The Column of the Movie of the Game.

 You can’t blame people for not predicting the future accurately. For every correct insight, there’s a “Space: 1999” and Harold Camping assuring us of the apocalypse.
 Still, I doubt anybody 20 years ago would have guessed that, in the year 2012, we STILL haven’t had a decent videogame movie.
 It’s gone past the point of conversation and into the realms of parody. It’s accepted wisdom, far and wide - films based on video games are shit, and so are games based on films.* It’s the drunk Irishman of the digital era; a lazy, accepted stereotype that hacky internet writers can fall back on.**
 Although it’s contentious, most people seem to agree that the best video game adaptation so far was “Mortal Kombat.” Which was shite. Although in fairness, the makers of “Mortal Kombat” offered a role to Jean Claude Van Damme, and he turned it down to go and make “Street Fighter: The Movie”, which was painfully, infinitely worse.
 We’ve grown so numb to the phenomenon that nobody is actually thinking to question it anymore.
 Movie studios don‘t care because, depressingly, they’re still making money. Whilst it might be true that the average studio head is a fat, aging white man who doesn’t understand any part of modern culture in anything other than a rudimentary sense, he still knows he can green light “Resident Evil: Tedium” and see a return on it.
 The fact that the public still goes to see awful game movies doesn’t address the fundamental question of why they’re so awful, though.
 Luckily, there are sites like this to answer that question.
 The biggest problem, as has always been the case with gamers, is to get things taken seriously. It’s been a long, uphill struggle, but it’s fair to say that these days, anyone under 40 knows that gamers aren’t desperate, lonely virgins huddled in a cave somewhere. Movie studios, however, aren’t known for their down-with-the-kids attitude, or even for a passing awareness of the modern world. Every time Hollywood attempts to jump on a technological bandwagon, they miss and fall face-first into the dusty manure that the cutting-edge horses of the zeitgeist have left behind.
 “You’ve Got Mail” earns points for making a movie about e-mail at around the same time that most households were becoming familiar with the medium - and also being the last time everybody didn’t hate Meg Ryan - but it still took film studios nearly a decade after that to find out about MSN messenger. When they did, they cast Halle Berry and Bruce Willis in a movie about people so stupid they read their IM conversations out loud as they happened. (Y’know. Like we all do.)
 So it’s fair to say that Hollywood isn’t up to speed on it’s tech, and it’s only dimly aware of video games as “those things that keep stealing our profits.”
 We can count studios out of the race to find someone who can make a decent game movie.
 But what about the creative side of things? Surely, there are writers, directors and actors who appreciate gaming enough to come together on a collaborative effort and adapt a beloved property into something worthwhile?
 This is the other end of the problem: gamers know nothing about making movies.
 The people who make movies are aware of what it takes, and the majority of non-movie people only think they know what would make for a good film.
 Take the most obvious, slam-dunk example in history: Resident Evil. A game that sold huge numbers, had better reviews than Scarlett Johanson’s buttocks and had an entire, movie-like plot BUILT INTO THE GAME. How could they possibly screw that adaptation up?
 Well, they scrapped the plot from the game and gave Milla Jovovich everything she asked for - a valuable lesson about the benefits of giving a director unlimited access to your vagina.
 Fans were outraged. Jovovich’s character, Alice, was a wearying bit-part player in the original game, and in the movie she’s the star? The mansion of horrors now has an evil, HAL-like robot controlling it? No other characters from the game are even mentioned?! Why?!
 Here’s why: The original Resident Evil didn’t have a good enough plot to sustain a movie. And neither does any other game, before or since.
 It’s a hard truth to face, but think about it: How much of what you remember being Resident Evil’s plot (the mansion, the trapped rescue team, the zombies) is dealt with in the first ten minutes of gameplay?
 And how much of the rest of Resident Evil was spent wandering the same few hallways, looking for keys?
 I’m not knocking the game; it was revolutionary in its time, but the point is that video game plots FEEL a lot more coherent than they are because we mentally edit out all the plodding, in-between bits. A lot of what people think are plot points in games aren’t even really plot points; they’re set-pieces, designed to stick in the mind. From a script perspective, when your most important story arc is “explosions”, you’re on shaky ground.
 Even modern, open-world games wouldn’t necessarily make for good movies. “Red Dead Redemption”, for example, had a long, sprawling plot that could in theory be adapted for the screen, except that without the slow-burn effect that riding a horse for ten hours of side quests has, it would feel rushed and disjointed. Cowboy gets shot, Cowboy recovers, Cowboy goes to Mexico for some reason and wins the revolution, Cowboy comes home, Cowboy accomplishes his original goal, Cowboy gets shot again. It doesn’t exactly flow.
 Even with some tinkering, the bare bones of the story - the former outlaw forced to hunt his old gang, the death of the old west, the indelibility of sin, the value of loyalty - have all been done to death in other western movies that the game itself was based on.
 All of this, incidentally, ignores the fact that the games being cited are the best examples; the ones most easily filmed. A lot of games are deliberately light on plot so that we can just pick them up and play them. Can anyone picture an accurate screen version of, say, Tekken? And don’t flood the comments section with rants abut the backstory of the characters, because most people only play those games for the face-punching, the way god and programmers intended.
 (Also: Please don’t flood the comments section with “OMG dey flimed Tekken LOL!” because I know about that movie, and try very very hard to pretend I don’t.)
 Games that are fun don’t need deep plots. I’ve played all the way through “Lost Planet 2” and at no point did I have any idea what was going on, except that I had a machine gun and there were lots of aliens attacking me. That was enough to keep me entertained for hours.
 As for the awful subgenre of "games based on movies," everybody already knows the story. The game is released as a tie-in with the film, and is cobbled together as fast as possible by the lowest bidder. This is the same as it's been for thirty fucking years.
 Every so often, the planets align and someone brings out a game that is both fun AND well written, well acted and emotionally engaging. These games give us hope that one day, someone will succeed in the not-impossible task of making a really good movie based on a really good game.
 The simple fact remains, however, that games and film are two very different mediums - one of them is based on the passive enjoyment of other peoples’ work, and the other takes audience participation as it’s lifeblood. The point of a game is playing, and the point of a film is watching.
 So, at least for now, if you want to see a good film, go and watch one, and if you want to play a good game, make sure it’s not based on a film.



