Is anyone else finding it almost impossible to drag themselves away from those videos of Tom Cruise?

I only turned away when a thought struck me: maybe this is The Cruiser’s plan. While the rest of us are all staring wide-eyed at his pronouncements and chewing our knuckles, Scientology is on the march.

Oh, and get well soon to Larry. Hopefully real help will be along soon.

Torchwood, fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, won’t get fooled again.

If you want a perfect example of the triumph of the (lack of) spirit at the heart of British politics, look no further than John Harris’ interview with culture secretary James Purnell in today’s Guardian.

When he talks, the requisite New Labour tics are present and correct - a fondness for such wonkish adjectives as “strategic” and “systematic”, and a habit of responding to difficult enquiries by making up his own rather banal questions and briefly interviewing himself (eg, “Is it better? Yes. Is it perfect? No.”)

…

Purnell won’t be drawn on specific examples

…

He talks about “engagement with communities”

That Harris is a Labour Party supporter makes the interview all the more unsettling. Purnell is another one of those smooth, featureless New Labour drones, like the Miliband brothers, Andy Burnham and Jim Murphy, who, terrifyingly, are hailed as the future of politics in this country. As the New Statesman’s Martin Bright put it with, for some unfathomable reason, complete calm: ‘One way or another we will have Adrian Mole as Prime Minister’.

Painfully on message, chary of the tough question, indoctrinated with that lifeless, soulless use of language devoid of passion, personality or the power into inspire, I’m yet to be convinced that these people aren’t being grown in vats somewhere. Which culture was the culture secretary grown from?

Purnell’s pre-Parliament bio is the all too predictable boilerplate we’ve come to expect of these up and coming young spud guns:

While still a student he worked in the summer holidays as a researcher to Tony Blair from 1989 to 1992. After graduating he worked as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research before moving to the BBC to become Head of Corporate Planning. In 1997 Purnell returned to work as a special advisor for the now Prime Minister Tony Blair until 2001. He also served as a board member of the Young Vic theatre.

Purnell was selected for the seat of Stalybridge and Hyde in 2001.

To wit: well connected, special adviser, parachuted into a safe seat, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da.

His master plan for the arts in Britain is…

…to usher in a new era in which the logic underlying public subsidy moves from “measurement to judgment”, and the pursuit of targets (as seen in a long-standing focus on the arts appealing to certain social categories) is superseded by a new emphasis on “excellence”

Which is all very well, in theory, but you have to ask, as you do with all these New Labour initiatives that promise tomorrow’s boysenberry conserve (nothing so common as mere jam for the new Jerusalem): what constitutes ‘excellence’ and who gets to decide?

We are besieged, and have been these long years, by the mediocrity of thought, poverty of ambition and dunderheadedness of deed of this government. Along with decisions and recommendations being made by committees of placemen and the top-down legislation being passed by rubber stamp, the precedents for a new golden age aren’t good. To say the least.

Purnell is looking forward to a ‘new renaissance’ which is extremely worrying when you consider that most of what passes for art in this country right now is almost entirely untouched by any renaissance values whatsoever. New Labour once charged itself with assembling the acme of British culture and look what we ended up with. Toiling under this regime, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo would be starving artists working in call centres to scrape by.

(See also Jamie and Philip.)

I Am Legend: Take spare pants.

…to bad rubbish Ike Turner. Boo hoo, rock ‘n’ roll pioneer. Boo hoo, Rocket 88.

You know what? To borrow from Jamie Kenny, writing about another wife-beating arsehole, it meant nothing from the moment Ike first raised his hand to his wife.

Why do famous wife-beaters always get a ‘but’? Sure he hit his missus but did you see him play guitar? Sure he hit his missus but did you see him kick a ball? Sure he hit his missus but…

Tell you what, try this: spend ten minutes talking to someone who’s worked in a women’s refuge and see if these arseholes are still your heroes afterwards.

Fuck the lot of them.

For the people most threatened by the revolting masses talking back are those paid to opine from the tops of the mountain: the old school, mainstream media commentators and opinion journalists. If there are people out there who will do what you do, for free, for the sheer pleasure of it, and who are quite capable of dissecting and critiquing your piece, and who, in doing so, prove themselves equally impassioned, equally well-informed, then that is a threat. Mediocrity will suffer. Too damn bad.

read the rest

Take one stupid but still quite scary Doctor Who villain, and make it even stupider and less scary. Killer steak and kidney puddings, anybody?

I’ve been showing the kids some Tom and Jerry cartoons. I watched them with my dad when I was a kid and even though they’re hyper violent, they never had any adverse effects on me. Apart from the time I killed that cat by dropping an anvil on it, obviously.

