Best Before End: Thank You For The Music

According to Pop Justice the best album of 2010 is...(drum roll/rolls eyes) Happiness by HURTS. Pop Justice are of course entitled to like what they like and to have an opinion about it. Here's mine. It's really not very good. Wonderful Life is ace, Better Than Love is ace but the rest of the album is two guys posturing as if they are Tears for Fears/Black/Blanmange/Lotus Eaters/ insert name of generic 80s band here. The tracks sound like they've been put through the Guy Chambers cliche blender. It's not a good album, and any comparisons to Pet Shop Boys are particularly daft. Pet Shop Boys make better music, Pet Shop Boys are more original, Pet Shop Boys are Better Than Hurts.

But if PJ wants to champion this, along with many misfires it has in the past, and write about the damp squibs and X Factor with any kind of passion and continnual irrelevance than that is really up to them. It is, I suppose, a harmless, curious website which could have something going for it, if for the life of itself, it knew what it really wanted to be. At the moment it seems to thrive off pretending to really, honestly, really like cheap pop music, especially the pop music that seems to be fiddled into the ear lobes of the great unwashed via the medium of ITV. This is wrong. Not because there is anything wrong about music of all types but because, well, at a time when there is genuinely more exciting pop music around like Grum, Aeroplane and Cut Copy, to name three, PJ forever feels that the burning discvoveries or pointless inanities we, the reader, really, really have to know about, because it's so amazing is/are: The Saturdays, JLS, Mini Vida, X Factor, Scouting For Girls, Girls Can't Catch (remember them?) X Factor, Alesha Dixon,  and oh yeah, X Factor! Of course PJ mentions Gaga, Kylie and even Pet Shop Boys every so often to show that they are normal like everyone else. But they prefer their pop stars to be wank, have no stage presence, be totally ordinary, or pointlessly overblown and to make shit music that doesn't set a matchstick alight, let alone the charts or people's imaginations. Because ooh, that's what you don't expect! Music journalism it ain't.

BEADY EYE

The name of this band is like a pisstake. It's what me and a pal would have come up with to extend the career of a fictional rock star who has lost his mind and ability to make music. Funnily enough the NME don't get this. They believe that there is obviously enough interest in post-Oasis activity to justify pointless hype about the ex-members of the tribute to Status Quo. I guess this is just one of a million examples of why NME has been shit since 1994. So, does Liam's new band push the boat out? Will we get an album or even at least twenty seconds of something that gives the impression that Liam has matured, has progressed, wants to experiment, wants to rip up the rule book and redefine, nay, reform his musical ways, that once defined the conservative, bland pop of the 90s? Will he? Does he? On balance, so far, does he fuck? Same old same old. It's like there was no music created after 1966. Let's have a look at the album cover. Perhaps we'll get something modern, that will piss on the idea of Liam and his pals being some old retro, pub rock band...

Right, remember what I was saying at the start of this article, 'bout me and my pal making up fictional bands? This is what a fictional album cover would look like. I'll give Beady Eye their dues. They are good for a laugh.

BIFFY CLYRO

I don't get it.

Best Before End Part: The Future of Television

Cunts.

We're already fucked. This is a photograph of the 'cast' from ITV 2's high end 'soap' The Only Way Is Essex. I had the misfortune to catch this while endlessly channel hopping, because when you have Virgin Media's 'Medium' package or Freeview, that's essentially what counts for an evenings viewing. For a few minutes I wondered if this was a parody. This idea alone is bad enough. Then I made the link, the truth dawned on me. 'Hang on, this is ITV 2! Of course it isn't a parody.' Yes, readers, these living and breathing Ken and Barbie's are real! Somehow they have money and mobility to be as tacky and as vile as they like and because they are so mind-crushingly stupid, they can't see it, let alone care about it. With phrases and constant banalities like 'Ohmigod.', 'No!', 'Shut up!', they're like a bad Catherine Tate sketch. And they are vile. Take Mark Wright. I don't deny he's good looking and has lots of cash. This doesn't worry me. If he approves of the air-headed orange faced bimbos who hang around him like the smell of unshowered spunk, that's his look out. But he's a cunt. Or it could be the editing to make him out to be a cunt. If he had a brain he'd have some form of empathy. But he wears his ignorance and cunty attitude towards the female members of the cast with that kind of pointless pride that might have been in fashion in Hornblower's time.

