Let's darts!

Did I write a blog post last year about the BDO World Darts Championship? And the year before that? I probably did*. Am I going to do another one anyway? Of course! It's one of the great traditions of my year so I may as well make reading this old rubbish one of yours.

I love it. I love the whole thing. The visuals, the excitement, the noise, the characters and the futility. I love the reigning World Champion Martin Adams, a man of such good humour, honesty and moral scruples that he is by far and away the professional sportsman for whom I have the most respect. But most of all, I love the TV coverage and the magnificence of the commentary.

The simple fact is, there's no way to make darts any more than it is - two fat-bellied men throwing darts at a board. Even the legendary Sid Waddell, who has a double first class degree in English Literature from Cambridge University can't elevate it. When he compares Eric Bristow to Alexander the Great, the brilliance comes from the humour of the juxtaposition. No matter how much anyone loves darts, it's always only darts.

Which brings us to Tony Green, a man who loves darts so much it can often leave him completely tongue-tied. This is his burden, particularly as he is a commentator on the game of darts. Every year Tony Green commits crimes against the English language, twisting it into a Möbius strip of a Möbius strip and back again. Last year he was waylaid by illness (I think maybe he sat on his darts) and unable to commentate on the final. The loss was palpable. I would like to BBC to release Tony's entire commentary output from each year's Championship as a podcast. It would be so starkly beautiful I think it could win the Turner Prize. If you listen to enough Tony Green as a stream of consciousness, I think you may well be able to achieve a higher state.

BEST OF ORDER PLEASE

I don't like the PDC. Great brassy whore of a thing. It's pretty easy to avoid it, I don't have Sky. But even if I did, I think I would give it a wide berth. There's an unpleasantness to it. The whole thing was built out of players wanting more money, nothing more or less noble than that. Where the BDO has history, honesty and the growth of the game at its heart, I see nothing but an aggressive air of proletarian menace and the celebration of spending new money in the PDC, the sporting equivalent of a man just out of prison winning the EuroMillions. Whenever I've seen the PDC on television, it's terrified me. OK, there's little doubt that it attracts many (well all right, most) of the game's top talents, but the crowds are like a baying mob. As if Unicorn had plonked an oche in the middle of the Tottenham riots. Game on!

So another January and another heap of praise for the British Darts Organisation and all they do. Christmas is never really over for me until I've spent a little time in the company of Martin "Wolfie" Adams, Ted "The Count" Hankey, John "Boy" Walton and Garry "The Cougar" Thompson (no man has ever looked or moved less like a cougar, but then again a cougar isn't as proficient at darts). Every year is the same, every year is slightly different, just like a colourful, eight-day long microcosm of life itself only with higher consumption of lager and more gold. There's some old faces, there's some new faces (I'm particularly excited about a new referee this year who looks about 14 and speaks.... very.... slowly.... and.... deliberately.... one.... hundred.... and.... eighty) and there's many more words of wisdom to be had from Tony Green and Bobby George.

This year, I'm hoping to learn fundamental truths about space and time from them. Also you get an Elizabeth Duke voucher by watching.

* turns out I didn't, but I did do one in 2009. Time flies when you're watching darts.

Klaatu Deetu

1950s science fiction films are the best, there's absolutely no doubt. OK, the ambition and the special effects of their 1960s, 70s and 80s cousins may be superior, but they can't match their forebears for their scope and philosophical understanding. The 1950s was the first decade where science had started to become FACT rather than anything else. The early explorations of the new world order of the atomic age were destined to be the most profound and influential films of the lot.

If you watch enough 1950s science-fiction films you can learn how to live your life! Now we all know that Things are not to be trusted and Blobs can be destroyed with a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. But one of the most significant films of the lot is The Day The Earth Stood Still, a moralistic fable about an alien coming to earth in a spaceship to warn humanity about the futility of its warlike tendencies. It is unquestionably one of the absolute classics of the genre, a film that people should and do come back to for inspiration time and time again.

The thing is, I don't like it.

It makes a number of very good, very honourable, very sane points. But I don't like it. The basic tenet of the film is that, when viewed from outside this small marble floating in space we call planet Earth, our internal squabbles are completely trivial and self-defeating, our ability to destroy ourselves a joke. Which is. of course, true. But by god this film labours the point. We all get it! Honestly we do. It's one of the great ironies of life. No matter if every single citizen of Earth knows deep down that something is a universal truth, it doesn't have any ultimate bearing on government policy. We get it Klaatu. Stop making vague threats at our intellectuals! Talk about a preachy alien!

It's an engaging enough film. It's worthy, too, of its reputation and critical acclaim. But for anyone with ever half a brain it's so self evidently truthful to be an irrelevance. Let there be no doubt, if you are profoundly stupid this film may yet save your soul. Maybe that's the point of it. And yes, obviously it was made during a very different era. Supposedly at least. Is the world really a safer, more stable, place now than it was during the bipartite Cold War struggles of the 1950s?

Nevertheless, it's hard to dislike The Day The Earth Stood Still. The world was beginning to find itself in such a to-do that really, only such remedial, primary school, action seemed like it would do any active good. Start from the bottom and work up. Maybe we are better off now, now that buffoons like me can complain about this that and the other? I hope so.

I hope so mainly because the valedictory speech of the film, where Klaatu extolls the virtues of having a race of unthinking, indiscriminate, massive robot peacekeepers on your home planet, is philosophically troubling to the point where I honestly believe both Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau may have been script consultants. People forced into peace-loving freedom and law abidance through fear of instant death! It's a big intellectual quandry (it probably isn't). But hey, maybe being forced to be peace-loving under pain of TITANIUM DEATH (the logical extension of Rousseau's The Social Contract, perhaps?) is the way to go. There'd be no wars.

Just a great, big, love-in.

