Unadulterated Madness and Tragedy...

Right, I'm not sure if anyone's noticed but in the last 15 hours or so, the world has gone completely, off-the-wall, dingo ate my baby crazy. It is very much a mad world (not like the song... well not the Gary Jules version anyway... maybe the Tears For Fears one...).

From what I can remember it all started yesterday evening, when reports came out of SeaWorld that a trainer had been killed by a killer whale. Obviously a tragic event, but I can't help but feel that there is a clue in the title. It's another strong claim for why we shouldn't keep sea creatures in tiny environments. If I was trapped in a bathtub (to try and keep things to scale) for most of my life, I think I'd probably want to kill someone too. PETA have been lobbying SeaWorld to cease and desist in their capture and confinement of sea mammals and this has given them a pretty strong case. Telly, the murderer, had form however. He worked with a gang in the killing of another trainer in British Columbia in 1991 and in 1999 was discovered with the body of a naked man lying across his back. They appear to be dealing with the Godfather of orca- an uncompromising, lethal criminal genius. One eyewitness explained how Telly made it look like an innocent bit of playing. This time however, Telly made the crucial mistake of committing the crime in front of hundreds of people and will surely be tried and convicted. I worry that (as is the form with these kinds of things) Telly may have to be 'destroyed'. That always bothers me- "and the Bull Mastiff has been destroyed". Don't say 'destroyed' Peter Donaldson, you're not Auric Goldfinger; they didn't lock the poor bugger in a room and atomise it with bombs, they put it down.

The trainer was one of SeaWorld's most experienced and died 'doing what she loved', though I'm not really sure that anyone loves being attacked by a whale. That said, I offer (for what they're worth) my deepest condolences to the family and friends of the trainer. A little known fact is that on the cutting room floor of Hollywood is a reel labelled 'Willy kills Jesse, alternate ending'.

The second crazy event of the night (and the one that nearly carried me off) was the brave but ultimately futile effort of David 'the Iceman' Murdoch, Murdy, the Lockerbie Leopard, whatever you want to call him (albeit I came up with most of those nicknames...) and his men's curling team. GB came out to pipers playing 'Scotland the Brave'. It was quite an entrance, but it's fair to say that they had a poor opening 5 ends, with errors coming from the previously immaculate Euan Byers, Third Ewan MacDonald and the Iceman himself. Cram (playing the part of Alan Partridge) announced "I've just been of Dave Murdoch's Facebook page and apparently he likes listening to Oasis." Rhona immediately put him in his place and told the viewers at home to keep the faith. "It's a long way to the 10th end." She reminded us and told us to be positive- one of her catchphrases for the games. Take-out master 'Pistol' Pete Smith had a solid game and in the second half the throws started to come together for the GB team. Murdoch blew the chance for the win in the 10th, but managed a 1 to take the match to an extra end. The tension was palpable now, but GB were on the back foot as it came to Murdoch's final two stones. The Swedish Skip, tiny Nicklas Edin (the man with enormous arms) had hardly put a foot wrong all game and Murdoch was well and truly up against it. Rhona was remaining positive, explaining that if Edin fluffed his lines then it was as good as ours. She never says die, Rhona, it's very easy to see how she won a gold medal. Forget Cram in the commentary box, Rhona should have been down on the ice, dispensing the tactical advice to the boys. Edin made the take-out for the win with consumate ease and the World Champs found themselves ejected from the tournament. Asked what had happened, Murdoch (in true British 'don't admit your own failings' style) explained that "sometimes it doesn't go for you and this week it just didn't go for us at all." It was a plucky effort but no reward for our brave curlers. I was distraught, curling's as good as over, I'll have to go back to hoping that men/women crash spectacularly on ice/snow.

Speaking of spectacular crashes that's exactly what our other world champs did too. Minichello and Cooke in the Two Man Bob flipped over on the 12th corner and rode the remainder of the track the wrong way up. It was a biggie, an absolute peach of a stack (I missed it, because I was bleeding the radiator at the time, but I did eventually see it). Both were unharmed though and there were raucous cheers from the Whistler Sliding Center Crowd as the British pair had a cuddle in the middle of the track. So our dreams of olympic gold are as good as over. Amy Williams did exceptionally well to claim gold in the skeleton but it looks like that's all we're getting.

