Ice Hockey Hair

Now I don't know about you, but Liverpool bores the cake out of me sometimes. There might be a few things a week that I'll go to, gigs and films and whatnot, and that's great. But being a roving bastion of activity, I need things to do every hour of every day (I don't sleep). If I don't get this I turn into a house price-obsessed, traveller-hating, homophobic, racist bigot (only joking). So for a short time I became rather interested in ice hockey.



Oh lovely. One of the best things were the regional adverts. Each team has a regional TV network that will show its local games, what with the USA being quite big and all, and this naturally gave rise to some rather esoteric advertising slants:



Here's a clue - he's not selling chicken or ice hockey sticks.

Another thing that struck me as particularly absurd occurred when watching a game at the Joe Lewis Arena, home to the Detroit Red Wings. In an interval, the hospitality wheeled on a Country and Western singer, which I guess makes sense because Country and Western is rather a Big Thing in the states. The act was a fellow called John Rich, formerly of Lonestar, currently on hiatus from Big and Rich, but this chap looked to be a bit of both, the bigness and the richness being logical extensions of the marketability of Country and Western in the US:



However, more baffling was Big Rich's track selection. Being a man with the kind of face that has a story to tell, he decided to opt for his recent smash 'Shut Detroit Down'. In Detroit - Land of the Structurally Unemployed. It'd be like sending Margaret Thatcher to Rotherham to sing 'We Are All Bourgeois Now'. Most baffling was the generally positive reception to Mr. Rich's thinly-veiled putdown. The people of Michigan, clapping their foam fingers, supping on their $6 beers, must have been so in awe of everyone's favourite half of Big and Rich that they wouldn't have cared if he had have cranked out his latest hit smash 'Motown is shit, so is Eminem, as well as the White Stripes, and I love getting on eco-friendly municipal transport'. Still, when you think about it, Mr Rich does look rather familiar, doesn't he?



As yes, chubby-cheeked Gary Barlow: celebrity #1 of the 1990s and renovated pop-chap in man band Take That. Indeed, it could be magic. But hold on:



He also looks like chubby-faced demon-villian Jez Quigley from Coronation Street. Who would have thunk it?

Resumed Service

Oh goodness. It's been a good 7 months since I last dipped into this mire of patheticness. Since then I have moved to London, lived in Edinburgh, rebecome a student and travelled across Europe. But I've had enough of that and am certainly not a gloater. So, onwards and upwards. I'm soon to have: 1) a radio show 2) some craft fairs to attend (see the links on the right) 3) some more snippets of writery stuff.

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HAIKU OF THE DAY:

Working class hero:
Life's full of nepotism.
Start networking now!

==

That is all.

Letters Page #3

People, people, people. What have you done? You came so far, all the way from prehistorical spermatoid protozoa, to hulking champions of this sphere and beyond. What a valiant, unprecedented odyssey. But wait! We've got distracted with things like CCJs, Loose Women and brand loyalty. Now we're too busy selling each other coffee to realise that we're making a mess of the world.

Oh well, don't worry about that. If you've got a problem/neurosis, just spaff your stupid little thought to someone like me, and I can spaff an answer back at you.

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Dear Bang Bang Bang: What's the Sanskrit translation for 'nothing in life is to be feared, only understood?'

Bang Bang Bang: I don't know. Just remind me never to take you to Auschwitz, lest you decide not to fear another Holocaust, and instead strive to 'understand' the Third Reich. The same goes for your fervent quest to understand Pol Pot, heinous crime and the commodification of life saving medicine/energy/food technology. Tattoo that on your bicep. It'll look really good when you're 50 and it's flapping around like a fat pancake.

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Dear Bang Bang Bang: I've gt 2 months until da N-Dubz gig and I still got 2 lose 16lbs. I weigh 12st. Does Bang Bang Bang fink I cn do it?

Bang Bang Bang: Yes, you can certainly do it. You just need to stop eating. The best thing about losing weight is that when you reach your target weight, you can choose another target weight to reach. Bang Bang Bang suggests you aim for 0st 0lbs. Don't eat anything until you reach that weight. When you do, I'll have a lovely Dappy-esque woolly hat to wrap you up in. You'll look really good when I toss you into the sea, I promise.