Standing in the way of progress, looking to one side

Today's post was inspired by yesterday's journal entry over at The Middle Class Handbook, which is a site that I personally think it's a good idea to read.

I don't know about you, but when I cross a road, I always like to avoid being killed so wherever possible I use crossings. I'm quite defiant about it. I'll stand there long after the last jaywalker has made their excuses, waiting for the little green man to appear. The thing is, I think people who jump that particular gun are thinking that the trade off of possibly getting really very seriously injured for arriving at their destination several seconds earlier is worth it. Having been really seriously injured, I must assure you that it is not.

Which leaves me standing at the crossing. I've pressed the button and everything - this is something which often escapes people's notice but I find it's an important step in the whole road crossing process. I'm going across the road. Across the road is where I am going to go. Straight ahead of me is my destination. Head up. Wait for that green man. He'll see me right.

And in the good old days (yes, this is going to be one of these. But I'm right, so suck it up) it was as simple as that. The little green man was waiting for you, straight ahead on the other side of the road (which as you may recall is my destination).

Road safety in action, and in Acton

But progress is an important thing. You should not and cannot, we are told, stand in its way. In this particular incidence, this is possibly because you'll get run over by a bus. Because yes! For reasons best known to someone presumably, the little green man has moved down to your side. Hip-mounted road safety is the way forwards, or indeed sideways. This is so stupid it actually hurts my brain. Not only has 'head up, look straight ahead' been the system worldwide since time begun, but it has also been the system for a good reason. On top of all of that has become a reflex, a muscle memory.

Watch a busy crossing today. I guarantee you will see at least one person look ahead, look confused, look around... then remember and look down to their side. Possibly whilst rolling their eyes to the heavens. They may even look thoroughly pissed off, as they should.

This new system makes me so angry that I'm worried my head will explode. But I reserve particular ire for the ones where the little box containing all the red man green man goodness is oriented in such a way that only people on YOUR side of the road can catch a glimpse of it. This isn't the bloody Crystal Maze for heaven's sake. Sweet Christ.

If course, in a generation's time, it will have become second nature. The children growing up now will be so used to it that changing it back to the right and proper way would be just as disorientating. However, I'm still fuming about this so all I can say is that I hope all the children of today grow up with a bleedin' permanent crick in their neck and a slight lean.

I always knew that I would turn into a disagreeable old coot sooner rather than later. But I'd never have predicted that it would be my adherence to the tenets of basic road safety that would push me over the edge.

Have a banana

What I want to know is, what are the United Nations doing to protect people like me, who don't like bananas? We're a pitifully small number of people, easily the numerical equal of any distant jungle or island tribe whose ancient way of life is deemed worthy of preservation. But we're also far more geographically dissipated, meaning that interbreeding to pass on the vital Bananas Are Shite gene (it's recessive) is difficult.

Not liking bananas isn't like not liking olives or brussels sprouts. The poxy, stupid, yellow bastards are considered to be so universally adored that they pop up everywhere. Oh, have some banana bread. Here's a banana smoothie. Here's an ice cream with a banana in it. We've flavoured your arse medicine with banana, get stuck in. You people out there who love bananas have created a world in your own image, forcing the huddled minority to shuffle about in a netherworld, gasping for potassium.

I'm two in the hole, actually. I don't like mashed potato either. It's a texture thing fundamentally but also a little bit a taste thing. You know how people complain that children don't know where food comes from these days? Well, my problem is the opposite one. I have seen a potato. I know a potato's ways. It's a hard brown thing what's lighter inside innit. The incongruity of mashed potato jars horribly with me. Why should that thing, which could be mistaken for a rock or a particularly unlucky mole, be imbued with the virtue of CREAMINESS? Oh sweet heavens it gives me the limpies.

This is my Everest

It's not just mashed potato, it's any puréed thing which would otherwise be solid and lumpen if we'd just left it alone and stopped bullying it. The way I figure it is that a human being, if they are lucky, might get 60 years with functioning teeth. Come your dotage, you'll have ample opportunity to cram mush down your gummy maw. All the while, no doubt, thinking, "I wish I'd not wasted so many of my good toothy years sucking down celeriac purée when I could have been honking on pork scratchings and raw carrots".

And again, the mashed menace is so universally adored as to make me a cowed refugee in my own land. I accept every dinner invitation with such happiness and gratitude, only to start to wonder if Nemesis will be there awaiting me. Will I ever be set free? Should I try and learn to love mashed spuds? Why aren't they willing to meet me half way? I don't want potatoes and me to fight, we have such a long and happy history.

My message to you all today is one of tolerance and acceptance of the beliefs of others. And when catering, stick to food that everyone enjoys. Like rollmop herrings, or gherkins.

Batmaniac

Hello. You probably know already that I draw pictures that may well be termed as cartoons. Well here's a thing about being a cartoonist: I have generally found that if people know you are a cartoonist it presupposes an extensive and actively growing knowledge of every single comic and animation ever made. I hate to disabuse people of their frankly absurd notions but in this case I have to. I know very little about either.

I would occasionally read comics in my youth - Buster and Whizzer and Chips were my favourites because the Beano and Dandy were a bit staid and old fashioned then. And I have always loved animated cartoons but not for their own sake. They had to be funny, or have good characters and stories, or preferably all three. I'm more interested in the writing than the art.

All of this cannot adequately explain the argument I am about to make. Indeed, it essentially flies in the face of it. But here I go anyway.

There is only one Batman film that I will watch, or that I consider worthy of anyone's time. It is Batman, the schlocky, campy, absurdist 1966 film version of the impending and rightfully legendary TV series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. All other Batmans are simply a waste of time.