Anyway, YouTube has loads and loads of Tom and Jerry cartoons. While I was searching out my favourite ones, I found this. It’s an Iranian ’scholar’ explaining how Tom and Jerry are part of the the Jewish conspiracy.

It’s a convincing argument, I’m sure you’ll agree. I knew there was something about that bloody mouse.

Anyway, here’s one of my (and my dad’s) very favourite T & J cartoons. It’s the one where Jerry drinks the blood of Christian children at his Bar Mitzvah.

It’s all over, isn’t it?

‘America’s Next Top Model 8′: Week Four: Crime Scene Victims

Sarah
Pushed Downstairs by a Model

Nigel: The look on your face is just extraordinary. Very beautiful and dead. (later) I think Sarah is the classic example of someone who isn’t typically pretty, but translates amazingly well on film.

Guest Judge Photographer Mike Rosenthal: I think you just put a little bit too much thought in the pose. I thought with the facial expressions, you did a great job.

Why no ‘Beaten to death with a huge porcelain phallus by a Model‘? The poverty of imagination on display is only too wearyingly familiar. Someone with real balls would have recreated the murder of Sharon Tate. If you hate women - or yourself for that matter - that much, put some bloody effort in. Misogyny as a creative driver is so 1970s.

The most shocking part about this is that the image aren’t really that shocking. Most models look dead inside anyway; that glassy stare looks out from a million magazine. What are the pictures trying to say? Anyone trying to make a real point would have hung their model from a hook in a meatlocker. Or given us ‘Anorexia-induced liver failure by a model‘.

As it is, the whole exercise is a moral vacuum, exquisite in its amoral vapidity; pointless. The pictures don’t fuel any sense of outrage but merely top up the resignation to the fact that the human race is slouching towards a tyranny of the mediocre and not giving much of a toss along on the way.

I give us ten years at the outside. By then we’ll be so emotionally stunted we’ll be eating our own young and rutting in the street like animals. Those of us escaping this psychic cataclysm will be regarded as latter-day Travis Bickles. We won’t be the lucky ones.

(Link via Rochenko)

The mighty Keith Olbermann and the mighty George Carlin, together at last:

God, I love him: William Shatner - ‘It Was A Very Good Year‘.

Courtesy of the mighty Cover Freak.

And so the natural supporters of traditional BBC values look glumly on, too battered by 30 years of Murdochian assaults on excellence (”elitism”) in the sacred cause of mass-market mediocrity (”accessibility”) to do more than whinge, as I am doing today, as the last truly great entity in British life is denuded and devalued, its wrists cut and its lifeblood ready to begin slowly seeping away.

read the rest

Exciting times for Star Trek fans. The prequel, showing the first adventures of a fresh from Starfleet Academy Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty and the rest, has been cast. Our very own Simon Pegg gets to be Scotty.

It’s sure to be a tense, roller-coaster of a movie with plenty of jeopardy and an ending that I’m sure nobody will be able to guess. Anyone care to bet which of them won’t survive the battle against the villain, Nero?

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart interviewed on the US C-Span channel. It’s from 2004 but has only just arrived on YouTube. Still worth a look if you’ve got an hour to burn:

Parts two, three, four, five, six and seven.

Being both physically too weak and mentally too apathetic in the last few day to escape it, I’ve found myself taking another spin on the witless, churning carousel of popular culture that is daytime television.

And, like last time, I’ve been inexorably drawn to the music channels. For instance, I’m fascinated by that clash of the cultural titans that is ‘Ayo Technology’ by 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake and which is being endlessly looped at the minute:

Apart from the video being some kind of stalker or sexual harasser’s instruction manual, it was this lyric that caught my ear:

I’m tired of using technology, why don’t you sit down on top of me…

Now, I’m jaded and cynical to a singular degree but doesn’t that translate to:

Hello, I’m sick of looking at pictures of mucky ladies on the internet, please help me…

Similarly, I’m gripped by the poetic and emotional shallows plumbed by erstwhile Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger’s Baby Love. Couldn’t they have tried just a little harder? I had to drag myself upstairs to administer the antidote of Northern Sky by Nick Drake.

I know her song isn’t supposed to be a hymn to the ages and isn’t even really aimed at people who like music but I have a three year old with a better grasp of emotion, soul and, yes dammit, diction.

Looking at the video for the song, it seems to be aimed more at people who prefer more furtive and solitary pursuits. I suspect Ms Scherzinger’s management have shares in Kleenex as a financial safety net should her ‘pop’ ‘career’ stumble.