*Mostly. “Wolverine: Origins” was a much better game than the film it was based on.

**And how!

The Five Worst Olympians, Ever.

[Another article I pitched to a few places that went nowhere. Enjoy!]


 Say what you will about the Olympics, there’s something inherently noble about them. Their insistence on only using amateur athletes prevents the games from becoming another cash-driven, gladiatorial prickfest, and the dedication to lesser-known sports gives people a chance to shine when they would normally be ignored.
 Granted, there are always things to complain about, like travel chaos, media saturation and the near bankruptcy of almost every city that stages them…

                                          "Hello...? Shit, did someone stage an Olympics?!"


 …but nonetheless, the Olympic games provide a noble, upstanding example of what humanity is capable of at its best.
 Or at least, it does until these assholes show up.
 Whether through incompetence, inexperience or just plain shitty sportsmanship, these are the worst Olympians in history...

 Eric Moussambani:

 Eric “The Eel” Moussambani was a product of that brief and under-reported period in sporting history where the Olympic committee decided to team up with the estate of Roald Dahl.
 Eric won his entry to the games via a magic ticket, and if you think that’s an exaggeration, no, it actually happens.
 Hailing from Equatorial Guinea, Eric decided that his sport of choice was going to be swimming. “Decided” in this case means he took up the sport eight months before the games, and did all of his training in a hotel swimming pool.
 It would be great to report that Eric’s plucky spirit and “can do” attitude held him in good stead, but there’s only so far that ambition can carry you, especially when the only time you’ve ever seen an Olympic sized pool in your life is immediately before you jump into it.

                                                        "You want me to get in there?!"


