Politics for kicks.

This week British politics followed America's lead, once again, and staged it's first televised leadership debate. Yes, British politics was dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century, even though it's the middle of 2010, by utalising the magic talking box that's been around for about 300 years. By this rate MP's should be uploading funny clips of themselves onto you tube by about 2050. But, despite this radical step forward for British politics and radical step backward for live TV, there was only one question on everybody's lips this week “ What the fuck has Charlie Brooker done to his hair? It looks like he bought all the hair Simon Amstell had left over when he styled his head wig into a similarly detestable fop, and weaved it into the garishly trendy poncecap you see before you. With Charlie Brookers new hair making him look 20 years younger and 50 times more of a cunt, one was forced to pay attention to the antics of Larry, Curly and Moe (or David, Gordan and Nick, as they are now known) as the curtain raised on the first of their 3 live performances, or the triumvirate of shit, as it's not nearly referred to enough. By general consensus the night belonged to Harpo Marx, or, to use his pseudonym, Nick Clegg, for speaking in public for the first time. Although his performance was rather good, his performance in the polls is a bit misleading as he scored most of his points simply by not being Brown or Cameron. Indeed, the Lib Dems could, conceivably, have stood Bertie Bassett on stage and people would have voted against Gordan and David because they “weren't nearly made of enough liqourice” By all accounts Brown came across as solid and dull, while Cameron was disappointing, or at least as disappointing as someone could be when you expect the to turn up and simply imitate Blair. The whole thing began to resemble a surreal live game of rock, paper, sissors with the three leaders, simply, cancelling each other out. The good thing to come from this is that Britain is now a three party country- and not one of them can explain their proposed spending. See, democrazy works!

Why don't you? I'm saving kids TV - for us all!

Ola! Do you know what this blog needs? Pictures of Shakira naked? Yes, we all need that. But, despite sending her numerous handwritten letters, samples of my own blood, and pictures of my toes with her name written on them in jam, they are still forthcoming. However while we all wait for the lady who is surely the image in which god created eve to let us glimpse her Eden, we will have to content ourselves with this:



How did they get away with that? That's brilliant and it's real, unlike that rainbow parody that litters the net and the urban myth that Captain Pugwash actually had characters called Master Bates, and Roger the Cabin Boy. I think all Children's TV shows should go in this direction and include all manner of smutty innuendo to help keep parents, and early developers, rich in chuckles. It's not a bad thing as 1.)It's Prince not Michael Jackson, so it could have been worse. 2.) The joke goes over the Children's heads anyway, I saw every episode of Animaniacs and didn't twig, and I love smut. And finally 3.) It's funny. The unexpected joke is always funny. Which is why, no matter how high brow you are, you will, at some point in your life, have found a fart hilarious. It's genetic. I propose a quota: A mandatory three innuendos per episode, then parents will have reason not to tear their eyes out while trying to comprehend In the Night Garden (which, by the way, is awesome.) and kids will have something to look back on when they're 20 somethings; using whatever frightening mind powered medium we will have evolved to and say “How on earth did they get away with that?” It's fun to do, I enjoyed the clip above, and so did you. Why deny them that pleasure? We're fucking everything else up for them we could at least give them this. They can't look back on the Teletubbies and say “how did they get away with that?” because the inevitable response would be “because it's shit, it doesn't make sense, the purple one is offensive to gays and the baby in the sun is just creepy.” So for the sake of our kids, let them partake – Let's give them smut!

The future is now!!

It's 2010 at last! this is good for a number of reasons: first, we no longer have to stomach pissed up ladies on their hen night screaming "It's the noughties! Wooo!" like it's some hellish Orwellian nightmare decade, where everyone is forced into self-conciously wacky fun, due simply to an unfortunate homophone, before downing sambuca and crying. Second, Back To The future part 2 was set in 2015, so we can expect hover boots in the next 5 years (as everyone knows Back to The Future was a series of documentaries) and third, due to the twenty year gap needed for kitsch appeal (the 70's in the 90's, the 80's last decade) the 90's will become fashionable again towards the end of the decade, which means my knowledge of Oasis and Men Behaving Badly and collection of worn out linen shirts will garner me some retro cool. Excellent. So to celebrate the oncoming seismic change in taste and fashion, ITV have decided to take us back to the 70's through it's bizzarely out of place new game show- "Take Me Out." A spectacularly dated piece of Saturday night fluffutainment where single men have to prove themselves to a panel of what appears to be 300 or so women, before being rejected purely for their looks. The show is hosted by Ginsters spokesman and professional friend of Peter Kay's, Patrick "Paddy" Macguiness whose complete lack of charm is depressingly apt. The show is brazenly sexist in a way television only dares to be towards men, and will no doubt be dismissed as just a laugh in the shows numerous press releases, but the whole thing feels oddly flat, and no amount of staged whooping and northen accents can inject any life into proceedings. The show, I feel, is supposed to resemble a kind of hen night, where random men will have a bit of dance, while the girls merrily laugh their heads off. However, the flat tone, vacant stares of the contestants, and Macguiness's turn as a savoury Willy Wonka, mean the whole thing more closely resembles a kind of televised brothel- where, instead of men paying for prostitutes, the whores simply choose the most pathetic specimen of masculinity they are presented with, before taking them backstage to humiliate them and laugh at their genitals. They might as well just go the whole hog and replace the women with snipers who simply shoot the men they don't like, at least that would put them out of their misery quicker and might actually be more fun. It's the way TV is going anyway. Roll on 2020, I'm sick of this decade already.