And finally this morning, in a spectacular bid to become 'Massive Wanker of the Week', UKIP MEP Nigel Farage launched a disgraceful, racist, character assassination at EU President Herman van Rompuy. In his quest for the title, Farage has already made Ashley Cole look like a thoroughly decent chap and Cheryl Cole look like a media-shy shrinking violet. It makes me thoroughly ashamed to be British. When I first heard the rant on the radio news, I expected it to be from the scorn-filled jowells of Nick Griffin, however it was from Farage, probably spurred on by the aforementioned Nazi's usurping of his key electorate. I don't idolise van Rompuy, I'm not a member of his fan club, I don't have posters of him on my walls, but no-one deserved the hideous tirade unleashed by glorified xenophobe Farage. I'm astounded that such brazen disrespect for a president doesn't result in immediate assassination - I suspect if it had been directed at Hugo Chavez instead of van Rompuy, that's what would have happened. The worst part is that the British public voted in this horrible bastard. How does that make us look to the rest of Europe, eh?

While van Rompuy generated more interest in the British media for his amusing name than his political exploits, he is a highly effective politician. Able to steer Belgium from political civil war between the Flemish and the Walloons, van Rompuy was chosen unanimously as the inaugural EU President. Farage claimed that van Rompuy's 'hatred of nation states' stemmed from the fact that van Rompuy came from a 'non-country'. This was the final straw, I practically hurled my radio through my window. As a man with Belgian heritage, whose ancestors died in Flanders fields to prevent the Germans from grabbing any piece of land they wanted in the Great War and had British relatives fight alongside them to take it back from the Kaiser, I feel pretty strongly about Belgium's right to be a 'country' and one hateful, bigoted little man is not going to change my opinion. Farage is an uncouth, attention-seeking racist and the biggest indictment of his ludicrous accusations was the fact that van Rompuy did not rise to them. "There was one contribution that I can only hold in contempt, but I'm not going to comment further." The Belgian said, with a dignity conspicuously absent from Mr. Farage's appearance.

Seriously, Farage was keen to bang on about democracy in his paranoid-delusional bellicose oratory, so perhaps we can remind him of what it means, by removing him from his role at the next election (if we can't forcibly remove him sooner). No man should have to face such unwaranted hateful bilge in any professional capacity and it was a great credit to the president that he was not affected by the comments.

And the BAFTA Predictably Goes To...

As many of you will have noticed a little film award ceremony took place on Sunday. The BAFTAs are always good value and I always (in true Dr. K style) have a bash at predicting the results. This year I managed an impressive 7/8 film category predictions (plus a couple of randoms- will it rain on the red carpet, which Rising Star nominee will arrive first, etc.). I know you're thinking that you'll have to take my word on this, but I did also use the handy little predictions tool on the Orange BAFTA website, it doesn't have all of the categories that I made predictions for, but it gives you the gist of things -








As you can see, I did get the biggie wrong, thinking that they would hand Best Film to Brit-flick An Education with Hurt Locker taking the Oscar (plus I didn't expect Bigelow and Hurt Locker to both win awards - Cameron's face was priceless though, so that did make up for my wrong prediction).

I'm not particularly saying that the BAFTAs are predictable (no more so than usual anyway) and I still enjoy watching the academy dispensing their masks, as various movie stars (at varying levels of washed-upness) struggle to read the teleprompter. What I'm not quite so fond of is the red carpet shows that they have now on BBCThree and E!, where George Lamb (half silver-streaked weasel, half Alan Partridge) or Duncan Whatshisname (out of off of Blue) hunt down many and varied bored-looking actors and directors and hound them with questions. A particular triumph was intellectual heavyweight Lamb asking a very fed-up looking Kristin Scott Thomas (who appeared to be wearing a bear) about Nowhere Boy co-star Aaron Johnson. Now, I didn't watch E!'s coverage but I'm told that Duncan's interview with the director of Nowhere Boy, Sam Taylor-Wood, was, to quote Richard Bacon, "Brent levels of awkward", though presumably not as awkward as the fact that she is engaged to the aforementioned star, 19 year old Johnson, a mere 23 years her junior and that the couple are expecting their first child. Now, as an amateur musician, I spend some time on a particular guitar forum where anything goes and people turn up with their problems- were a 19 year old (LennonLives or somesuch other username) to arrive and post "So, my girl (23 years older than me) is pregnant" the response would no doubt be somewhere along the lines of "you can go right ahead and file this under 'shit that fucked up my life', kthanks".