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Dear Bang Bang Bang: Can someone who has been declared bankrupt go to Florida in America for a 2 week holiday?
Bang Bang Bang: Yes they can. This is possible due to the recent emergence of the Insufferable Selfish Twat Holiday Experience market. While you are there, hordes of penniless urchins will pester you for change. But they don't need it! They are merely there for your pleasure, so feel free to spit on them and mock them for their honest, real-world values, like you do with the rest of the world. Optional extras include in-room TV service which warns you when charity adverts are going to appear 1 minute before they actually do, and your own personal golliwog.

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Dear Bang Bang Bang: Please find me the perfect property to rent; as close to Liverpool street station as possible, around £500pcm per person (2 or 3 best) and with concierge, sauna, pool etc. Good luck!

Bang Bang Bang:

Apparently the rent is free.

Review of the Century #8

Movieplex - The Crate Escape
Liverpool.com, 2008

Sick of the same, over-chiseled summer Hollywood blockbusters? Want to try something completely different? You could do exactly that at Movieplex: World Cinema In A Nutshell, coming to a Liverpool near you.

Movieplex, which will be at Princes Park (1-3 August) and St. George’s Square, William Brown Street (7-10 August), is a travelling cinema and museum, encased entirely within two shipping containers. Outside they might look uncomfortable, but inside they’re lush, with a whole load of interesting exhibits and an art-deco style viewing room. In the first room, visitors will be welcomed by 2 ‘Dutters’ (like Trekkies, but more fun) to receive a short museum tour, and will then be whisked into the second, screening room to watch a short film.

Movieplex is a project created by nutkhut (Sanskrit for ‘mischievous’) and happened as a stroke of amazing luck. Co-artistic director Ajay Chhabra was being taken around Merseyside by friends while touring a different project, the outdoor dance spectacular ‘Bollywood Steps’. In an antique shop in Wallasey, he uncovered an Edwardian box, in which was a long-lost and forgotten copy of the 1920’s, ‘Docker and the Rose’ by Shanta Rao Dutt (or simply ‘Shanta’). The find was a massive stroke of luck, and there are hopes that it’ll improve Shanta’s profile in the UK. “There are a lot of lost stories out there,” said Ajay, “but today information is at your fingertips, so it’s important to see things from new, different perspectives”. ‘Docker and the Rose’ has since been conserved and digitised by the North West Film Archive, and is now touring the UK as part of Movieplex.

Shanta Rao Dutt was a filmmaker at the turn of the century. The son of a poor miniature painter, he travelled the world making documentaries and ended up on the Mersey. He made the film using non-actors - dockers and the like – and the result is a 9-minute wonder – slightly dramatic, but very light-hearted and undeniably Liverpool, just like the shipping containers. “It would have been obvious to have Movieplex in a museum, a building, a ‘place’” said Ajay, “but we make massive outside projects. We just want everyone to see it. It has been really important to make it fun. We see a lot of kids leaving, laughing and giggling. It’s about uncovering friendship”.

Sure to be a hit for kids and grown-ups alike, you have to free up some time for Movieplex. Weighing in at a super-convenient 20 minutes, and at 2 different locations in Liverpool, you’ll have the most fun humanly possible in a couple of shipping crates.

Epic Fail

'Epic Fail' is one of the most efficient turns of phrase I have ever come across. In three succinct syllables, 'epic fail' tells you all you need to know. There's been a failure, and guess what, it's pretty epic. It's like FUBAR, but not trying to be cool. It's all like 'listen dude, a car has fallen down an anus, and it's messy'. It's not like 'we need O-neg, stat' or 'man down, man down!!!'. It doesn't swagger around, thinking it's dead important. Oh no. 'Epic Fail' is ultimately matter of fact, in the matter of fucked.

http://failblog.org/ is my preferred source of epic fails. You can see the best pictorial boo-boos from around the globe, comment on them, send in your own if you're lucky/unfortunate enough to come across an epic fail in your own shabby, little existence. And, with this being web 2.0 and all, if you don't like something you can always complain and people will pretend not to read it.