Comic books - without wishing to completely explode anyone's world view, Batman is a character from one of these - have supervillains set up deadly scenarios for superheroes, only for the protagonists to make a series of audacious and unlikely escapes. Often using handy and never-before-mentioned means, such as Shark Repellent Spray or Bat Gas. Everything is clearly labelled for the avoidance of doubt. It's daft, fun, throwaway (why do you think early issues are so valuable?) entertainment. It's silly and diverting and so clearly fantastical that it provides escapism from the humdrum.

Every single Batman film that has followed has been dark, sinister and deadly serious. Batman is real, walks among us and has Issues. I hate them for that. The 1989 Tim Burton version starring Michael Keaton wasn't bad, to be fair. It still retained a certain sense of humour, not least in casting Jack Nicholson as a suitably mental Joker. The 1992 follow-up Batman Returns isn't without merit either, with Danny DeVito and Michelle Pfeiffer well cast in their supervillan roles. However, that's as far as it goes.

I reserve particular ire for the Christian Bale Batman films. Batman Begins is a piece of shit, one of the worst films I have ever sat through. Where's the escapism or the sense of humour? And why does every big summer blockbuster film these days need a thirty-minute expositional kung-fu training sequence tacked on to the bleeding thing? What makes the original Batman so beautiful for me is that it stars Adam West, then 38-years old and a bit podgy round the middle like so many 38-year old men are. He was a gentleman crime-fighter of the Old Etonian tradition. He fought according to the Queensbury Rules. As soon as the bloody Kevlar body armour and kung fu and emotional pain and people dabbing iodine on open wounds whilst looking meaningfully at each other, I'm out.

I hope that this post doesn't cause Christian Bale to give me an earful of abuse. But even if it did it would prove my point. Comic book films need to stop taking themselves so seriously.

Ronald Searle 1920-2012

One of my heroes has died. Ronald Searle was 91 years old so his passing isn't a shock but it is still a sadness. I believe he is the greatest cartoonist that the world has ever produced, capable of producing such enchantment, wit, animation, joy and wisdom in a simple drawing that he should be held up with all the other greats from the history of art.

He's going to be fundamentally remembered and talked about in the context of St. Trinian's, but of course he produced so much more. Magical illustrations, reportage and travelogues. Pictures of stars of stage and screen. Magnificent, understanding, pictures of animals. You could spend many far less profitable hours than the ones you could devote to looking through the pictures on this magnificent tribute site.

More or less every single cartoonist and graphic artist from his professional emergence in the1940s up to the present day - and beyond, believe me it will be and beyond - has been influenced by him, whether or not they even know it. Many of his more overt disciples have gone on to become some of the most respected names in the industry of their own right - Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman and Matt Groening among their number.

I hope that the countless tributes Searle's passing will produce are copiously illustrated with his work. They represent the very definition of a celebration of life. Both his and ours. Today I feel sadness but also the most enormous sense of gratitude and wonder. The latter two will always remain.

Like everybody who has ever lifted a pencil to try and draw a picture from the 20th Century onward, I owe him more than I can ever say.

Showers are rubbish and for the weak

I prefer baths to showers. I will always have a bath instead of a shower wherever possible. I don't understand the modern obsession with viewing the bath as somehow an extravagance, a pamper or a whole evening's work.

And yes, in the words of Cosmo Kramer, there is an aspect of lying around in a tepid pool of your own filth to it. But I suppose I must just be into that.

The strength of the bath is that it provides me with thinking time. When I'm in the bath, I don't listen to music or the radio or read (the pages get wet, you mad people, what are you thinking of?). I don't watch television or play with plastic battleships and re-enact some of the key naval engagements of World War II. I don't even sing. I don't even wash myself. I don't even put any water in it. OK, the last two things were lies.

So it's just me and some soap and my rubber duckie (which, tragically, I do not have and if I do anything this year it should definitely to be to get one) and my beautiful, brilliant mind. The same mind which conspires against me for the rest of the waking and unconscious day, telling me how rubbish I am and how it would have been better for everyone if I'd died that time, is somehow placated entirely by warm water and the partial immersion of its associated body therein. Bathtime allows me to think with a clarity, constructiveness and rationality of which I simply do not seem capable in any other situation. Standing up brings out the absolute worst in me. I also get all my best creative ideas in the bath, including ideas for blog posts. I thought up the idea for this one and drafted it in my head in the bath this morning.

I've worked through a lot of stuff when in the bath. If I switched to showers I think I'd be dead by now. In fact, that's not even a joke.

You can't think in the shower. You can sink and wank and clean your stinkables, certainly, but you can't think. Ray Mears taught me that. He said that when you're in a survival situation in the rainforest, you should make your shelter before the afternoon downpour starts, because the simple unrelenting pounding of raindrops on your head makes it difficult to think clearly. He's right. Try and do some algebra in the shower. It is hard. In the bath, in the meantime, you are able to start to see the meaning of the cosmos.

You can learn a lot from Ray Mears. He espouses survival, which is a wise thing to espouse. But the key thing he teaches you is humility, an understanding of what human beings truly need. Not what they think they need or might like to think they need. Just what you have to have to get by. A foundation upon which one can then start to build comfort and happiness in time. It's an important lesson, and it's remarkable that we have to rely on a man whose diet primarily consists of ants and wipes his bottom on leaves to teach it to us.

I tell you something: I bet Ray Mears is a bath man.

Goodbye 2011

My 2011 awards are definitely legally binding

The end of 2011 is upon us. I've crested the peaks! I've plumbed the depths! I've generally speaking managed to look miserable whichever one I was doing at the time! I've only cut my hair once (and that was because some teenage girls were pointing and laughing at me at Shoreham station. I am 31 years old). I have done an unprecedented 219 blog posts (although 30 of those were written by other people). I have tweeted approximately enough words to have written a novel. I have not written a novel.