 Eric managed the men’s freestyle 100m in a sedentary one minute and fifty-two seconds, which, it’s worth noting, was still slower than the pros could swim twice that distance.
 Eric Moussambani was to swimming what Courtney Cox is to pie eating contests. He was less comfortable in an Olympic pool than the Wicked Witch of the West. He had all the grace and agility of cats having sex, and moved at the speed of elderly nail-growth.
 He wasn't a great swimmer, all told.
 Rather than fade from consciousness, Eric "The Eel" Moussambani stuck around, and things didn’t turn out too badly in the end. Despite posting much-improved training times (due to, y’know, actually having experience at swimming now) a visa problem kept him out of the following Olympics in Athens, but he did go on to success as, of course, the swimming coach for the entire national team of Equatorial Guinea.


Andarin Carvajal:

 Andarin Carvajal was a Cuban runner at the turn of the twentieth century whose chief goal in life was to run an Olympic marathon.
 Born dirt poor, Carvajal would stay that way his entire life, but in 1904 he literally begged on the streets until he could scrounge enough money for a ticket to America and, he hoped, glory.
 Arriving in St. Louis, Carvajal would actually become part of one of the most farcical races in human history; the winner of the 1904 marathon would later admit that he gave up after nine miles and caught a lift in a car which - ironically - broke down at the nineteen mile mark itself.
 With the first man to finish now stripped of his title, Thomas Hicks was declared the winner, even though he nearly died after being dragged over the line by his trainers, insensible from a combination of strychnine and brandy. These were what passed for diet supplements in those days, and it took a team of doctors to keep Hicks from flatlining in the stadium.
 If anyone is thinking how pitiful these guys look in comparison to modern super-runners, bear in mind that this was the first Olympic marathon to include black African athletes, one of whom, Len Tau, was a hot favourite to win until he was chased for a mile by an angry dog and lost his way.
 Where does all this leave Andarin Carvajal?
 Asleep under a tree.
 See, if there was one thing Andarin loved, it was running. But if there was something he loved more than that, it was free apples.
 Half way through the race, he decided that he was hungry and snuck off to steal some apples from an orchard.
 The apples proved over-ripe, causing a tummy ache, and so Andarin - no bullshit - decided to take a nap in the middle of the race until he felt better.
 Olympic dreams are great, and all, but hey. Free apples.
 Impressively, and probably due to a lack of angry dogs and strychnine, he still placed 4th.


Jung-Il Byun:

 Jung-Il Byun, a bantamweight boxer at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, probably deserved a medal for childish bullshit if nothing else.
 Presumably, the Korean phrase for “remember to work behind your jab” sounds very similar to the Korean phrase for “go and headbutt that guy in the teeth,” because Byun was told one and immediately did the other.
 Boxing referees will generally only deduct points for head butts if they’re obviously deliberate or, at least, frequently occurring.
 Impressively, Byun managed to have a point deducted for butting, and then another, separate point for the same offence. This shows an impressive frequency of headbutting, if not much boxing skill. He went on to lose the bout heavily on a judges' decision.
 Most people in his situation would go in one of two directions; stoical acceptance of defeat, or angry protestations.
 Jung-Il Byun went with the unusual third method of “nyuh-uh!” and proceeded to sit in the ring, presumably content to just sulk there until somebody, somewhere gave him a medal.

                                                        "If I can't see it, it's not a loss!"


 After Olympic committee members checked and confirmed that there were no medals for the men's freestyle head butting OR the zero-metres "acting like a toddler," they did the logical thing and turned out the lights in the stadium.
 At this point, the last ghostly shreds of Byun's dignity put in an appearance and he agreed to leave.
 His marathon one-man sit in last sixty-seven minutes.


Angel Matos:

 Angel Matos discovered his passion in life and decided to follow it.
 That passion was kicking things.
 Already a gold-medal winning taekwondo athlete (referred to as a taekwondo-er [citation needed]), Matos went into the 2008 Olympics with a recent gold from the Pan American Games to add to his 2000 Olympic medal.
 During a bronze medal face off against Kazakhstani Arman Chilmanov (yes - the Arman Chilmanov) Matos suffered a foot injury and took a kyeshi, the taekwondo equivalent of a time out.
 Under taekwondo rules, a kyeshi can only last a minute, before the competitor must either return to the fight, request more time or concede the bout.
 Having been warned about time at the forty second mark, Matos breezed through the minute barrier of his kyeshi without acknowledgment and the judges disqualified him for taking too long.
 At this point, it became clear that Matos wasn’t actually having his foot treated so much as he was charging his special move.
 Working from the sound logical principle of “fuck it, I came here to kick something”, an enraged Matos proceeded to kick a judge in the face, spit on the floor and try to pick a fight with pretty much everyone in the room.

