Well goodness gracious blimeys and all that, that didn't take long. A mere three days, I think, after writing about the somewhat unlikely occurrence that I would see Richard Herring on the street and blog about it, here I am doing that very gosh-darned thing. On a normal walk home after my bland and boring day, he looms out of the night like only a Yorkshire comedian with a really rather impressive amount of hair can. And seeing as I am currently working my way through the backlog of the Collings and Herrin podcasts, as I saw him, he was all talking in my head and stuff! It was most unnerving.
I mean, come on, what are the odds? Pretty slim, I'd wager. There's a lot of people in Shepherds Bush, and it's entirely possible that most of them aren't Richard Herring, but there he was, just after I'd mentioned seeing him, on the same road, at the same time, while I was listening to him talk about Heather Mills getting her divorce settlement entirely in coins which she could hide in her false leg. Of course, I didn't say anything. What could I say? "Hi, I'm listening to you right now!" What if he didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that I meant his podcast, and instead thought I had some kind of strange bat-like super hearing, and was gaining a perverse pleasure listening to the blood sloshing through his ventricles? That might have really freaked him out, and by the time he'd worked out what I really meant, I probably would have punched him in the face through sheer panic and embarrassment. That's just not a nice conclusion for any of us. So I missed my chance to create the infinite feedback loop of bloggery I had previously posited.
Sigh. My life seems to be a series of missed chances of late. I have a niggly, horrible feeling I'm yearning for something or other, and I really hope it turns out to be peanut butter, cos I've just bought a really big jar of it and that would be the end of that. Ah, but can peanut butter put a stop to chronic self-regarding nonsense?
Readers (HA), let's hope not!
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
About Four Blog Posts Away From Eyebrow-Raising Fanfic
I seem to be suffering from an alarming surplus of love at the moment. Possibly as a counterbalance to the amount of hatred generated by, and if I could type through gritted teeth I would at this moment, Charley Boorman, I am falling head over heels at every opportunity with many amazing things. Well, I say they're amazing. I would though, I'm in love with all of them. Here is a non-exhaustive list:
A) Guy Garvey and Elbow-mbo in general. Hooray for the Mercury win! I discovered to my surprise recently that I owned and liked all of their albums - I always assumed I had missed a few along the way - which I guess makes me a proper fan. But recently, one song in particular has invaded my brain and refuses to leave. But not in the usual mentally jarring, nagging, earworm way; rather, it gently plays on repeat in the background of my thoughts, lending absolutely everything I experience a melancholic hue. Great for mooching along grey London streets, but not, say, for eating a really good houmous. The song is The Bones Of You, and it is about as perfect a song as you will ever care to hear (although I am a complete sucker for anything with a 12/8 signature). It's about what happens when you hear music which reminds you of a tragic love affair, and boy, does it nail it. I have read huge great gushes of praise about Mr Garvey recently - someone referred to him as "the last drunken poet" or something, which I think is pretty gross and makes him sound like what the NME imagines Pete Doherty is (or did a few years ago, I dunno, whenever I read NME I always feel like I'm being repeatedly being told how completely out of touch and stupid I am, like I'm standing in the middle of some cretinous Camden pub wearing a full Saturday Night Fever disco ensemble). He may be a fantastic lyricist or there may be better ones, but that misses the salient point, that he has a fucking gorgeous voice and I could listen to it all day. In fact at the moment I am. And I love him totally.
B) Andrew Collins. Strange! One of those people who has been in the background of the general cultural chatter in my life for years, Collins and Maconie, then popping up on clip shows and pretending to be Mark Kermode, but suddenly I have discovered his blog and devoured almost the entire two-year archive in a matter of hours. I didn't realise he'd written almost everything in the world, including Not Going Out which I think's actually funny thank you very much, and been editor of Q when it was good! I should be worshipping at his feet, Brooker-style! And now, I am. Also, he does a good podcast with Richard Herring, which just involves the two of them talking for an hour and is somehow the top end of hilarious. I imagine most people "reckon" that if someone taped their pub conversation for an hour, it would be pure-spun gold comedy fit for a king. And I know that most people are really, really wrong. But these guys are the exception. That's what comes of being professional comedians, I expect. Note: Mr Herring does not appear in my lovelist, due to some misremembered slight from the dim and distant past - he's done something at some point which was specifically designed to specifically annoy specifically me, which is a rather paranoid-schizophrenic thought. But! Still true. Anyway, Andrew Collins - I love him totally.
