DAVE: branded with idiocy

if i have to witness the wet-wiped twats that supposedly encourage you to spend your life re-watching dead shows to infinity again, i'll probably end up throttling whoever is sitting nearest. completely unrelated to the dave tagline of "the channel filled with complete and utter fucking wits" or whatever it is, the branding trails between each show feature a selection of randomly chosen 'beautiful people' demonstrating each of the entirely fictitious sub-cultures of dickheads that fill our society.

such a contrived and idiotic freakshow seems to have been created by gathering together aforementioned fucktards from the gyms of chelsea and the manors of the home counties, airdropping them at a big country house, then finding the most drugged-up vapid costume designer to put together to most pretentious set of outfits ever known to mankind. next grab a few cameras and some african wildlife and encourage the carnival of fools to act out their most self-absorbed fantasies. "hi i'm kevin, i like working out and riding elephants whilst dressed in flannel. watch me and my muscles."

for a repeats channel, dave ain't so bad. the programmers seem to have selected a few of the best shows of british tv of the last few decades - whose line is it anyway, QI, red dwarf... shows made for and loved by the salt-of-the-earth folk like you and me, but for some reason they've chosen to brand it with this bunch of self-gratified cuntrags.

some particular shitters never cease to increase my pulse with their sheer, unrelenting cockness. see if you can spot the following:
> twat with the mohawk and red/white/blue leather jacket - especially during his butler-serviced snowball fight that gives me the desire to destroy small animals.
> moron in tweed and a black bowler hat who looks like he was turned down as a professional footballer for being overweight and instead reverted to modeling for a tractor magazine.
> cock-ass middle aged financier dressed as an advert for the edinburgh wool mill.
> daddy's little toff, fresh from the hunt and some kinky frog-masked sex in the smoking parlour.

...and who do they get to voice-over the menstruous bloody things? ralph ineson AKA chris finch, the most irritating cocknut from The Office. and even a pretty good actor can't polish the turds served to him on the form of scripts.

i wonder if all those bastards are still at that big house.

i wonder where you can buy plastic explosives.

AMY WINEHOUSE: the pointless anti-social laggard of idiocy

i've held off writing about this woman for so long, frankly because i thought it like shooting fish in a barrel. how is it sport if there is no chance of failure?

i should start at the beginning before i launch into attack on this festering human waste. i shall start with a compliment.

i used to think she was quite good.

there was a point when i thought "wow, this girl has a great voice, so much control, so much depth, and with little visible effort on her behalf. she truly is a natural." part of me still thinks some of those things are true. for example, she still shows no effort.

her appeal has dwindled as her tattoos have appeared. only as a time scale, mind. i have nothing against tattoos - i'm tempted myself - but there are well thought out, meaningful tats relevant to your heritage and experiences as a person... and there are those that look like you've been repeatedly raped in a truck stop by retard with a magic marker.

the papers (when i use the words papers i currently include those free scraps of toilet roll you get handed outside tube stations nowadays. rather like describing 'zoo' as a human interest magazine) are currently running a feature-length day-to-day diary of whinehouse and her embarrassing attempt at stabilising her life, so in the dullard sections of my day i.e. when i'm traveling on the public transport purgatory system of london; i can catch up on the haphazard frolics of the tattooed wretch. a couple of nights ago she went out in a bra, last night she bought a box of ice lollys. as far as i can work out, there are only very few possibilities for these antics:

1: she is a genuinely fucked up pile of wreckage, and needs professional mental... i mean psychiatric assistance, and we should all feel sorry for her. boring.

2: she is a media grabbing camera-whore and it is all just an act to get her horse-shaped face on telly, where they would otherwise be looking at a more attractive media grabbing camera-whore. like kate moss.

3: she is an absolute twat.

in the past few weeks she has turned up on stage at her own gigs (not even charity do's) completely head-over-shitter wasted, and proceeded to roll her frog-like tongue over a few songs before stumbling off stage, and probably face down into a big pile of charlie. any remaining respect i had for her as a musician would end right there, where she cared so little about the music she refused even to finish her own songs. frankly though, if i had been at one of those gigs i might welcome her backing singers finishing the show as i have recently come to realise something:


while searching for those pictures it became evident that many other people have noticed the similarity. man, i hate it when i'm right.