                             The judge is the smaller, slower, un-protected gentleman on the right...

 He was disqualified and thrown out of the World Taekwondo Federation. The judge’s head landed somewhere in the shot-put field, where it placed fifth.


The Entire Tunisian Pentathlon Team:

 What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Tunisia?
 If you said “Tattooine in Star Wars” or “where they filmed the crucifixion in Life of Brian” then fair enough, and if you said “the Battle of Carthage” or “the Second Punic War” you’re probably on the wrong website.

                                               Pictured: The Battle of Carthage. Probably.

 What literally nobody has ever said in answer to that question is “excellent pentathletes”, and there’s a reason.
 In 1960, the Tunisian team descended on Rome with dreams of glory and the sporting ability of a late-nineties John Candy.
 In the show jumping, the team committed a minor faux pas when every single member fell off of their horses, earning a record zero points.
 One of the team nearly drowned in the swimming event, although rumours that he was a ringer from Equatorial Guinea went unconfirmed.
 After proving they couldn’t be trusted around domesticated animals or water, rules dictated that the team be given live firearms for the shooting event, which went about as well as you’d expect; one member of the team was disqualified for firing “dangerously close to the judges.”

                                                       Olympic Pentathlon Judges, 1960.


 Worse was to come in the fencing, when the team, who had presumably met on the bus on the way to the games, realised that only one of their number had ever done any fencing before in his life.
 Apparently having swapped their coach for a team of sitcom writers, the pentathletes devised a cunning plan: Make the same guy play every match, and keep his mask on the whole time.
 Judges became suspicious when the Tunisian team fielded a string of fencers who were of identical height, build and style, and quickly saw through the ruse.
 Having combined the near-drowning of Eric the Eel, the “nearly killing a judge” technique of Angel Matos, the forward-planning of Andarin Carvajal and the logic of Jung-Il Byun, the Tunisian team placed dead last, although presumably managed a rousing rendition of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" afterwards.

Batman's Right Wing.