That's one of the problems though. These people are dangerous because of the bubble of ignorance and fantasy they live inside. Kind of like typical viewers of ITV 2. You could  suggest that it's all harmless fun, like most 'soaps' or 'reality' shows, or punching a tramp in the face for so long that it makes your fist sore. But if only they were harmless. More than anything NOTHING happens. The characters and the events are so boring. It's not aspirational or inspirational. It's BORING! More than that, hateful. This is what those who complain about this show ruining the image of Essex should be getting riled about. But as ever, this will get pushed onto us at the expense of genuine new talent, such is ITV's quest to be the Heat magazine version of broadcast media. In the media universe the stupid reign supreme. Long live the stupid.



MORGANA SHOW

She can do Fearne, you see?

This came in from a meeting at Channel 4. Idea for a comedy show. Take a wacky, wacky personality kind of like French and Saunders or Catherine Tate and Katy Brand, you know really amusing women who are so talented they don't resort to lazy, stereotyped characters, cliches and  basic catchphrase comedy, and let's create a new show that attacks and satirises really, really hard targets, so that everyone will take a long hard long at the world and be ashamed of themselves. Especially Fearne Cotton. Fuck it, just commission something as awful as those examples with all the worst, overdone aspects. Channel 4 viewers are finally daft enough to put up with the crap we throw at them.

So Morgana. She can do Fearne Cotton you know. According to some on twitter, an impersonation of Fearne just being over enthuisastic is the stuff of legends. It's more iconic and funny than DEL BOY FALLING THROUGH A BAR.  Because you see, Fearne Cotton is a bit enthusastic. Get it? So it's funny. And the fact that it's like this every episode, with Fearne being overly enthusiastic is bound to be funny because it'll knock Fearne Cotton down a peg or to, because Fearne Cotton is an over enthusiastic bitch.And she's a mate and can't stop going on about it and playing the clips on her show, so amused as she is by someone impersonating her.  As we've learnt from Little Britain it's highly, highly amusing to repeat the same basic gag every week, because it makes it funnier and it'll be funnier still when channels devoted to old television programmes repeat the repeated basic gags over and over and over again till the end of time.

But Morgana is actually very clever at creating complex characters, She can do a poor Boris Johnson. Not purposely odd like Reeves and Mortimer portray people but just poor. She can do jokes about people with mental illness. Mental illness is funny without any context isn't it? Don't listen to me Morgana, just let all your mates in Yes Yes Land endow you with faint praise. Fucking wank.

Frankie, minus hair and glasses.

FRANKIE BOYLE

'He looks like a sex criminal.' That's what should be quoted on the back of his book because for all it's logic that's the kind of observation he'd find blisteringly humourous. In a way this lack of logic and randomness to Frankie Boyle's stand up and his terrible show Tramadol Nights is characteristic. You would have thought that if there was something beyond making fun of disabled people, gay people, black people and all the obvious targets for offense he might be onto something. It doesn't challenge anything though. Not even the bounds of taste or taboos. Or audience response to them. Maybe it wouldn't have to if it was funny, which is essentially the only remit of comedy, but there also lies the problem. 'Mock The Week' isn't funny. You can see the desperation and forced laughter on the hosts face. You can hear it in the audience. Not a great breeding ground for comedy. Russell Howard's boss eye makes him vaguley amusing (see what I did there Frankie) and that, bloody useless, whatsherface, Ganeesh Yashmer(?) are hardly inspiring. Boyle's interludes when he wasn't crowd pleasing could be amusing. However he seems to have found his level and will milk it for all its worth, inspiring dozens of pissed up plebs who watch his show to laugh at the unfortunate just because its funny. It's the kind of comedy that comes from a a ginger haired kid with specs who was bullied at school. Very sad. To think that Channel Four had Chris Morris for a while. Tsk.

Best Before End: Human Wrongs

'Bitch'

Her name's Ruby Thomas. This is what she looks like. She might be balding a bit but she has that French look of an enfant terrible, a child actress. She stamped on a mans chest and kicked him to death because, well it doesn't matter, there is no justification. For a laugh probably. According to some reports her looney dad did time for stabbing a taxi driver 28 times. Vegetable mentality.