C) Sue Perkins. Proving it's not just men that have suddenly captured my heart, which personally I find reassuring, as it means that it's not some grotesque hormonal response to the rapidly approaching day when my ovaries crumble into a fine dust, making me fall in love more or less at random in the hope that something, somewhere will impregnate me. Although, what IS love, eh? A topic for another day, is what it is. Anyway, lovely Sue, who's just fabulous and wonderful, and I didn't even watch that conducting reality show she was in. And I don't even begrudge her the amount of reality shows she appears to be doing at the moment. Mostly, I just adore the "Supersizers go..." shows she does with Giles Coren (who was finagling his way into this list before the whole fuck-gate thing and before I realised that he might be an overprivileged insufferable cunt, cunningly disguised by a pixie beard. I just said might be, Giles. Save your bile for the lowly underpaid footsoldiers in your business called show) She is quite possibly the most quick-witted and amusing laydee on the box at the moment, and she does it by just being funny, not being funny&ditzy, or funny&sexy, or funny&havingtotalkaboutperiods. Yikes. Getting into dangerous feminist territory here. I'll back away from that cos I wouldn't know what I was talking about, and just say, Sue - I love her totally.
The usual objects of my ridiculous affections still loom large, of course. They know who they are. Or at least, they will when they receive the special packages I've just sent them. You're right, that IS made out of my own hair!
Oh, now. That's just nasty.
**UPDATE** Stop press. I changed my mind about R Herring, cos I've just discovered his blog, and it's very nice. Plus he writes it every day about the minutiae of his life and still manages to make it amusing, which I admire utterly. Plus plus, he lives very near me and I have occasionally seen him out and about, so maybe I should seek him out and say hello, which he can then write about on his blog, which I can then write about on my blog, and we can all merge into a self-regarding mobius loop which should, if we're lucky, get sucked directly into hell. So congratulations, Richard. You're on my list. This is really not good news for you.
A) Guy Garvey and Elbow-mbo in general. Hooray for the Mercury win! I discovered to my surprise recently that I owned and liked all of their albums - I always assumed I had missed a few along the way - which I guess makes me a proper fan. But recently, one song in particular has invaded my brain and refuses to leave. But not in the usual mentally jarring, nagging, earworm way; rather, it gently plays on repeat in the background of my thoughts, lending absolutely everything I experience a melancholic hue. Great for mooching along grey London streets, but not, say, for eating a really good houmous. The song is The Bones Of You, and it is about as perfect a song as you will ever care to hear (although I am a complete sucker for anything with a 12/8 signature). It's about what happens when you hear music which reminds you of a tragic love affair, and boy, does it nail it. I have read huge great gushes of praise about Mr Garvey recently - someone referred to him as "the last drunken poet" or something, which I think is pretty gross and makes him sound like what the NME imagines Pete Doherty is (or did a few years ago, I dunno, whenever I read NME I always feel like I'm being repeatedly being told how completely out of touch and stupid I am, like I'm standing in the middle of some cretinous Camden pub wearing a full Saturday Night Fever disco ensemble). He may be a fantastic lyricist or there may be better ones, but that misses the salient point, that he has a fucking gorgeous voice and I could listen to it all day. In fact at the moment I am. And I love him totally.
B) Andrew Collins. Strange! One of those people who has been in the background of the general cultural chatter in my life for years, Collins and Maconie, then popping up on clip shows and pretending to be Mark Kermode, but suddenly I have discovered his blog and devoured almost the entire two-year archive in a matter of hours. I didn't realise he'd written almost everything in the world, including Not Going Out which I think's actually funny thank you very much, and been editor of Q when it was good! I should be worshipping at his feet, Brooker-style! And now, I am. Also, he does a good podcast with Richard Herring, which just involves the two of them talking for an hour and is somehow the top end of hilarious. I imagine most people "reckon" that if someone taped their pub conversation for an hour, it would be pure-spun gold comedy fit for a king. And I know that most people are really, really wrong. But these guys are the exception. That's what comes of being professional comedians, I expect. Note: Mr Herring does not appear in my lovelist, due to some misremembered slight from the dim and distant past - he's done something at some point which was specifically designed to specifically annoy specifically me, which is a rather paranoid-schizophrenic thought. But! Still true. Anyway, Andrew Collins - I love him totally.