 Alright, god dammit; I get the rare chance to post something as dumb, juvenile and geeky as the inside of my head tends to be, and then I go and have another serious thought.
 So here goes.
 Batman movies might just be construed as fascist propoganda.
 Stick with me here.
 It's already been pointed out that Christopher Nolan's last Bat movie, "The Dark Knight", was an extended allegory for the Bush administration's war on terror.
 In the early scenes, Batman kidnaps a mafia banker from a foreign country, illegally, so that he can be interrogated. It's a veiled comment on the process of rendition.
 Soon after, The Joker appears. A demented anarchist who will never answer to reason, he is memorably described by Michael Caine as a man who "just want[s] to watch the world burn."
 Faced with an implacable, unrelenting and impossible-to-reason-with enemy, Batman and his allies are forced to resort to extreme measures; in the final reel, Batman hacks into the phones of every person in Gotham city and uses them as a vast information pool to locate his quarry.
 Lucius Fox, Batman's secret tech designer, is aghast. "This is wrong, Mr. Wayne," he insists.
 Having finally captured the Joker, Batman gives Fox the key to the entire hacking operation, allowing him to destroy it permanently.
 So, to recap, we have rendition, a dangerous and unpredictable terrorist foe, and draconian measures that invade the civil liberty of the masses in the name of catching the bad guy(s).
 Pretty clear cut, when you think about it.
 And so to the new movie.
 Paid by a corporate fat-cat, the terrifying mercenary Bane is hired to ruin the now-reclusive Bruce Wayne's business empire.
 Playing a long-con, Bane is, in fact, a twisted revolutionary who, through massive plot spoilers, manages to isolate Gotham both politically and physically, and wipe out the police force.
 The populace of his newly-formed city state are now deemed "free," in Bane's eyes, and there promptly follow various show-trials and executions of the city's wealthy elite by an un-governed and angry populace.
 One member of said populace is Anne Hathaway's Catwoman, a Robin Hood master thief who is only robbing from the rich to, as she sees it, redress the balance of wealth and get ahead the only way she can.
 Whilst "The Dark Knight" may not have been overt in its war on terror motif, "The Dark Knight Rises" is pretty clear in its themes; they're topical and very obviously aimed at the Occupy movement.
 They're also scarily reminiscent of Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophies.
 Several times in the movie, a now-retired and reclusive Bruce Wayne is reminded that he should be doing good through philanthropy rather than roundhouse kicks.
 So, the people who should save us are the wealthy industrialists? Society should be succoured by them? The billionaire elite should be looked to for salvation, because they are our superiors?
 Apparently so, because the implication seems to be that Bane, a hulking, freakish mass murderer, is the logical conclusion of the desires of the 99%.
 I find it really, really disturbing that the person who is calling - however crazily - for a reckoning between the downtrodden poor and the wealthy elite is depicted as a monster and a thug. He could quite literally be the poster boy for what the one percent fear about the occupy generation.
 As discussed, there are equally unpleasant ideologies at work in the previous movie.
 Whilst it could be argued that the overall message of "The Dark Knight" was that police-state tactics are never acceptable, actions speak louder than words. Batman and co., for all their chin-stroking, do end up using the morally questionable means in "The Dark Knight."
 Perhaps, then, the message is that potentially dangerous tools should only be entrusted to upstanding, morally good and rational men like Lucius Fox.
 Doesn't matter. Because again, the message that comes across is "draconian methods are okay to use if the threat is really really bad. They're okay to use just this once."
 That's an obviously slippery slope, and the film is making apologies for it.
 "The Dark Knight Rises," meanwhile, seems to be telling us that the poor are inherently violent, and deserve their place in the world because if they weren't held down, they would riot and kill everyone. While Catwoman/Selina Kyle is poor and good hearted, she is still a thief, and the only other people we see doing good during the occupation of Gotham are Lucius Fox (y'know; head of tech for a mega-conglomerate Lucius Fox) and Miranda Tate, who is herself a rich businesswoman.
 The police are also portrayed well, but that just means that the only people who are good in society are the rulers, and the people they arm and pay to keep the peace.
 I'm not sure that's ever been true.
 To recap, again: "The Dark Knight" shows us that it's okay to use over-the-top methods just this once, when threatened, and "The Dark Knight Rises" thinks that the proletariat are a violent menace who shouldn't be trying to tamper with the balance of financial power, because it will only lead to carnage.
 Metaphor is a subtle art, but in the subtext of the last two Bat-movies, the subtext feels broadly right wing. There is dissent from the fascist notions, but it's a minority view that ultimately goes ignored.
 Or maybe I'm just reading too much into films about a man dressed as a rodent in a cape.

 

Who Likes Short Shorts?!

 Children, apparently.