All of these things give me an increased sense of self-importance so I'm going to talk about some of the stuff I have most enjoyed this year, in this, the seasons of awards and the BBC telling us it's been the hottest/driest/wettest/coldest year on record as if I'm supposed to be able to do anything about that.

My favourite blog post of the year that I wrote is definitely this one, about the Doncaster Warehouse rave. Whenever anyone says anything nice about my blog then I immediately think back to this post and assume that it's about that. I have not heard anything from any of the key players in that spirited drama, which is a shame. Although they're probably all far too busy being responsible middle-aged people these days.

My favourite blogs of this year have been Skulls and Ponies, Panda and Crumpet and I See A Beautiful Future. During the year I have met all of the people responsible for these blogs and was delighted to discover they are all as lovely as I'd hoped they were, whilst they discovered I'm a lot worse than they had feared I'd be. All three of these blogs are so bursting with ideas and style the internet can barely contain their goodness. They are also shot through with a level of honesty and thoughtfulness to which I can only aspire.

My favourite blog post of 2011 is either this one by Betsy about STRESS or this one by 5olly, which defies all rational description but reminds me that the world would be better if 5olly blogged more often. 5olly also wrote the funniest post on this site of the entire year, a fact simply bound to make me feel bitter.

My favourite thing that I drew this year is my illustration for Panda and Crumpet's first anniversary blog post of Johnny Cash. I've had a very average drawing year in 2011. Nothing too special, nothing too lousy. Ideas have been hard to come by too often. However, this is just about perfect. When I see things like this and remember I did them it makes me think that there's a chance that I don't completely stink the place out.

My favourite thing on television this year was Burnistoun, the best sketch show that's been on British television in over a decade and inexplicably squirrelled away by the BBC so that it's only available to English viewers with access to iPlayer or enough amphetamines to stay up to the witching hour. It deserves a much bigger audience. They should put it on instead of the 10 o'clock news. The most disappointing thing I saw on television this year was the latest series of Doctor Who, the plotlines of which too often required a doctorate in theoretical physics to understand.

My favourite music of this year was all from 1991.

My favourite film of the year was Senna. It is also the only new film I saw in 2011, which is not to detract from how good it is.

All in all, I'm awarding 2011 seven out of ten.

New Year's resolutions

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, least not formally write them down. However, this year I have. I think some sort of public accountability might make me actually pull my bleeding finger out and get some stuff done. I am pretty sure that one day this piece of paper will come back to haunt me, like Charles Foster Kane's Declaration of Principles. This is one reason that I shall not be giving it to Jed Leland, that troublemaking swine.

Hello

Hello. That's what they say. When you are walking, that is. I'm not sure what happens to British people as soon as they get off public highways and onto promenades and footpaths but they seem hell-bent on saying "HELLO!" to people as they pass. Whatever it is I am clearly immune to it. In many ways I would quite like to try it, but never on a footpath on the Downs or along the seafront or in the woods. I'd prefer to try it in central London at 8.15 a.m. on a Tuesday morning.

I digress slightly. Today I went for a walk to Shoreham Old Fort. This is in Shoreham. Shoreham Beach, to be precise. West Sussex. Although by that point you're getting quite close to being in East Sussex, so close that you can smell the refinement. Or you would be able to if it weren't for the diesel fumes of heavy industry.

Anyway, I took pictures of it, so if you are a fucking lazy bastard or something, you can vicariously live my thrilling life. But rest assured that I hate you. Unless I don't. So, that's that cleared up. (Click them to make them bigger)

This beach hut looks like Adolf Hitler.

This bin comes with instructions about what to put in it.

Lonely egret is lonely.

Shoreham in the distance, houseboats in the middle & loads of green stuff in front of that.

Shoreham fort. Designed to keep the Egyptians at bay. It's working.

R.I.P. Harry Ayre, whoever you are. I imagine he drowned.

Shoreham power station busily making power which does not interest seagull.

There's an entire army division in this shed (re: Egyptians)

Shoreham lighthouse and lifeboat station. To prevent deaths (sadly not that of Harry Ayre).

I don't know what this is.

Cormorant. Maximum speed 6 knots.

Here are some boats going to B&Q.

Here is Shoreham lighthouse again BUT! from a different angle.

These boats are a bit knackered. Sort your boats out, people.

BEACH. Looking back towards Worthing. Wherever the hell that is.

There are some hardy souls fishing here. They have caught some birds.

There is Shoreham High Street, where everyone is high. HIGH ON LIFE. And some drugs.

I should also point out that I could have walked past the Shoreham houseboats but chose not to. This is because my photography skills are largely limited to taking wonky pictures of seagulls and falling over. Luckily for you, though, in November I walked along there with my friend Lolly and she is super-blazing-OMG-awesome at photography so you should have a look at her pictures instead. Go on!

Happy Christmas

Hello blog. Blog is a bit like a diary really. I tell it all sorts of things and sometimes forget that other people can - and indeed are encouraged to - read it. Never completely though. There's always that thing in the back of your mind urging caution.

I'm an old stager of social networking. I've never really been an early adopter of anything before but this time I have been. Kind of accidentally, and a lot of the people I know are far more seasoned campaigners than me. But I've pretty much seen it all now, as I've mentioned here several times before. One of the consequences of this is that I'm possessed of a fairly firm set of principles and guidelines about what I will and will not post.

I am now particularly drunk thanks to whomsoever it was who invented the red grape. But my principles are so unshakeable so I'm not going to start whiffling on about my specific personal business now. Interestingly I have no such foibles about discussing (in some depth) the parlous state of my mental health. Maybe I know that, really, that's all just make-believe and hooey. I imagine that most people who will read this will know me and will maybe know what I'm talking about anyway.