C) Sue Perkins. Proving it's not just men that have suddenly captured my heart, which personally I find reassuring, as it means that it's not some grotesque hormonal response to the rapidly approaching day when my ovaries crumble into a fine dust, making me fall in love more or less at random in the hope that something, somewhere will impregnate me. Although, what IS love, eh? A topic for another day, is what it is. Anyway, lovely Sue, who's just fabulous and wonderful, and I didn't even watch that conducting reality show she was in. And I don't even begrudge her the amount of reality shows she appears to be doing at the moment. Mostly, I just adore the "Supersizers go..." shows she does with Giles Coren (who was finagling his way into this list before the whole fuck-gate thing and before I realised that he might be an overprivileged insufferable cunt, cunningly disguised by a pixie beard. I just said might be, Giles. Save your bile for the lowly underpaid footsoldiers in your business called show) She is quite possibly the most quick-witted and amusing laydee on the box at the moment, and she does it by just being funny, not being funny&ditzy, or funny&sexy, or funny&havingtotalkaboutperiods. Yikes. Getting into dangerous feminist territory here. I'll back away from that cos I wouldn't know what I was talking about, and just say, Sue - I love her totally.
The usual objects of my ridiculous affections still loom large, of course. They know who they are. Or at least, they will when they receive the special packages I've just sent them. You're right, that IS made out of my own hair!
Oh, now. That's just nasty.
**UPDATE** Stop press. I changed my mind about R Herring, cos I've just discovered his blog, and it's very nice. Plus he writes it every day about the minutiae of his life and still manages to make it amusing, which I admire utterly. Plus plus, he lives very near me and I have occasionally seen him out and about, so maybe I should seek him out and say hello, which he can then write about on his blog, which I can then write about on my blog, and we can all merge into a self-regarding mobius loop which should, if we're lucky, get sucked directly into hell. So congratulations, Richard. You're on my list. This is really not good news for you.
Monday, September 08, 2008
It Could Even Be Worse Than This Description Of It
Holy flagellating hellfire! Now, I have suffered through a lot of bad, bad television in my time, but nothing could quite prepare me for the scream-at-the-top-of-your-lungs, smash-your-skull-repeatedly-into-a-brick-wall, fall-down-sobbing-on-the-floor levels of rage and ire that the over-titled demonic dancing festival of pointless egotism that was Charley Boorman: Ireland To Sydney By Any Means would provoke inside my mild-mannered belly. We're talking anger of an epic and monstrous scale, anger that would rend asunder the seas from the skies, anger so volatile that it caused the folks from the black hole factory in CERN to shift uneasily in their seats and hastily check the escape routes to their nuclear bunkers. Man, it made me tetchy.
I'll be interested to know how long I will be able to describe this programme before descending into constant swearing and the random clumps of letters generated by chewing on one's own keyboard, so here goes: Charley Boorman appears to be a non-famous friend of a famous and charismatic film star. He has been in two programmes before where he has ridden a motorbike across the world with his film star friend to raise money for charity. These previous efforts have escaped me entirely, but one can assume that watching the beard of a famous and charismatic film star slowly grow accompanied by vistas of Africa and lashings of liberal guilt could hold some televisual appeal. This new programme is broadly the same, apart from it contains no f+c film stars, no hint of any charitable impulses, and absolutely no point whatsoever. It is basically a documentary about a completely uninteresting and unwatchable man travelling across the world because he feels like it and because, and this is the real sucker punch, THE BBC ARE PAYING FOR IT.
The whole thing seemed to be designed to rub that last fact into our feckless, rubbery faces. Charley Boorman goes to his HUGE warehouse in west London and skateboards around like a tosser while his team of photogenic early-20s researchers plan his epic round the world trip with our money. Charley Boorman goes to a custom motorbike manufacturer and coos over the high-spec vintage motorcycle with chrome and leather he has had made with our money. Charley Boorman shows off the valuable antique monogrammed suitcase his friend "sourced" (Gah! Vein in forehead just popped) with our money. Charley Boorman goes to the beach and sacrifices a goat then burns it on a funeral pyre fuelled with our money (maybe).
It's a real struggle to know why this is on TV. Is it a travelogue? Well, no - it has a flimsy gimmick, in that they are trying to travel from Ireland to Sydney without using planes, but that seemed to be secondary to their main aim of riding their shiny bikes wherever they damn well feel. (They, incidentally, being Boorman and his new sidekick, who will probably end up with his own show in 2010, starting an endless cycle of talentless no-marks trotting round the globe which will only be stopped when fiery apocalypse causes the annihilation of all life on this planet.) Charley Boorman is such a complete dunderheaded idiot, he is incapable of passing any comment on the places he drifts through, save for saying it's great to be there and oh by the way, look at my motorbike! Isn't it shiny! In fact, the programme makers play up his idiocy as if it's endearing or something. His road trip companions chuckle indulgently as they point out he's no good at planning or taking instruction, as if he's a four-year-old, or a monkey in a business suit. In one excruciating moment, Charley fumbles a phone receiver and laughs directly into the camera for twenty minutes, while around him the photogenic 20-somethings bray compliantly. No, programme makers, he is not a lovable buffoon. He is an incapable sponger who has had it too good for too long, and must be stopped. This oughta do it.