 Anybody who’s seen me out in public - and especially those who have seen me at home - will know that I’m not necessarily very in touch with the whole “fashion” scene.
 Nonetheless, some things are so obvious that even I notice them.
 So lately, I’ve been gratified to notice, tiny little hot pants are in.
 There’s a big part of me that’s really happy about this.
 Alright, it’s not that big a part, but at least I know how to use it.
 That part aside, my brain was starting to worry that the trend was getting a little ridiculous. Somewhere around this tipping point, the kids showed up and pushed it over the edge into the abyss of “downright scary.”
 I don’t know how teenage girls communicate with each other - if pushed, I'd say it’s a mix of giggling and “Twilight” sequels - but somehow, somewhere, all the teenage girls in the land have decided to join in the short-shorts revolution.
 At best it’s confusing and a little uncomfortable. At worst it’s horrifying.
 I have nothing against barely legal girls in very little clothing. A quick scan of my Google history will attest to that.
 But lately, there are girls wearing such tiny, tiny hot pants that I can see most of their buttocks. And this is creepy when the buttocks are attached to someone who doesn't remember the original Playstation.
 Normally, looking at a 16 year old’s ass in public leads to trouble. As a parent, you’d be well within your rights to storm over and ask if I was staring at your underage daughter, before attempting to punch me to death.
 Except that these days, I’d also be well within my rights to respond with “Yes, I was staring at your underage daughter, because she’s got her bum out.”
 In the last few days of people-watching, I’ve had several staunchly un-used opportunities to go over to a schoolgirl and say “Excuse me, I can quite clearly see both your arse cheeks.”
 This would be bad enough, but it’s equally prevalent in girls who aren’t even into double figures yet.
 It’s horrible. I have nothing against women who dress sexily, or even flaunt their bodies, but the key word is women. Some of these girls weren’t born at the time of 9/11 attacks, and they’re wearing outfits that quite literally show me their asses.
 These girls are so young they still think that puberty is a form of liberty given to church seats. I’ve had pubic hair since five years before they were born, and they’re dressing like forty year old hookers around me.
 I shouldn’t ever have to avert my eyes from blatantly accentuated nine-year-old camel toe, because that’s not a thing that should ever exist in the first place.
 (Is there a more diminutive form of camel toe?! Okapi toe? Alpaca Toe? Camel Toe Lights? Feel free to send your suggestions to answers@theworstfuckingquestionanyonehaseverasked.com. Winners will be notified in person, by the police.)
 In six or ten years, there is going to be an entire generation of fathers thinking to themselves “I don’t know why my daughter became a stripper,” to which the answer will be “it’s because of that time you dressed her as a stripper.”
 “That time,” in this instance, will mean “from the age of seven until she was found in a back alley getting ploughed by five sailors for the price of a bottle of Malibu.”
 I’m not, for the record, attempting any form of slut-shaming, here. But when girls I could comfortably have fathered are walking around in daylight wearing something that would force us to call Daisy Duke’s outfit “flowing” and “billowy,” something has clearly gone badly, badly wrong with society.
 Cover up, girls.

These Are Not the Headlines (2)

[Part 1 here]

House Painter Killed in Mafia Revenge Hit
Hoboken, New Jersey

 Local interior decorator Karl Howman was found dead at his home last night in a suspected Mafia hit.
 Allegedly, Mr. Howman had been approached by notorious local Mafioso Jimmy “The Lock” Bloccare, who had met Howman at a party and discreetly asked if he “painted houses.”
 Mr. Howman, who was in fact only at the Mafia party to put up some wallpaper, replied that he was an excellent painter, at which point Bloccare gave him the name and address of a rival mobster.
 Bloccare was then apparently incandescent with rage upon finding out that instead of executing the occupant of the house, Mr. Howman had actually just re-done his living room in a nice shade of lilac and charged him a reasonable price.



Keith Richards Goes On Detox, Experiences Time Travel
London, England

 Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has expressed his shock and confusion after attaining complete sobriety for the first time since 1963.
 A wide-eyed Richards was apparently stunned to learn that he had arrived in the year 2012 with no memory of the intervening five decades, and that “my bloody face looks like varnished gorilla scrotum.”
 Although only initially sobering up “to see what would happen,” Keith was last seen sprinting towards a local Oddbins, followed by a slavering team of drug dogs. “Reality is all a bit baffling,” he was quoted as saying during his brief lucid period, adding with a mystified head-scratch: “Apparently, I’m in some sort of band…”



Chris Martin Fails to Fix People
London, England

 Coldplay front man Chris Martin has drawn criticism recently for his obvious lack of medical skill.
 Despite promising to “try to fix you” to literally millions of listeners, a recent shopping trip ended disastrously when Mr. Martin stood dumbly by whilst a fellow shopper suffered an aortic aneurysm.
 “He just stood there,” complained one eyewitness. “He didn’t even attempt to perform open-heart surgery with a pocket knife or anything! And his kids have stupid fucking names.”
 “We haven’t seen any sign of him yet,” said the equally miffed head of a Filipino leper colony. “We’re not asking for miracles; all we want is our leprosy cured, magically. He hasn’t even tried to try to fix me! And his music is a pile of dreary shite.”
 A spokesman for Mr. Martin refused to comment on his client’s failure to make good on his promises, but did concede that his music is shit and his kids have stupid names.