One of my correct predictions was that Twilight star (and winner of the Or So I Thought... Ben Affleck Award for Best Chin-Acting in a Leading Role) Kristen Stewart (or KStew as it's often hatefully put) would snatch the Orange Rising Star Award. How did I know this? Because it's the only award voted for by the 'idiot public' and as such is the award that, more often than not, finds its way into the hands of the wrong person. Honestly you have an Academy of experts in film, don't pander to the public like this, it's embarrassing. It is very much a 'damn popularity contest' hence the fidgety teen taking the famous mask this time around. Her acceptance speech (as also correctly predicted by me) was under a minute long (thankfully) and blog followers won't be disappointed to learn that it was much the same as her acting- all chin, sighs and teen awkwardness (see here for details). To be fair to her, she did credit her success to the horde of Twilight tweens who no doubt voted in their dozens and is clearly under no pretenses about the 'value' of the award.

Mickey Rourke returned to be absolutely tremendous again, this time presenting an award instead of receiving one and having to face the notorious autocue. He squinted into the camera "do you want this bareback or with a raincoat?" He asked. No-one got it (I suspect Vanessa Redgrave understood but was too classy to laugh...). "Their performances have encompassed grace, humility, slow it down... determination..." he continued, eliciting more laughs from the audience than Jonathan Ross managed in the entire evening. It is a truth universally acknowledged that actors are incredibly poor at reading from a teleprompter... except for Peter Capaldi, who was excellent at it.

Acceptance speech of the night was (despite a touching tear-filled one from Moon director Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son ((because you can't say one without the other apparently)) which proved popular) Colin Firth. He is excellent- intelligent, witty and humble (a particularly good interview on Kermode and Mayo's film reviews a few weeks ago showcases all this) - and his speech about how Tom Ford had made him "better groomed, more fragrant and more nominated than one has ever been before" was suitably charming. A wonderful soundbite, though A Single Man has received mixed reviews (many critics somewhat prejudiced by Ford's stylistic background), all are in agreement that Firth gives a superlative performance, though he admits he was close to turning down the part. "What Tom Ford doesn't know," he explained "is that I have the email in my outbox, telling him that I couldn't possibly do it and I was about to send when a man came to repair my fridge. Well, I clearly don't know what's best for me, so I'd like to thank the fridge guy and..." Needless to say the delivery was perfect and the audience charmed and amused. A worthy winner (as I predicted) though one would not be advised to bet against Jeff Bridges at the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actor, Christoph Waltz- he of Inglourious Basterds fame, where he gave a bravura performance in 4 languages as SS Colonel Hans Landa- had also prepared a humble acceptance speech, crediting Tarantino (who he appears to worship) with reigniting his passion for acting and supporting him. Going so far as to say he was the Best Supported Actor (see what he did there? supporting him, best supporting actor, best supported... oh, never mind...).

While we're on speeches an honourable mention has to go to BAFTA fellow Vanessa Redgrave who gave a tremendous acceptance, though we had all aged terribly by the time it had finished. Still, I think she's probably earned the right to give such a speech, dropping in superfluous French maxims and Shakespeare quotes, though it did not have the entertainment factor of Terry Gilliam last year. The award gave rise to one of Peter Serafinowicz's (who was running a BAFTA twittercommentary) many funnies of the evening - "Such a shame they have to assassinate her tonight." The best one of the night being "Eddie Murphy did a fantastic job as the cast of 'Precious'.

Best Foreign Language Film went to Critic's fall over special 'A Prophet'. Regular readers can guess that I was somewhat miffed by Let the Right One In missing out. The speech from the cast was entertaining though, featuring a rather... groovy translator which resulted in a chorus of 'I'll have what she's having' on the twittercommentary. Up (as I predicted) won Best Animated Film, Avatar (unsurprisingly) won best visual effects (to be fair, that's all it's got), Carey Mulligan (as I predicted) won Best Actress and Best Short Film still didn't go to The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island (I know it was nominated 3 years ago but it should have won then and I am yet to see a better short film since).