Note: Admittedly, I only got to the 36-minute mark of the first show, by which time we had had 34 minutes of looking at oh how fucking brilliant Charley Boorman was and about 2 minutes of travelling, so there's a good chance the programme perked up after that. I have an excuse, though - they'd just got to the Isle of Man and were, for some reason, repeatedly showing in slow-motion a TT race bike crash where a rider got flung 100 yards like a rag doll, and I drifted off into long an happy fantasy involving Boorman, his stupid fucking motorbike, and a piece of piano wire stretched across a blind bend. Mmm. Relaxing.
Additional note: for a more succinct, coherent and generally professional slagging of this show, check out Sam Wollaston.
I'll be interested to know how long I will be able to describe this programme before descending into constant swearing and the random clumps of letters generated by chewing on one's own keyboard, so here goes: Charley Boorman appears to be a non-famous friend of a famous and charismatic film star. He has been in two programmes before where he has ridden a motorbike across the world with his film star friend to raise money for charity. These previous efforts have escaped me entirely, but one can assume that watching the beard of a famous and charismatic film star slowly grow accompanied by vistas of Africa and lashings of liberal guilt could hold some televisual appeal. This new programme is broadly the same, apart from it contains no f+c film stars, no hint of any charitable impulses, and absolutely no point whatsoever. It is basically a documentary about a completely uninteresting and unwatchable man travelling across the world because he feels like it and because, and this is the real sucker punch, THE BBC ARE PAYING FOR IT.
The whole thing seemed to be designed to rub that last fact into our feckless, rubbery faces. Charley Boorman goes to his HUGE warehouse in west London and skateboards around like a tosser while his team of photogenic early-20s researchers plan his epic round the world trip with our money. Charley Boorman goes to a custom motorbike manufacturer and coos over the high-spec vintage motorcycle with chrome and leather he has had made with our money. Charley Boorman shows off the valuable antique monogrammed suitcase his friend "sourced" (Gah! Vein in forehead just popped) with our money. Charley Boorman goes to the beach and sacrifices a goat then burns it on a funeral pyre fuelled with our money (maybe).
It's a real struggle to know why this is on TV. Is it a travelogue? Well, no - it has a flimsy gimmick, in that they are trying to travel from Ireland to Sydney without using planes, but that seemed to be secondary to their main aim of riding their shiny bikes wherever they damn well feel. (They, incidentally, being Boorman and his new sidekick, who will probably end up with his own show in 2010, starting an endless cycle of talentless no-marks trotting round the globe which will only be stopped when fiery apocalypse causes the annihilation of all life on this planet.) Charley Boorman is such a complete dunderheaded idiot, he is incapable of passing any comment on the places he drifts through, save for saying it's great to be there and oh by the way, look at my motorbike! Isn't it shiny! In fact, the programme makers play up his idiocy as if it's endearing or something. His road trip companions chuckle indulgently as they point out he's no good at planning or taking instruction, as if he's a four-year-old, or a monkey in a business suit. In one excruciating moment, Charley fumbles a phone receiver and laughs directly into the camera for twenty minutes, while around him the photogenic 20-somethings bray compliantly. No, programme makers, he is not a lovable buffoon. He is an incapable sponger who has had it too good for too long, and must be stopped. This oughta do it.
Note: Admittedly, I only got to the 36-minute mark of the first show, by which time we had had 34 minutes of looking at oh how fucking brilliant Charley Boorman was and about 2 minutes of travelling, so there's a good chance the programme perked up after that. I have an excuse, though - they'd just got to the Isle of Man and were, for some reason, repeatedly showing in slow-motion a TT race bike crash where a rider got flung 100 yards like a rag doll, and I drifted off into long an happy fantasy involving Boorman, his stupid fucking motorbike, and a piece of piano wire stretched across a blind bend. Mmm. Relaxing.
Additional note: for a more succinct, coherent and generally professional slagging of this show, check out Sam Wollaston.
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