I love Failblog.org because it makes me laugh out loud. Due to the quality editing, and presumable the sheer number of proposed submissions, the photos that make it up tell a story instantly. Usually, the story is someone fucked up. The essence of the humour is in that no matter how long the fail took to build up, be it weeks of hard graft:



or nanoseconds:


or, in the case of this chap's name, a lifetime of fail:


IT'S GOT TO BE WILLIAM. OR BILL, SURELY??!!!1

The actual fail, and all its history, can be traced in 1 camera flash. And that's why I like it.

Personal Genius: Lev Yashin

If there are 2 constants in life, they are football and Russia. One is an unending phenomenon, with a confusing history spanning centuries, full of controversy, infamy, bad moustaches and self-destruction. And there's Russia as well. Lev Yashin was a Soviet footballer, who revolutionised the modern game from the 6 yard box outwards.

Playing as a goalkeeper, Yashin was renowned for his superior agility, and cat-like reflexes. However, he goes down in history as the only goalkeeper to have won the European Footballer of the Year award. Add to that his development of the idea of the goalkeeper playing as a sweeper, in addition to the fact that he spent his entire career at Dynamo Moscow, and it's fair to say that Lev Yashin was a bit of a legend.



Although he died unfortunately after complications on a knee injury, his legacy has lived on, first and foremost in extrovert goalkeeping forays towards the outfield, in an (often vain) attempt to clear loose through-balls, but also thanks to music from bands like The New Lev Yashin or, more simply, Yashin. It's unlikely that bands will surge to name themselves after cult-hero goalkeepers until other European favourites, such as Ludek Miklosko, Pavel Srnicek and Dmitri Kharine become the deserved renowned legends that they are undoubtedly yet to become.

www.myspace.com/theunfathomablemulletofdmitrikharine, anyone?

My Future Of Music Is.... Spotify

Welly welly well, have you heard enough about Twitter? No? Go put your head in a cement mixer. If you're still here, forget about Twitter. It's rubbish. It's full of people who think their every fart is worth documenting. It's like they've taken the single most irritating facet of Facebook - that of the overcreative use of status update - and launched it on its own platform, assured that Twitter is such a genius idea that it doesn't need anything else, like, you know, a point. The fact is, Twitter, that the only solo project that has improved anyone's life was Paul Simon's 'Graceland'. Not even Rocky running up them steps comes close. You might as well give up. No-one's going to buy Twitter, you nincompoops. No-one. Not even the British government and they buy anything, including my (used) socks.

So forget about all this 'POWPOWPOW is currently sitting at the computer updating the POWPOWPOW Twitter account' nonsense. Get a Spotify account. It's changing the face of music, how you acquire it, how it is accessed and produced, and how revenues will be derived. Spotify is like a huge database of music. It's like Napster, in its vastness, except instead of downloading files illegally, you stream them legally. And instead of waiting for some chump in Boston to come online so you can suck up some My Vitriol loving, it's centrally planned and ready to go ON DEMAND. You get thrown some adverts now and then, say once every 20 minutes, and that's the down side. It's not really a down side, considering you are exposed to adverts:

1) On the TV.
2) On the vast majority of radio stations.
3) Outside.

So basically you're paying with the utter inconvenience of doing something you already do all the time anyway. OH BOO HOO.

My favourite bit is the ease with which you can make your own playlists, and share them. You can even make them collaborative, so if you're chatting to a friend in the pub, they can be all like 'have you heard this banger?' and you'll be all like 'no?' and they'll be all like 'well I'll put it on our joint Spotify collaborative playlist' and you'll be all like 'o rly?' and they'll be like 'yea rly!!!1'. That simple.

For starters, here's the official BANGBANGBANGPOWPOWPOW playlist for you to slap your sweaty chops around.

And try it yourself, little doggies! In the distant World Gone Right, people like you will be sitting around, talking about their first Spotify experiences. And then you can mention POWPOWPOW. Lovely.

Spotify Official Website