…is a Charlie Brooker Pez dispenser:

[L]ike many people I find the notion of an instant slimming pill pretty tempting. My physique’s wired up all wrong. Even if I sit indoors eating deep-fried cake for a month, my arms and legs stay skinny, while my neck and face swell up like wet dough. And my head’s too big for my body anyway. In fact, I’m built like a novelty Pez dispenser. A disappointing one. The last one left in the shop, after all the Donald Ducks and Popeyes and even Geoff Hoons have gone.

I’d quite like a Geoff Hoon one as well, if truth be told. Not to eat sweets from, obviously. One could weight it down and place it in the toilet bowl as an encouragement for when one is eggbound. Store Valium in it for the next time a cabinet minister is being interviewed on the television or radio. Use it to frighten an unruly child, perhaps. The possibilities are endless.

Remember a few weeks ago when lawyers acting for Uzbek billionaire and potential Arsenal buyer, Alisher Usmanov, had Craig’s Murray’s, Tim Ireland’s, Boris Johnson’s and a bunch of others’ websites taken down? And do you remember the wave of publicity those actions received?

Well, they’re at it again, and this time it’s the mighty Indymedia on the receiving and of the threats.

Indymedia UK has been issued with a takedown notice [10th of September & 21st of September] from lawyers acting for Alisher Usmanov. The notice served to Indymedia charged Indymedia with publishing allegedly libellous accusations about Usmanov, one of the richest men in Russia, recently linked to a possible hostile takeover of Arsenal FC.

Obsolete says it best:

This only makes Usmanov’s charm offensive this week, involving the flying via private jet of at least 9 British journalists to his offices in Moscow, then putting them up in a five star hotel all the more shallow. He says he’s not a vindictive man and that some of Murray’s allegations are beneath his dignity to respond to, yet his lackey of legal brown-nosing sycophants are still trying to remove all mentions and republishing of Murray’s original post, while still failing to respond either to Murray’s request for them to sue him or to even explain how inaccurate his allegations are, apart from their completely untrue argument that Usmanov was pardoned by Gorbachev.

If Usmanov and Schillings want to keep digging this hole, I for one don’t mind shovelling in the dirt on top of them. Usmanov has the money and the lawyers to fight libel cases from here to judgement day. There can be only one reason he doesn’t want to - just like why Gordon Brown doesn’t want to fight an election - because he doesn’t think he can win on a level playing field.

Spread the word.

Here’s a hell of a thing. Alisher Usmanov, putative Arsenal owner and website smiter launched a charm offensive this week. You can’t buy the kind of favourable coverage he got.

Well, actually, you can. He took ten journalists to Moscow to vouch for his own character in the face of allegations made about him. Because flying ten hacks to Moscow and putting them up in a five star hotel is cheaper than a libel case, obviously.

The journalists duly wrote up their trip and what Usmanov had had to say for himself. How many of them, do you think, declared their interest and how the trip had been lavish and all expenses paid?

The answer, as uncovered by Tim Ireland, may or may not surprise you.

UPDATE 5/10: Tim gets assurances in a letter from the Financial Times:

…in accordance with our strict policy on hospitality, the FT refunded the cost of an air fare and insisted on paying the hotel bill ourselves.

Ronnie Hazlehurst 1928 - 2007.

Groove, you cats.

As an extra bonus, look out for Lord Levy at the end of the clip.

You have to admit, it was a gesture of sheer lack of ego that prompted Gordon Ramsay to allow Gordon’s Gin to use the portrait he keeps in his attic in order to whore their product.

Take a look at the endlessly fascinating image. Like Velazquez’s painting of Gene Hackman, I dare not look away lest the image move in some ungodly attempt to seize me.

Admire Gordon’s blonde highlights. Take a long cool swim in that piercing stare. Go pony-trekking through the lines on his forehead. They’re so deep he must have to clean them out with a cotton-bud. They’re like the canals of Mars.

But look further. There’s something missing. Despite the deep lines that map Gordon’s journey through life, where are the crow’s feet? Where are the laughter lines?

Gordon Ramsay has never laughed. Except on one or two occasions and only at the sound of the lamentation of his diners’ bank managers.

Drunkenness, licentiousness and violence. All recent unwelcome guests in our society, if you listen to and believe power-hungry politicians. Nobody ever binge-drank, had casual sex or knifed anybody before 1993 when Tony Blair declared Britain to be in a state of moral chaos, did they?

And it’s the same with television, isn’t it? Nobody ever bamboozled the viewing public before the age of interactive cat-naming and premium rate gullibility contests, did they?

Or did they? This is Tony Blackburn speaking to the Observer Music Monthly this month about his years as a Radio 1 DJ:

I found Arnold on a sound-effects record. I thought to have a radio dog would be quite fun, but then the dog became more popular than I did. You know, woof woof. But he was never actually a real dog. I don’t know why I called him Arnold. I was doing Butlin’s a few weeks ago and someone came up and said: ‘Where’s Arnold?’ and I said: ‘He’s dead now, and I had him stuffed, and he’s in the back of my car.’