Modern life is rubbish.

Society is hard. I'm using society as a verb, not a noun or an adjective as I genuinely feel it's a doing word. I did attempt to conjugate the verb societing or societe, as in “quick everyone- societe now!” and we would all conform to the mundane bullshit game we play everyday, just so everyone else thinks we are getting by, even though in their heads they are just as depressed and fed up of it all as you. So I use society as a verb, it means to conform to the imposed pretending in your head. Try it, it works,

“What are you doing today?”
“I'm society”

O.k, maybe it doesn't. But my point remains. It's hard just existing, simply getting from the moment you wake up and coming full circle to go to sleep is an achievement. Which is why I can't understand people who actually want babies! How can you be so confident in your ability to be a person that, not only do you feel you've mastered the art of being a functioning member of society, but you can actually teach other people to be one? It's astounding to me. When ever I go out and attempt to society it's a futile and laborious attempt at co-existing with other human beings that invariably ends with me curled in foetal position humming the theme tune to gummi bears at the back of a bus. People should take more care when having children- some people seem to put less thought into the decision to procreate, than I do over what breakfast cereal to eat. Living is hard, trust me I've tried I've failed. We shouldn't subject this onto infantile beings unless we have actual physical barometers of success at society, like butlers and jet ski's. Spiritual success won't cut it I'm afraid, you may have reached the spiritual plateau of nirvana, but it's still not as good as a wii, and you know it. The only hope for us all now is we, as a nation, collectively give up and allow ourselves to be adopted by Angelina Jolie and live in her rainbow house of joy while she farts sunshine. That or you could join me at the back of the bus.

The Alan Sugababes

The Sugababes are back, except they're not. But they are. If you hadn't heard the Sugababes have gone and sacked founding member Keisha Buchanan. “That's not unusual” I hear you cry, “the Sugababes always replace members” well, yes. But this time it's different; Keisha was the only original member left in the band she formed, over ten years ago, with Mutya and some other girl no one really remembers, but she wasn't Heidi, which matters all of a sudden. This is brilliant because it has opened up all manner of debate over the authenticity of pop music, and has seen some brilliant hand wringing from muso types harping on how music has 'no soul' and that as it was Keisha's band they should quit- The Sugababes have become a soulless corporate production with an endless treadmill of desperate wannabes, kind of like The Apprentice. I don't agree with any of this. I think it's ace. Pop music has never been authentic – Pat Boon sang Little Richard records and Elvis had blonde hair! All that's happened is that 3 reasonably pretty girls with nice voices have replaced three less reasonably pretty girls with nice voices, it's not the end of the world. It's only a name, if Mika was Mika by any other name would he still be as shit? Yes. Names are meaningless, and the fact they have kept the Sugabaes name only means it will be much easier to search for any new songs they produce on Spotify. Far from being the final corporate nail in the music industry, I think we should embrace this as the next evolution in how the public digests music. For instance, there's too many bands as there is, who can really tell the difference between Fall Out Boy and Panic at the Disco? No one, not even their mums. We should turn music into a league based competition like football. Each Genre of music should have a league table with 12 bands who then go head to head over a season with results based on downloads and sales and number of tracks released, this way everyone gets to keep up with music as it's the same bands, there's far less copycat acts producing mindless disco-pap and music becomes generally interesting again as you support your band over everyone elses. You could even introduce transfer windows- imagine in the off season: “Following the disappointment of their last Album U2 have signed Jay Z! Or: “In an effort to combat accusations that their play is boring Coldplay have signed funk master Prince!” It would be awesome,and you know it. And we should thank the Sugababes, whatever Jayne, Deborah and Mary make them up.

