at night despairing over whether cuts are going to lose them their jobs or wondering how they're going to keep the electricity bill paid and sleep through their alarms until they awake in a cold sweat, cursing the fact that they're still alive and still doomed to the daily grind in Cameron's Britain.

Phew...