THE SPICE GIRLS: the badly conceived return of idiocy

can anyone think of anything more hilarious than five middle-aged women singing "i wanna huh, i wanna huh, i wanna really really really wanna zig-a-zag, ah."

?

it's hard to believe a group of adult women, a couple of which have already committed their lives to embarrassing themselves and their loved ones, could make the decision to propell themselves & each other to further ridicule... but...

PEER PRESSURE: ottoman shagging posers of idiocy

I’ve held back from writing about these cats for a while because to be honest it felt a bit like playing slapsies with a quadriplegic: mean, pointless and less than challenging. After about 10 minutes you’re just beating a guy up, you know what I mean?

But I can’t hold my tongue any longer because when you really get down to it, that’s five guys fucking an ottoman. On the internet. For everyone to see. And it isn’t a joke.

No, it really isn’t. It may be tempting to think that Relentless, X2C, Pipelaya and the rest of the gang are in fact a visionary performance art troupe dedicated to exposing the rampant consumerism and preening narcissism endemic in hip hop culture but you’d be wrong. They’re just a bunch of rampant, preening narcissists with the intellectual facilities of pocket lint.

So what enrages me the most about this video? What aspect has me moistening my keyboard with hot, salty tears of despair as I weep for humanity’s desecrated soul? Is it the fact that the first moron wanders on with a dumbbell as if he just happens to have been pumping iron off camera before sauntering on to ravish the soft furnishings? Or is it the way that each idiot has an equally brain dead ‘street’ moniker, a practice they’ve evidently copied from their favourite MCs and applied with all the finesse of Leatherface at an ice sculpting festival. Pipelaya? You sound like a plumber, mate. Or someone who poos a lot.

Never mind the fact that the whole enterprise has the distinct whiff of being one repressed, desperate hair’s breadth away from descending into a hard-rutting, any-holes-a-goal, five-way, sweaty-teenage cum fiesta with the Peer Pressure boys joyously thrusting their tiny members between cushions, against soft fabric and into each other. There’s nothing wrong with being gay and it’s actually kind of sweet the activities they’ve concocted to distract themselves from their obvious mutual attraction.

‘Why Satisfaktion, have you noticed how firm yet yielding this leather cushion is? Let’s go and show Pre$$ure … with our tops off.’

Yes, there’s nothing wrong with being gay. It’s a legitimate, healthy lifestyle choice. What isn’t healthy is being so wrapped up in your own greasy, arrogant world-view that you believe uploading this kind of unintentionally hilarious masturbatory sofa-porn is going to make you look good in any way.

It doesn’t. You pointless bunch of egotistical poser-fucks.

VICTORIA BECKHAM: the wretched vacuum of idiocy

MARK THOMPSON: the knee-jerk of idiocy

there's a bit of turmoil in west london. firstly, today i heard that the base of the once great standard in superior broadcasting is teetering on the edge of selling out and the miracle doughnut that is BBC television centre may well be sold. SOLD! to someone. who knows who, probably for about £300 million.

due to the unique way the BBC is funded, er...
we're going to sell it.

shocking.

but i was left stunned today by a far more ridiculous slither of news from the world of world class telly. it's all come from the incredible inflation that recently occurred in the press over the supposed phone in 'scandals' uncovered by the infallible newspaper journalists of our liberated country. i thought at the time, as i do even more now, that the whole thing was blown all out of proportion. suddenly it became unbearable to the british public that TV might bend the truth slightly, on occasion, in order to better present a program.

most unthinkable (according to the broadsheets) was the idea that a when a few phone-in competitions had had technical problems the show producers decided to grab a member of the production team to stand in as a competition winner (thus retaining the beats and rhythms of the show) and donated the prize to charity. i guess the journalists - speaking for we general public - think what should have happened was a presenter come onto screen and said, "sorry, something's gone wrong so we're going to forget about the phone-in and improvise for the 3-and-a-half minutes that was originally dedicated to trying to get some quality viewing out of a muffled conversation with a sniveling semi-retarded ten year old... um, so konnie.... how are your teeth today?"