This Christmas Day could well prove to be a highly significant one for a number of reasons. I've been very determined to enjoy the whole holiday season - to the point where, in fact, I've even worried about not doing so, dissecting the whole experience bit-by-bit in my head to try and decide if I'm doing it RIGHT. But after lunch today, full of meat and brassicas and wine and Christmas, I sat (lay, heaving) down on the sofa and just thought about stuff. I felt such great waves of gratitude at my good fortune to have such wonderful people around me in my life that I almost wept. I felt truly happy.

I hope you have all felt truly happy this Christmas.

Christmas song digest

Hello. Regular readers of this shit will no doubt be aware that I am pretty much completely dead inside, devoid of any of the normal human emotions or sentiment. However, even this doesn't mean I'm completely past enjoying Christmas songs. That's right. Think on that one.

Here are some Christmas songs which, if you don't like them, you can rest assured that you're even more twisted, shrunken and dried up inside than me. In which case I sincerely advise that some sort of therapy could be useful in the new year.

Be warned. There are very few trendy or left-field suggestions here. I'm not even being meta. Or meta-meta. Christmas is fundamentally a time for chintzy, shiny rubbish to make up for the general lack of daylight. I make no apologies. Well, some apologies.

I hope you all have a happy Christmas.

Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

This is my favourite track from the Phil Spector Christmas album A Christmas Gift for You. My overall enthusiasm for this album is very much under control. I dislike Phil Spector's production, his Wall of Sound - whilst pioneering - was so much more aggressive and unpleasant than Brian Wilson's that I believe Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys is a more festive-sounding record, even though it has nothing to do with the season. Phil Spector having been continually proven to be more aggressive and unpleasant a human being than Brian Wilson this isn't a particularly big surprise.

I love this record, though. The smack-you-round-the head-until-it-bleeds stridency of the production, the content of the song and the vocal performance all come together beautifully.



Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day

There's no doubting that we all disagree with the title of this song. However, it's increasingly as traditional as roast turkey and profound emotional pain to the whole affair. And yes, it's annoying and twee and shit, but that's Christmas all over.



Slade - Merry Christmas Everybody

This song is brilliant. You know it. I know it. There's no point in hiding from it any more. Just bloody accept it so we can all move on with our lives. I don't want Christmas songs to be dark, or different, or have a message or a story to tell. This song is absolutely the best example of its kind. Fact.



Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

Herein lies the all-time greatest cultural achievement of the Welsh nation. Probably the last great Christmas pop record ever made. No wonder the world's gone to the dogs, it was 26 years ago.

Die Hard: A warning from history

As we all know, the inspirational boffins at CERN have been colliding hadrons with the best of them over the last three years and inventing physics and discovering bosons and all sorts. But one of the best-known effects of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is that in 2060, it opened a portal in time and space allowing time travel. Today's post comes courtesy of the 80-year old me, who popped round this morning with his considered historical retrospective of all of the Die Hard film series.

For almost 100 years, Die Hard films have been entertaining the masses with their slick blend of violence, wit, thrills and vests. They have variously taught us never to trust the Germans and also that the best form of defence is to blindly attack without any fear or indeed knowledge of the likely consequences. A practice which Bruce Willis took into his unfortunate four-year US Presidential term with some disastrous results, most of them for Suriname.

I love Die Hard films. They make me feel alive. Or rather, they make me feel like whatever explodes near me, I will not die. Alas, the series itself, as all things must, came to an end in 2042. Still, it allows me to provide a considered retrospective of the whole set. Some people believe that it remains the high watermark of what human civilisation has produced. Others, don't.

Die Hard (1988)

The original and, some think, still the best. McClane arrives at the Nakatomi building in Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his estranged wife and family, only to have his plans interrupted by a German terrorist syndicate led by Hans Grüber. This film establishes the pattern for all of the future installments: our hero is, by a combination of accident and misfortune, left to battle all the forces of crime and evil single-handedly. Often in spite of the bumbling of uniformed paper pushers. The enemy are sharp, multinational and prepared for every eventuality. ALL BAR ONE.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)

As we all know, Die Hard 2 is the best Die Hard film. McClane has to thwart a cartel of ex-military men hell bent on rescuing a deposed South American military dictator, with a perky weather eye on his massive stash of cocaine. Their method: taking over Washington DC's Dulles Airport on Christmas Eve, without a care in the world for all the people in the skies above. Including, of course, McClane's wife, Mrs. McClane. This one is non-stop pulsating action, with some top Sherlock Holmes-style sleuthing from the nevertheless always-in-a-vest John McClane. On the way, he escapes certain death by using an ejector seat and explodes a jumbo jet with a trail of leaking fuel. The latter represents the action film equivalent of Scooby Doo floating down a corridor after the whiff of a sandwich.

Die Hard 3: Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995)

The Grüber dynasty returns, with Hans' younger brother Simon engaging John McClane in a preposterous game of Simon Says across New York City to find a bomb planted in a school, all as a blind so that his terrorist cartel (many of whom are masters of disguise and ninjas) can rob all the gold out of the Central Reserve. Together with a shopkeeper from Harlem who hates whitey, McClane must foil Grüber before his accent slips and reveals that, like all Germans in Hollywood cinema, he's actually RADA-trained. Die Hard 3 has perhaps the most thrilling first half of any film in the series, but the pace slackens somewhat towards the end, which is a shame.

Die Hard 4.0: Live Free Or Die Hard (2007)

Cyber-terrorism brings the entire eastern seaboard of the United States to a complete standstill. McClane, once again in the wrong place at the wrong time, must protect a seasoned 12-year old computer hacker so that he can save the world whilst combining being a major Luddite and saving his, now teenaged and inevitably estranged, daughter Lucy. Some of the set pieces in this film are so preposterous as to be almost cartoonish - McClane's spell hanging off the wing of a fighter jet is a particular highlight. Die Hard 4.0 divides opinion as a result, but I think there's really no need - every Die Hard film is complete, wonderful  lunacy and requires the suspension of disbelief and good faith on the part of the viewer.