Readers of a certain age will, no doubt, join me in sweeping up the pieces of our hearts as our childhoods are rent in twain. The bastard was maintaining the fiction as recently as yesterday.

I want Biased BBC screeching about this now. I want my licence fee back now. I want Blackburn reinstated at Radio 1 and then fired now. I’m marching on the BBC this morning. Who’s with me?

No, no, NO!

Tony Scott is, according to the good people at ew.com, remaking The Taking Of Pelham 123.

Here’s an idea, Tony. WHY DON’T YOU THINK OF YOUR OWN SODDING IDEAS? It’s an innovative approach admittedly, risky even, but nobody else is doing it right now. The brand new, original story market is an untapped goldmine.

Leave Pelham alone.

I’m planning a remake of the remake. It’s only loosely based on its predecessors and features two hours of fat men in suits pelting people queuing for a movie with fresh cow turds.

‘It’s up to people to stand up and shout a bit.’

So Gordon Brown’s appointed a new adviser to investigate the effects of the internet (specifically violent and sexual imagery) on children. It’s Dr Tanya Byron, erstwhile presenter of the jewels in the BBC’s crown, ‘The House Of Tiny Tearaways‘ and ‘Little Angels‘, where member of dysfunctional families air their problems for the edification of the wider public. You know, the kind of programmes that make you feel like your life’s not so shit after all.

There’s no doubt that Dr Byron has an impressive CV: 17 years as a clinical psychologist and a burgeoning media career that has branched into writing sitcoms. It’s just that, how many people do you think Downing Street looked at before they decided on Dr Byron? Or did they just say, ’sod it, get her off the telly’? Would she have even got the gig without her media profile and is it possible that there are more suitable candidates?

Anyway. I’m probably doing Dr Byron a disservice and she might surprise us all by reaching conclusions and recommendations that don’t mirror Brown’s puritanical instincts or suggest banning anything.

Of course, all of this follows on from Gordon’s love of gritty, gripping television. Or wish-fulfilment, as we in the reality-based community like to call it. We are, after all, talking about a man who once uttered this piece of classic mouth-droppings:

I like TV programmes like X Factor, Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice. They show the value of aspiration, how anyone can achieve things.

It makes you wonder what else might be in the works. I’d give my left plum to be working in the Number 10 policy unit right now. Just think of the possibilities of being able to get the public swallow even more contemptuous and contemptible grift. How about these:

• Noel Edmonds gathers together a bunch of prison officers who have to guess which box contains the best pay rise. All the boxes have next to bugger all in them.
• Gordon Brown sits in a big black chair under a spotlight and is asked questions on his specialist subject by John Humphreys. Brown fails to address a single question properly but is still declared the winner.
• Fifteen suspected terrorists are locked in a house. The ‘housemates’ are then watched all day. That’s it. Not sure, but they might have already thought of this one.
• To stem public outrage over fatcat city bonuses, Bratley K. Twatt and his colleagues will be presented with their cheques by the sebaceous Chris Tarrant, who chuckles ‘I don’t want to give you that’ before handing them even larger cheques.
• Cabinet Ministers appear on a special edition of ‘Just A Minute‘ where they have to speak for a minute on a given subject. Repetition, deviation and hesitation are mandatory. Again, this may have already been thought of.
• Evan Davis takes a group of nurses to a trendy warehouse apartment to watch Duncan Bannatyne counting his money.
• Jeremy Paxman presents a quiz show where two teams of four working class students attempt to make it through higher education.
• Robert Llewellyn asks two teams, red and blue, to build manifestos out of any old shit lying around and then get them to fart around the country without collapsing. The winner gets to bin their manifesto.
• Jim Bowen presents a sporting quiz where he ask members of the public to continue to prop up the British economy. ‘Keep out of the black, and in the red,’ he begs.
• Gordon Brown invites two teams of political journalists to ‘Call My Bluff’. None of them do. Ever.

Gordon, if you’re reading, you can have those for free. Call me, baby.

News that Britain has witnessed its second pedal-by shooting in as many months should give cause for alarm, hand-wringing and hyperbole. Just not for the reason desperate politicians and newspaper editors with their eyes on the bottom line are spoon-feeding you.

No, the spate of knifings and shootings are less to do with absent fathers (code from both sides for single mothers are useless) or a blood-soaked society swirling down the plughole to Hell than to do with a significant minority’s ingrained stupidity in the face of eons of evolution and/or a rank cowardice pretending to be swaggering machismo. Those who, in the first instance, pick up a knife or a gun for offensive or defensive purposes are labouring under one or both of two deficiencies.

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