IT'S ENTERTAINMENT.

who gives a post-dubbed-squirrel-fuck if they have to bend the truth every now and again? by all means refund the bankrupting 75p everyone spent on their phone call because their opinion mattered so much they 'simply had to pick up the phone' but don't - for god's sake - let it ruin the future of quality broadcasting. as it may well do.

yes, really.

why?

how about this:

today i heard that programmes like Top Gear are facing a shake up where they won't be able to 'lie' as much. yes; i used the word lie because that's what the idiots at the helm if this idiotic process have deemed a necessary word for it. for some reason top gear (and many other shows too, i use this only as an example); top gear, an ENTERTAINMENT show has been attacked because it takes it too far making us think that 3 completely different cars can arrive after a 4000 mile race within 5 minutes of each other.

for a start: what absolute moron would ever think that this is exactly what happened? what mind-numbed oblivious fool would ever consider the idea that week after week the antics of the three presenters racing and rallying and building and breaking, and always ending in a photo finish, could ever be the complete unabridged unadulterated truth? ever noticed the fact that it's E.D.I.T.E.D.?

dumb-asses.

secondly: why the hell would we want to see the actual practical result of each activity? i'd put money on the fact that it'd be utterly boring TV. if skilled directors and editors want to chop and change some dull footage of old cars driving about a bit so that i can spend an hour escaping into a fantasy world full of intrigue and wit, bloody let them. that's why i watch entertainment shows. to be entertained. the clue is in the name of the genre.

today i heard that CBBC presenters now have to say "here's one we made earlier," because they're not allowed to imply that it was solely them and not a researcher that stuck the sparkly star on the box. i mean seriously, that's not just putting the cart before the horse but sending it careering down the hill and into the river before even waking the horse up. as if a four year old child could give a spun shit about who actually made that particular prop when they have the joy of pritt stick and glitter ahead of them.

i hope the person or people who are encouraging this "honesty" gain some perspective soon. if not, i worry that we might be heading towards the news being presented from a big grey room, the floor covered in cables, by two people in t-shirts and no makeup reading from some slightly creased bits of A4 paper.

that is if we can see them without any lights on.

T4 HOSTS: the vaccuous clothes-horses of idiocy

due to unforeseen circumstances i found myself witnessing t4 on sunday today. an unwelcome surprise to me was the revelation that june sarpong is still allowed on television, complete with her rasping grapple at the english language and ever-so-slight hint of permanent confusion in her eyes.

traditionally deviant channel four have seemingly flipped the meaning of "subversive television." rather than the punk foundations that won over young, hip and trendy viewers at the dawn of alternative tv; the programmers of said channel have opted for "try to appeal to the mindless... let's celebrate mediocrity!" attitude. instead of searching long and hard for witty, intellectually cutting charismatics; they've stepped into the street, found the person with the loudest voice and wheeled them onto the set.

so they settled on june sarpong? her and all the other t4 presenters?

just because the tv says these people are funny, doesn't mean they actually are. certain characteristics give away the secret that they aren't really cut out for the job.

• when her voice sounds like scratching your nails down a blackboard while coughing like a disease-ridden smoker.
  
• when the furniture around her has more screen presence.
  
• when he has to read from an autocue to appear witty.
  
• when they look dumbstruck by a band who they clearly haven't heard of before.
  
• when their wardrobe looks like it was designed by a topshop store-cupboard cleaner.
  
• when his hair has more personality than him, and it's the personality of that shouty-guy from the police academy films.
  
• when their facial expression is limited to either "smug" or "bewildered."
  
  

jesus, while searching for the above picture i discovered one of some hollyoaks cast members winning some kind of award. i assume it was for "undeservedly highest tv ratings without decent script/director/actors/camera work/storyline" or something.

JORDAN: the unbridled media whore of idiocy

i've worked it out. i knew it couldn't have been all it appeared to be. nothing and noone could exist with that little depth. ladies and gentlemen, despite all our belief systems, one of this nation's greatest treasures is:
Jordan.

i know, i was shocked as you are now. i literally just spewed over my fresh filled pasta when i realised it.

katie price/mrs. peter andre/media-whore/dumb-ass... call her what you will, but she is an artistic genius. she joins the ranks of Leigh Bowery and Gilbert & George as members of society who have dedicated their entire life to their art and in doing so, enriched life's great quilt-cover.

in a sacrifice of her own human looks she has turned her body into a social commentary on the falseness of our current society. a walking representation of the ugliness of materialism, the mediocrity of the nation and the ignorance of worldwide injustice.