Die Hard 5: Die Hard Left, Right, Then Left Again (2014)

John McClane - oddly still not a huge world celebrity and global hero - is sent on secondment to Ludlow, Shropshire to teach schoolchildren the Green Cross Code. Again in exactly the worst place on earth at the exact wrong time, a group of embittered biological scientists release a superplague in Bristol Zoo. Owing to Britain's stringent handgun laws, McClane must thwart their nefarious scheme with a purloined pea shooter until he meets an embittered but beautiful sheep farmer on the Welsh border who teaches him to love again and more importantly has a shed full of shotguns.

Die Hard 6: I'm Dying Hard (2020)

John McClane achieved some measure of fame as a result of saving the world in Die Hard 5 - doing so five times apparently gets you on the cover of Time Magazine. However, during an appearance on Rikki Lake discussing his ongoing treatment for lung cancer, the youngest of the Grüber brothers, Gus Grüber (Daniel Radcliffe) rears his ugly head. Holding the entire studio audience to ransom with a bomb made of pork that Rikki Lake had unwittingly eaten, the televised farrago distracts from his gang's overarching aim - stealing everything in the entire world.

Die Hard 7: King Tut or Die Hard Trying (2037)

A militant group of Egyptologists plan to change all of culture back to 3000 BC levels, including replacing modern alphabets with hieroglyphs and chucking the Rosetta Stone in the sea. Their paymasters, a major multinational phone company, are about to launch the only smartphone that can send texts in Runes and are looking to corner the market. McClane - who survived cancer by shooting it - is typically on a sightseeing cruise of the Nile when everything kicks off. A controversial film, finished digitally after the 81-year old Bruce Willis died of scorpions during the production.

Die Hard 8: Died Hard (2042)

The most controversial film yet, as a puppet John McClane discusses his life story in a retirement home in the Yukon Valley. Cobbled together with a selection of clips, outtakes and deleted scenes from the previous 7 films, Died Hard was criticised for lacking a solid narrative drive, although many critics raved over the content of some individual scenes which they believed to be among the strongest in the franchise. The scene where McClane rides an atomic brontosaurus through Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia posthumously won Willis an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Rocky 2, The Rockening

I admit that I've already written about the film Rocky, but I just can't stop thinking about it. The reason for this is simple: every review I read of it is glowing and it bored the pants off of me. This leads me to believe that I'm missing something. But the more I analyse it, the more I come to the inescapable conclusion that Film World is in the grip of a mass delusion and that I am right, a lone voice in the wilderness. I suppose this makes me Film Karl Marx.

"Expertly paced, benefiting from well-drawn characters and an evocative, often funny script, ROCKY simply pushes all the right buttons"
The Eighth Virgin Film Guide (1999)

This quote comes from their four-out-of-five star review, meaning that they consider Rocky "excellent". But it isn't! It is daft.

Rocky Balboa, as you may recall him from yesterday's post

Who is Rocky supposed to be? He's a socially-conscious man who is down with the poor and the disenfranchised yoof, but his job is to break people's knees for a debt collector. And he's not very good at that, social consciousness gets in the way. And although he's poor and never made much of himself, he doesn't seem down about it. He's happy in his own little pond, with his turtles.  If this is meant to be a great tale of redemption, it's happening to somebody who doesn't need or want it.

Maybe Rocky is on a messianic quest to die for all our sins by getting his face beaten to a pulp? This was a key element to Raging Bull, Jake La Motta seeking punishment and justification from his in-ring beatings. And he certainly does get a beating. So does Apollo Creed. Their title bout is almost certainly the most brutal boxing encounter I have ever seen. Every single punch gets through, as if The Penguin out of Batman had malevolently suggested that blocking was for big blouse-wearing poofters. The punishment meted out to both fighters in the first 30 seconds of the first round alone would normally be sufficient to see the ambulances being called.

But Rocky Balboa accepts his lot, be it beating up Hobo Joe Ratboy in a Church mission centre or fighting for the Heavyweight Championship of the World (this would never happen, but still, we must remember that it's a film and in films anything can happen). He tries his best, whether his opponent enters the ring on a horse or whether they bring their own Thermos. He's happy to make a crust from boxing. He doesn't care if he could have been a contender, could have been somebody. He's just happy to get some money for cigarettes.

Even the introduction of a love-interest doesn't seem to be the motivating factor. He's happy to do this for himself and then go home for a little wuggle. Although I have to say, Rocky's success in bringing the autistically-shy Adrian (that's a man's name) out of her shell is far better than any 300 lb man who punches beef for a living had a right to expect. I think Rocky Balboa's real calling was social work. A missed opportunity. In between punches, he could have waylaid Apollo Creed by asking him about his mother.

Maybe I'm over-thinking this (I am). But really, why would anyone really worship a film that falls apart under even the most basic scrutiny possible, i.e. by me, an idiot? My expectations of a film are not that high. I love shit films. I have already written about my love of the oeuvre of Mr. Renny Harlin and Snakes on a Plane. I don't ask for much. But then, I also love good films, films that change the pace of the world, alter your perceptions and make you think. I wonder if perhaps the reason Rocky has disappointed me so much is that it resolutely falls in between these two camps. I can cope with stupidity and I can cope with genius. Mediocrity makes me nervous.

Rocky (or: are all films about sport rubbish?)

I'd never seen the film Rocky before yesterday. Generally speaking I've tended to avoid any film where Sylvester Stallone punches a cow and for preference I'd have wanted the cow to be alive. However, this Christmas I have decided to watch at least one film every day and Rocky was conveniently located on the television. So began the relentless pounding on a bovine and montages with steps in (not the pop group).