Poor old Jonathan Ross had an exceptionally tough gig though. It was the most spectacular 'dying on arse' moment since Elvis Presley entered the water closet for the final time. Every joke flatlined horribly, I expect writers' heads will roll after this one. James Corden happened to be presenting one of the awards and made a joking claim to present next year's ceremony. God, if you're up there and you happen to be a member of the academy, please don't let that happen. Bring back Stephen Fry, I say. He presented the ceremony with wit and panache and was revered by many of those performers picking up the awards (something which I doubt could be said for Wossy). Can we campaign for this? Fry for BAFTAs?


Winter Olympics Update
The plucky British Women's Curling team, led by 19 year old Skip Eve Muirhead (last night sporting an excellent headband) lost out cruelly to the Danes (skippered by Chloe Madeley...) and their hopes of qualification are now very much in the lap of the gods. It wasn't without controversy however, as in the 10th end one of the Danes nudged a moving stone with her foot (seemingly inocuous, you might think, but Rhona was incensed about it immediately and absolute in her condemnation). Eve attempted a gutsy quadruple take-out with her last stone to pull an unlikely victory from the jaws of defeat, however one stone remained counting for the Danes... none other than the 'nudged' stone. Cue furious reaction from the British fans. That said, apparently both skips and the ref saw the incident and carried on play. Perhaps Eve's inexperience showing there- it's not the British way to accept cheating, you need to have a massive benny at the officials until they let you win.

David 'the Iceman' Murdoch and his clan fared better however, with a convincing 8-2 smashing of the Germans, taking their tourney record to 5-3. Having only watched video highlights, I can't really give you an in depth commentary but from what I could tell canny play from the Scots overcame aggressive and error-ridden tactics from the Germans. A slight worry was the departure of Euan Byers at the opening of the 8th end, illness or injury suspected, but nothing confirmed yet. Bring on the Norwegians tonight, I say! Davey Murdoch's Barmy Army!

Everybody's Sporting For the Weekend...

Yeah, this one's mostly about sport again, sorry about that. It was a rather hectic weekend of sport and most of my Saturday and Sunday were spent watching various sized men/women pushing/kicking/throwing balls/stones or travelling quickly downhill on skis/teatrays/bobsleighs.

Let me paint for you the picture of Saturday morning. I came home to find my beloved blues playing Manchester United on the tv. Ordinarily I avoid watching live games on TV as they invariable result in losses, but I was knackered and slumped down in the chair to see the expected happen- Man U went 1-0 up in the space of 16 minutes. Right, business as usual, I thought, seeing as Everton had won just 1 of their 28 Premier League meetings with SAF's team. The United faithful began singing a chant which would be sacrilege for me to even breathe on here (needless to say it raised my hackles) and I was fully prepared to head upstairs and cut myself off from all sources of sports news, when the ball fell to much-maligned winger Diniyar Bilyaletdinov (that's easy for you to say...) and he hammered an absolute purler past a static Van der Sar from 25 yards. The Mancs were silenced instantaneously by the Russian's stunner and hope began to return to the Goodison faithful. Before long Gwladys Street was rocking and we were acquitting ourselves well, despite a couple of shaky moments. Some heroic defending by captain Phil Neville prevented Rooney from smashing it into an open net after rounding Tim Howard. When the half-time whistle went, I'd had enough. I've seen enough Everton-United games in my time to know that we are always cruelly denied a draw in the final moments.

I retreated upstairs and had a lie-down, avoiding the feminine wiles of the internet super highway and it's easily accessible sports updates. I bided my time and returned downstairs to check the final result only to see young Jack Rodwell charging, upright and majestic towards the United box, he coolly bamboozled Jonny Evans and placed a terrific right-footed strike beyond a sprawling Van der Sar to make it 3-1! I couldn't believe my eyes. A shirtless Rodwell charged into the crowd to receive the adulation of the Evertonians. I fell to my knees, fearing the 'play injury time until Man United win' rule would be enforced by referee (and Sky 4 sympathizer) Howard Webb. "I'm not a praying man," I uttered, eyes firmly shut, "but if you're there, Big Dunc, for Christ's sake don't let them score!"