Michael Jackson R.I.P 1958 - 2009

The King of Pop has passed away; long live Prince. I was going to write something cutting, acerbic and a bit silly about Michael Jackson's passing, but decided against it as google's search engines are quite powerful and I don't want people to hunt me down and murder me, only for my family find my naked, dead body in lake with one white glove stuck to my chest. The fact is like most people my age Michael's music (his MUSIC) touched me- in a good way, obviously. The first song I ever really loved was bad, and one of my earliest memories is watching the video for Black or White on MTV and being amazed at the face morphing on display. And the bit at the end where everyone changes into another person was quite good as well. You can't judge Michael Jackson's cultural significance through any one measure alone, he was a cultural phenomenon the likes we will never see again. The only way any death could match the scal of this is if Coca-Cola or Mickey Mouse were to somehow die, and even then it wouldn't be too bad as we'd still have Pepsi and Spongebob(which, in many ways, are better). But Michael leaves behind noone: A whole host of imitators, but no equal. Every facet of entertainment that Michael turned his hand to he excelled in: Music, Videos, stage shows. He revolutionised the way music was marketed and sold, the Thriller album alone had 7 singles, which meant from them on artists couldn't rely on filler to beef up their albums as people now expected more. Rolling Stone described his as a "One man rescue mission for the music industry" and they weren't far wrong. The only entertainment venture he failed in was Theme Park construction as, from what I can gather, Neverland was a bit shit, but we'll forgive him that. There will obviously be conroversy around his death as there was in his life, and public opinion will be divided over the majesty of his professional life compared to the shambles of his personal life. Michael Jackson was an enigma, a more superficial construct than any of the characters from his videos, but therein lied part of his appeal. He was otherwordly- etheral, even. While many of his contempories- Bobby Brown, Prince e.t.c- were deeply flawed human beings Michael Jackson, at times, didn't seem human and maybe that's how we should remember him, as an entertainer. He was Elvis, Fred Astair and Bono rolled in to one, and at least twenty times more exciting than that sounds, so whatever your feelings toward him as a person, and remeber you didn't know him personally, just remember him for what he gave you. And even if that was merely shaking your head over the latest Wacko Jacko story in the newspaper, then that's still more than a hundred Justin Timberlakes or Ushers will ever give you.

The world has turned and left me here.

The world has changed a lot in the last few weeks. The rank hypocrisy of the parliamentary system in this country has been exposed, the speaker of the house Michael Martin is about to resign, Jordan and Peter Andre have split up. Clearly, we're going to the dogs. The little public trust that was left in parliament, has gone. The fact is removing Michael Martin is an arbitrary step in restoring public confidence in the system- the damage has already been done. The way MP's were able to abuse the system of allowances so blatantly and then the way the body of representatives allowed this – no doubt as they were busy trying to justify a moat on their own expense accounts, means that any goodwill and, ironically, allowances that the public would have made for parliament is now history. So how do they restore public faith in the house of commons? This wont be easy as, like most of the British public, I wasn't interested in the state of their expense accounts until I learned they were abusing them. Instantly, the House of Commons became 1 million percent more interesting. The key to making the public trust someone is to make them interested in it, and once the accounts scandal gets boring again no one will give a shit, so how do we make the house of commons interesting? There is only one answer-Simon Cowell. Simon Cowell is an idiot, he routinely makes bad decisions and talks out of his backside but people are interested in what he has to say and as such his opinions are genuinely regarded as trustworthy. We need to Simon Cowell the shit out of parliament. Replace the speaker with someone partisan and objective – say Jeremy Kyle, and who wouldn't like to have seen the House of Commons this week with Kyle in Gordon Browns face screaming at him to 'be a man',or better yet- replace him with a puppet. Don't tell me you wouldn't find politics much more interesting if the whole thing was presided over by Emo from Seasame Street, because you would. It would be brilliant you could have Stadler and Waldorf sitting on a Balcony making obtuse statements like most of the backbenchers do anyway. And instead of debating issues, the MP's should be made to take Bush tucker trials (Which would be brilliant as we could see them all ingesting testicles, as opposed to speaking them for a change). The MP's should be made to wear garish suits in their parties colours, red for Labour, blue for the Conservatives, erm..pink for the Lib Dems. And finally, we need to incorporate a public vote so the least popular MP that week is voted out of the house like in Big Brother, except instead of Davina McCall, it's Jeremy Paxman waiting for them with a long list of their expenses and a big grin. With public interest back on track, people will start to trust Gordon Brown again because 'He was a good sport when he ate that Kangaroo's anus last week' and David Cameron will get Kudos for sticking his head in a cage full of rats (or sitting with the Tory backbenchers, as it's currently called) And democracy in this country will be either be saved or Susan Boyle will be our next Prime Minister, which, let's be honest, would be an improvement. Thank god for Simon Cowell, eh?