I knew an oddly large amount about Rocky considering I'd never seen it. I knew it was Sylvester Stallone's breakthrough film, the lead role in a self-penned script, written in the absence of any decent acting roles presenting themselves to him. It was very well-received, too, winning the Academy Award for best picture and Stallone nominations for both his performance and his original screenplay.

This is all very remarkable considering that it's a really dull film. And I mean dull. Duller than any film where Sly beats the crap out of a beef more than once has a right to be. Formulaic. Poundingly so. I began to emphathise with the meat. But it's not Rocky's fault. It is a film about sport, and films about sport are largely unsalvageable, even in cases where The Penguin from Batman makes a concerted effort to not be like The Penguin in Batman (which, in this instance, he does not).

Rocky Balboa, whomping ass on some beef yesterday

I like films and I like sport, so the absence of any good dramatised films about sport should irk me. But it really doesn't. What irks me is that people plough on trying to make them regardless.

I think that the problem is that sport is intrinsically more dramatic than narrative fiction. Everything that can be written and imagined has occurred in sport, but even less likely things have happened too. And sport is not always fair and friendly to narrative. Bad things happen and at unfortunate times, unpopular people win, popular people endure a career without. Films are fair. Life is not.

Of course, this is the reprieve for the sports documentary film. Without the responsibility of having to come up with its own story, the very best of both worlds can come out to play. Indeed, sports documentaries can often be among the most engaging and moving films one can ever see. In the last year I've been enthralled and captivated by both Senna and When We Were Kings. No-one could invent Ayrton Senna or Muhammad Ali, and if they did no-one would believe them.

All of this makes Raging Bull all the more remarkable for me. Of course, it is based on biography, which helps make the story ring true. But it is also impossibly dramatic and moving without ever sacrificing the power and impact of any of the in-ring action sequences. (Unlike Rocky, Raging Bull's fight sequences do stay entirely within the ring at all times, an inspired decision). Maybe therein lies the secret formula for all sports films: to combine biographical detail with good acting and memorable scenes.

It's a formula that Ron Howard is currently trying to replicate in his forthcoming film Rush, about the friendship and sporting rivalry of racing drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Hunt and Lauda, both men of huge character and talent, shared a unique camaraderie for top line sporting rivals and a titanic 1976 season full of excitement, controversy and mortal peril. It's a story that would have been a great film. And now it will be.

But I'm not holding my breath. It'll be a film about sport, after all. And they're always rubbish.

The Big Bus

Today's film blog is a guest post by Dave, the author of the spirited blog of lists, Chop's Top Fives. It contains everything anyone could ever want from a blog post: an atomic-powered bus and a top 5 list to finish. 

Thanks to Dave!

I don’t get to watch enough films. Certainly not enough films that I really want to see. This is, at least partly, to do with having children. My boys are 8 and 11 and generally rule the television remote from early morning until early evening. Once we have got them off to bed, a process that seems to take longer every night and generally involves some level of shouting, heated discussion or basic bribery, we’re left with a slot of about an hour to eat tea and watch something Mrs Top 5 likes. I then have the television all to myself from around 10 o’clock until I fall asleep on the sofa. Recently this has been roughly ten minutes past 10.

We go to the Cinema quite regularly but nearly always with the boys (this is a good thing I realise, I’m not complaining) and therefore only to see the latest family blockbuster. That means it will probably be animated, definitely be in 3D and almost certainly star Ben Stiller.

All this pre-ramble just goes some way to explaining the reasons for the huge number of well known films I haven’t seen (Top Gun, Casablanca and Saving Private Ryan to name just three) and my general poor taste in movies.

Should you spend any time in a pub with me, and if we are to spend time together I highly recommend a pub as the best location (it’s where I’m at my most entertaining), and the conversation turns to film then the chances are I will, at some point, extol the virtues of the 1976 disaster movie spoof The Big Bus.

I love The Big Bus, I think it’s hilarious and can reel of lines of dialogue with little encouragement. However I’m acutely aware that I’m in a small minority with this opinion. I’ve recommended this film to a lot of my friends. This has not always worked out particularly well. In fact I only know one other person in the world who likes The Big Bus as much as me and we saw it for the first time the same weekend and have traded jokes from it at regular intervals ever since. Everyone else thinks it’s shit.

I watched it recently with my two boys. I thought this might broaden their film tastes and provide us with more opportunity to watch something other than an episode of “The Amazing World of Gumball” or “Johnny Test” for the 37th time. We lasted 25 minutes before they made me turn it off.

To be fair, it does start quite slowly. If you’re prepared to give it a chance (or are just happy to skip the first half-an-hour) I think you’ll find it’s worth your time. You might also want to consider having copious amounts of alcohol on hand to help you through the dull bits. With this in mind, and because I struggle to write competently in any other form, here’s a top five of my favourite moments.

1. “Quick, raise the flags of all nations” – The main star of the film is the Bus of the title. A nuclear powered bus, called Cyclops, which is equipped with all the conveniences you’d expect from modern travel; A bowling alley, a swimming pool, a formal dining room, a piano bar, and the flags of all nations. The climax of the film sees a bomb go off (I’m not spoiling anything by telling you this) and the drivers fighting to regain control as Cyclops weaves it’s way through mountain roads. The flags of many nations are their last ditch attempt to slow the bus down.

2. “Why do they call you shoulders?” – The Bus is driving non-stop from New York to Denver so needs two drivers on board. Co-driver "Shoulders" O'Brien has huge shoulders but that’s not where he got his nickname from.

3. "Eat one lousy foot and they call you a cannibal" – Lead driver Dan Torrance had been accused of saving his own life by eating all of his passengers when a previous Bus he drove crashed at the top of Mount Diablo. He spends most of the film claiming he survived by eating the seats and it was his co-driver who ate the passengers, but finally breaks down at a formal meal to celebrate the Bi-Centenary.