'Enjoys golden showers'

 This is her homophobic mate, Rachael Burke. In a different life she could work in a bakers, a rough one probably. She got a clip round the ear and told not to stamp on gay men again. Perhaps she'll pee on them for a living. She really looks the type. I post these pics because of course I wouldn't want you to terrorise them for all their living days or make their lives hell. We wouldn't want that.  And the third stooge is,

'Another childish caption'

This muppet is Joel Alexander. It's probably the way the picture's been captured but fuck what has this gormless tosser got going for him? Now I haven't been to the court or to the interviews or was there so I don't know exactly what happened in detail, such as who said what, who started what? None of that matters because Ian Baynham was killed for no reason. You get that? No reason. He didn't rape the girls, bugger them in front of their mothers. He didn't threaten to burn their houses or piss on their cigs. The fact that he was gay is NOT a reason, the fact that he wouldn't stand for their lip is not a reason,  that they were thick cunts, the idea that he might have been pimping them, the fact that the girls might have been pissed up is not an excuse. How long can we go on looking for reasons? These people were responsible. Simple. What is just, if not more hateful, is that through fear, no-one obviously came to the poor bloke's aid.

Let's not look for excuses or try and find ways to understand it. You can't. People unfortunately are cunts, no matter how they get there. You don't need me to tell you what the broad term of 'human rights' mean to most people, and how its being abused at every level everywhere. You would think that in a relatively civillised, western country we understand human rights. We want to protect and look out for each other. Do you? Well you're naive. People are cunts. It's in our nature and even that is not an excuse. But we should know better. You know in less developed socities women and gay people get stoned to death or hanged for fuck all.  If these places got their priorities right we'd be bricking these three fucking cunts to death instead. This is not an issue about 'broken britain' bollocks. Britain and the world was never right to begin with. Depressing, These hate filled, shit faced wankers have no human right to take away Ian Baynham's rights. None.

Right, depressingly here's my next picture.

Can't drive.

This arsehole is Aso Mohammed Ibrahim. He killed a 12 year old girl, Amy Houston. Believe it or not, this alone is not the issue that's causing controversy. It's the fact that as an asylum seeker he won't be deported and the courts recently said he shouldn't be deported. Now I'm not arsed about asylum seekers. Doesn't concern me. What I'm pissed about and rightly so is the idea that because this wanker, who can't even drive, now has a family, to send him back to Iraq would be a breach of his human rights and those of his wife and children. Hm. You wonder if the most humane thing to do for his family would be to lock him in a shed in Siberia and beat it with planks. Or mowing into the cunt with a 4X4. You're talking about a spinless, arsehole who left a girl to die, when she could have easily been saved. Maybe he'll understand if one of his mates mow his kids down. I wonder what it is about some international drivers though. Especially Audi drivers. It's not diffuclt to drive, it's easy to drive fast, it's not hard being aggressive. Why are some international drivers so shite at driving? Do they not have to read signs, or follow the rules of the road in their own country? Have they heard of theory? Or do their mates at driving school just pass them for the sake of it? Christ I sound like Clarkson!

I don't want to be prejuidiced for prejuidices sake but this kind of thing, like the crime above, the lack of regard, the arrogance just makes me want to chuck a nuke at him. It goes back to the Human Rights thing again. What Human Rights? While there'll be victims they and their families will be the ones to lose out. Fuck Ibrahim. He lost his rights when he cowardly, because that's how he acted, when the dumb ass, left a girl for dead. Hopefully one day he'll understand the hard way when he finds himself in a sticky situation. It seems that his case is being looked at and he could be deported. With any luck he'll be back in Iraq. I'm sure he'll have a whale of a time. Wanker.

Endgame

It's probably obvious to you now that the things that have baffled, aroused and angered me will continue to do so for many, many decades. It's something I can't change, nor would I want to. I can't stop people from being stupid motherfuckers though, no matter how much I try and will it.

Over the past five years I have irregularly written and railed against many things, often trivial. Perhaps I should have (and maybe I will at some stage) write about the things that really matter and are worth being angry about, you know, war crimes, intolerance, injustice, attack on liberties and human rights.  None of it will make any difference but it will make me slightly calmer.

I suppose it's with this in mind, and not a heavy heart that my final post will soon be upon you. I plan to end with a four part special. After that this blog will remain untill deleted by the higher power that is Google, for you to read and rail against. I might compile a book version of some stage. I know almost certainly that there is zero interest let alone zero demand but I'm vain enough to publish a copy for myself anyway, be good to read in waiting rooms. So what will follow in four parts will be Best Before End.