she has even entered into a life-long contract (a marriage no less!) with a person who represents everything that is stupid in the modern world. not content with that, she is abandoned mother to a footballer's son, a man who (like other footballers) is vastly overpaid and living an undeservedly decadent life for his contribution to society. not only that (!) one of her sons is an ethnic minority and she made damn sure he'd also turn out to be disabled by drinking and smoking during pregnancy. what an amazing woman.

i'm sorry jordan, if you wanted to wait until your old age (29?) before you revealed this secret, but i think you deserve to be congratulated right away on your achievements.

i think the true beauty of what she has achieved is in the art of misdirection. allowing her stretched~airbrushed~flesh to grace the covers and broadcasts of what we could entitle "bad-media" means that those people with more resources than their genitalia can easily find more quality information and do something about the problems of this world. an easy rule of thumb:

picture of jordan = nothing of value here.

thank you katie.

i'm still trying to work out the symbolism of a hot-air balloon race, but i'll get there.
well done jordan, good luck to all who sail in you.

KANYE WEST: the deluded babble of idiocy

kanye west came to my venue yesterday to do a gig organised by vodafone. i'm not a big fan of his music. i liked golddigga, but to be honest the rest sound far too similar; a bit of rap interspersed with some sample from some old track that he's found in some record collection. but while i may not be a huge fan, i expected him to put on a pretty good performance full of energy and spectacle.

nope.

pretty much the worst gig i've ever seen. nothing to do with the music, although it sounded pretty awful. this wasn't the fault of kanye, but the fault of his PR guy and sound engineer; an american who - without irony - introduced himself as 'hotdog.' yuh. from that moment on i couldn't take him seriously. he was a dick, but let's not dwell on him other than this conversation between one of the girls from the orchestra and him:

HARPIST: hi, um... hotdog. is it possible we [the orchestra] could have some more light on stage? we can't see our music, and it's just quite dark
HOTDOG: that's hip-hop

what a penis. turns out his first name is brian, which might explain reverting to hotdog.

so to the gig. it was due to start at 8pm. no sign of kanye. not at 8.15, 8.30, 9.00... eventually at 9.20 june sarpong arrives on stage to lull the booing audience. a struggle for her without a personality to rely on. but after an awkward ten minutes she says "now the moment you've all been waiting for, the most exciting thing in music right now, ladies & gents... KANYE WEST!"

the crowd goes wild.

the band kicks in.

the lights go crazy.

... and everything fizzles out.

a few more minutes. apparently he had left the venue at 8 without telling anyone. he never explained why. why should he?.. he's kanye west.

then it all starts up again and on he comes, churning out one of his songs. and the gig has commenced. kind of. he doesn't make it through any song. constantly he stops in the middle of a track and says something to the effect of "i'm going to start again from the second verse." which he does; with the production crew staring in confusion and disbelief at each other. it's being recorded 'as-live' for channel 4. after 3-4 stop/start songs the director is practically pulling clumps of his own hair out.

it was horrible. a masterclass in how not to do a gig.
some things you really shouldn't do (that he did anyway):

- attempt a televised gig without really rehearsing

- make a big deal about forgetting your own lyrics and restart the song

- add new bits that throw off your band

- try to improvise with a clearly unprepared 30-piece string orchestra

- tell the audience they are "boring" and should "try to look more interested"

- suggest that the audience don't recognise a real star when there is one right in front of them

- try and do a costume change between songs and when you don't have time, tell everyone to stop over the microphone

- stop the gig to have a nonsensical rant about your bitter rival 50 cent

- stop doing songs to talk through the process of writing your latest hit single...

it was at that point that the audience realised they were bored and began leaving. without exaggeration, at least a quarter of the audience had left well before the end of the set. about 500 people.

it was like watching a car crash happen in slow-motion. it was terrible. the organisers and i stared together in disbelief as the entire event slowly ground to an expensive mess. i thought it was very funny, myself. tammy, the production manager didn't seem to agree. maybe she was thinking how they were going to turn about 20 minutes of good footage into an hour long special for t4, to be broadcast on the 2nd september. gulp.

man, it was embarrassing. but not surprising when you attempt to work with someone who is clearly
98% ego and
2% tasteless expensive clothing.

i was reminded of this video. not only is the final revelation a piece of brilliance, but the angry indecipherable rambling leading up to it is quite something.


and i'm not the only one who agrees:
MTV
HOLY MOLY
and i'm sure there are plenty of others...