4. “Look out he’s got a broken milk carton” – Before being recruited to join the crew Torrance is down on his luck and shunned by his fellow bus drivers. A fight breaks out in a bar and the weapons of choice are a cardboard milk carton and a broken candle stick.

5. “Welcome to the oriental bar” – The piano bar sits on the top deck of the bus with panoramic views of the surrounding country. The bar sees various passengers drowning their sorrows whilst the pianist sings inappropriate tunes.

I’m not sure I’ve done a great job of selling the film. Reading back what I’ve written doesn’t make it sound very funny, yet I’ve been chuckling to myself throughout.

If you do watch this movie, please don’t hate me afterwards.

2011: accentuate the positive

All year I've been complaining about the shitty year I've had. This is my right as an Englishman. It's also been a complete waste of my time. Trouble is, I've started to believe my own propaganda. Last week I got some bad news. Personal stuff, you'd not be interested. But the point is, it stopped me from blundering blindly along, bemoaning my misfortune over the last 12 months. It's been alright. It's actually been better than alright, it's taught me about being a human being.

What I will take from 2011 is that you don't need unendingly positive things to happen to you for them to be positive experiences. In fact, much of what has happened to me has ultimately led to stress, worry and sadness. I've lost a grandparent who was a significant part of my upbringing. I've lost my cat who had been part of my life for over half of it. Friends have moved away, moved on, moved up. And there's nothing but the prospect of more to come. But that's OK because 2011 has taught me I'm equal to it.

In fact, 2011 has taught me that I can be better than it. I've never made more new friends in a year as an adult as I have in the last 12 months. And that's not through things falling into my lap. It's been because I've put myself out there to do it. I risked rejection to do it but ultimately didn't encounter any. It's been a learning experience, and like any learning experience I'm not there yet. I have been slow to adjust to all the new things. This will get better and I will be better in 2012. I've been a good friend, a new friend, an old friend and I'm afraid to say, a bad friend in 2011. Not bad for any other reason than blindspots, laziness and not realising all the things I could and should have done.

There are a couple of people who I feel I've treated particularly shabbily and I'll be trying to redress that balance and keep it redressed next year.

But like everything else that has come out of 2011, although I don't feel good about having done that, I'm not feeling good about it for good reasons, positive reasons. I'm not beating myself to a pulp in a corner over some perceived internal failing. I let myself slip, I recognised it and learnt from it.

2011 has been really tough going, but I've got through it and I'm a better person because of it. And it's not just me thinking that, independent adjudicators have confirmed it. Which is particularly pleasing to me. 2012 promises to be the hardest year of my life. But I'll get through that as well.

I hate Westerns, they are shit

I'll give almost any genre of film a go. For one thing, strict generic classification of stuff is a rather reductive thing to do. For another, the more stuff you deny yourself on principle then more fool you, I increasingly find. However, I don't watch Westerns. I hate Westerns. They are shit.

It may be that they were so beloved of my grandfather, of whom I was always terrified. Maybe I associate them with that. But then, he also liked to watch sport on TV, and I can report no significant negative associations there. No, I'm pretty sure the problem lies within the Western itself, and how shit it is.

I'm not even sure why they're popular. They were pretty well ubiquitous in the early days of Hollywood, mainly I suspect due to the geographical location making endlessly dull retellings of the great American frontiersman's travails particularly easy to shoot without the need for any additional backdrops or scenery. Plus, you know, it's a nice story. Wholesome. Who wouldn't want to be reminded about the merciless cultural imperialism and rapacious greed of the European settlers at the expense of the native people? Fun times.

And yet, people still make Westerns. They've been making them pretty much non-stop since the dawn of cinema. This probably explains why in any average week on British television, you'll probably find a Western every couple of days or so in the schedules. It's enough to make me want to amputate my head. Fortunately, I discovered that not watching them was easier.

I thought that, as I'm currently engaged in a series of posts about films, it may be nice to redress this bias. Educate myself in the ways of the Westerns. Perhaps even live blog the experience of watching some of the classic Westerns that will no doubt be on over the Christmas holidays.

Last Saturday I watched a porno whilst drinking Carlsberg Special Brew for the benefit of the advancement of human knowledge. HOWEVER. When it comes to Westerns, I just simply can't bring myself to do it. Even in the name of science.

I hate Westerns. They are shit.

Let's make a film

I've been writing a lot about films recently. Well, it has been my film series. However, I thought it might be a good idea to lay my cards on the table and reveal some of my own ideas for films. Long-time readers of my blog will know that this is not the first time I have done this. They will also know that I'm an idiot and what is about to follow is not the sort of thing anyone should waste any time reading.

Nevertheless, for the rest of you, I'm a man of many ideas and almost all of them have not been thought through in the slightest. However, if anyone makes a film based on any of the following outlines, you owe all the money to me.

Jim Smitt and the Megalodon

Jim Smitt's run-of-the-mill suburban life is interrupted when a megalodon moves in next door and teaches him the true value of partying down.

President Bear

The United States Presidential Inauguration ceremony goes badly wrong after a passing grizzly bear is erroneously made the 45th President of the United States. The law makers face a race against time to rewrite the constitution and remove the bear from office before he bombs Mexico.

Atomic Titanic

Evil nuclear scientists make a cruise liner that not only can never be sunk but also never be stopped, and force the cast of 42nd Street to perform on it round the clock. Can rogue iceberg scientist Dr. Melly Gound be lured out of retirement to end this madness?

Son of Dog

A man whose Patterdale terrier has been officially declared as the second coming of Christ by the Vatican has to trek across Europe before he's crucified by the Romans.

Bag of Skunks

A terrorist group hold a nursery school for genius children of scientists and mathematicians hostage with a big bag of skunks...