They did not score and we had earned a remarkably convincing victory over the champions, after having beaten title-race leaders Chelsea in our previous game. I was on a dizzying high for the remainder of Saturday and knuckled down to watch some Winter Olympics. The night previously skeleton-bobber Amy Williams had sealed Great Britain's first (and only - you'll see) gold medal of the games and the first individual gold since Robin Cousins danced on ice in 1980. Williams gave a superlative performance on her sled, Arthur and sealed the medal on the tricky Whistler circuit with consumate ease. The skeleton is just a ridiculous event (I know I'm not exactly the first one to point that out) and my personal favourite bit is where they crash into the foam sheets at the end- it's basically a glorified level of Pat Sharp's Fun House (that dates me...). As they waited for the final runs to get underway, Auntie showed some promo vids - Williams was basically Charlie from Top Gun with a teatray and a big hill. Again have a look at my Twitter feed for yet more details.

My true Winter Olympic obsession has however been the Curling, which has well and truly sucked me in. The weekend was somewhat of a mixed bag for the plucky Scots as 19 year old Skip, Eve Muirhead, played some dodgy stones to throw away what should have been a routine win over the Americans and David Murdoch's boys lost to Canada for the first time in 5 matches against the Canucks. There were however dramatic victories, with Murdoch triumphing over the Chinese and last night the Americans. It's not necessarily the action of Curling that is so very charming, but the presentation. The belt and slacks combo sported by every curler, Rhona Martin keeping Steve Cram in line in the commentary box, Byers and MacDonald sweeping furiously as Dave plays another smashing stone to clear the house. There was a bizarre point during yesterday's match when Rhona had (for reasons which I still don't fully understand) disappeared and Cram collared American track and field legend Carl Lewis to join him in the box- yup, you heard that right, for a surrealist ten minutes the Beeb's curling commentary team were Steve Cram and Carl Lewis. What next? Lord Coe sitting alongside Ed Leigh for the Women's Ski Cross?

I digress, the main point is that it is genuinely nailbiting stuff. The tactics are incredible and we have some tremendous players. Euan Byers (the British lead) has an astonishing accuracy rating for the tourney, I'd venture one of the best of any team and Murdoch is a tough, canny general, playing those oh so crucial final shots. As they took on the USA, featuring one player with a cap... indoors and another with a tattoo (where the hell do they think they are?) , their ability really shone through. Though the talent evident within the team has been conspicuously absent against several opponents (Canada included) it did return against the US. A lone woman roared "Davey Murdoch's Barmy Army!" and no-one else even seemed tempted to join in. I was singing along at home, as David 'the Iceman' Murdoch played a marvellous draw to seal the 9th end. I think I actually understand some of the technicalities of curling now (shame the nearest rink is Tunbridge Wells...).

There were some hectic thrills and spills in the other events too. Ski Cross was essentially carnage with home favourite Delbosco just falling out of the sky on the penultimate jump, while Ed Leigh and Graham Bell basically just had a laugh on commentary. Bobsleigh provided numerous painful looking prangs- one including the British pair (you just knew it was going to happen). My suggestion to improve Bobsleigh: instead of calling them things like Germany 2 and Liechtenstein 1 (who also took a tumble), give them proper names. Cool Runnings had the 'Rasta Rockett', why not have the 'Berlin Bomber' (actually that one might not be so good in the current climate) or the Spirit of Vaduz? Monaco could be the 'Monte Carlo Flyer', wouldn't that be so much better? Speaking of Monaco, (an inclusion every bit as bizarre as the Jamaicans, where's 'Monte Carlo or Bob'?) a famous Bob-pilot of theirs in the golden age was none other than Prince Albert II, who now enjoys a behind-the-scenes role. This got me thinking about the days when royalty had a proper go at things- when the King would ride in the Derby or play cricket for the Gentlemen, there was a wonderful 'What we miss about...' in the Guardian today about the 1928 St. Moritz games, in which plucky Brit, David Ludovic George Hopetoun Carnegie, 11th Earl of Northesk snatched a hard-earned bronze in the skeleton bob. So Williams is but the most recent in a long line of British people deranged enough to hurl themselves down a twisty track on a teatray and well done to her. It does strike me that the events that Britain are capable of winning medals in play to our natural strengths: idiocy, marbles, housework etc.


Plan for the Week
40% (of time) Writing Blogs
30% Tweeting about and watching the Winter Olympics
30% Learning 'Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau' before Friday