More Trouble For Embattled Cricketer
Sydney, Australia

 Fortune has once again frowned on Australian cricketer Ed Cowan, as further legal woes crowd the controversial sportsman.
 Having been accused of stealing files on the Obama administration at the behest of top Republicans in the US, the resultant "Cowangate" scandal has seen the cricketer sued for copyright infringement by Cow & Gate, the baby food company.
 The resulting scandal, "Cowan/Cow & Gate-Gate", as the case has now been re-labelled, is already being branded the trial of the century in Australia, where none other than Bill Gates has been called as a star witness because some of his private cows are used to make the baby food, leading some pundits to speculate on the possibility of a Gates' Cow/Cowan/Cow & Gate-Gate in the near future.


Suffixes Go On Strike
New York, New York

 All suffix in the English Language have gone on strike, after that last story.
 Suffix as entity hand in their petition sudden and without warn on Friday to the U.N. Headquart in New York, say they were “sick of all the fuck stupid portmanteau words being invent these days.”
 The story is already trend on Twitt.
 Hyphens and slashes are rumour to be consider join in a sympathy strike, make hyphens a catch-them-while-you-can/get-'em-while-they're-hot commod.

What L. Ron Would Have Wanted...

 The frustrating thing about being given free books is that there's virtually zero chance of them being books that you'd want. As a rule of thumb, if people want something, they exchange money for it, and that tends to have an impact on the quality of free shit.
 One of the sections of society that seems the most heavily involved with the "free book" idea is the section charitably referred to as "religious nutters." I'm sure somewhere I've still got a Bible that some religious nutters gave me in school. I didn't particularly want it, and neither did anyone else, although one enterprising class member did collect as many as he could from the people who were going to throw them out, and then attempt to sell them to churchgoers the following Sunday.
 (That's a true story; Gideons et al should take heed, or at least take the hint about how little we care for our free Bibles. And in case anyone was wondering about the New Testament, it's not very good and he dies at the end.)
 Anyway, this has all come on the tail end of much groaning and hand-wringing because, apparently, Scientologists are going to be giving out free copies of Scientology-related books at the Olympics.
 It would be a stretch to say anybody was aghast, or up in arms. Most peoples' attitude seems to be "Really? Hasn't Scientology as a concept managed to just... fuck off, yet?!"
 Well, off is where it has demonstrably failed to fuck, and so we're left with people being handed copies of "Dianetics: The Modern Science of the Mind" on their way to the stadium.
 And I'm all for it.
 Because I own a copy of Dianetics, and it's fucking awful.
 I'll never forget the elation I felt when I saw a copy for sale, second hand, outside a Maltese pub a few years back. Here was my chance to read this hilarious shitpile, without giving Scientology money!
 I managed, I think, about four pages.
 Putting that in perspective, I've read Moby Dick.
 Moby Dick is like trying to read a phone book in bullet time, but I forced myself to do it. In fairness, the story is pretty good, but it's buried under about 200 extraneous pages of instructions about proper whaling techniques and long passages of the "what Herman Mellville reckons" variety.
 Still, I forced myself to read that fucking thing in an attempt to better myself (it didn't work) and I still couldn't manage more than the first few pages of "Dianetics."
 Unsurprisingly, given that it was written by a delusional con-man with a God complex, it's incredibly patronising. Every* other word has** a footnote*** to explain what it means, in case you're not good with big words. It's a fair assumption, because reading this book usually means you're stupid enough to have bought it in the first place, but there's something uniquely galling about L. Ron Hubbard, a man who once (as I've stressed before) bombed Mexico accidentally, assuming I don't know what "Crepuscule" means.
 By extension, it paints a worrying portrait of Scientologists in general. (Not as bad a portrait as the extortion, kidnapping, stalking and medical negligence they're already known for, but hey...)
 People who thought this book was the work of a visionary genius should probably be left to their little cult, as it's a good way of knowing where they all are. Personally, I wouldn't want to risk some of them escaping into the world and having their minds blown by some better literature, like "See Spot Run" or the back of a tube of hemorrhoid cream. Before we knew it, we'd have myriad new religions springing up, worshiping Spot, Nancy Drew, or Anusol.
 Still, for the rest of us, I'm actually all for a free copy of Dianetics. I think it's a great idea; not only does it cost these idiots money, it will also let everyone know how outright ridiculous their ideas are.
 They'll be out a few million, we'll all have a good laugh, and nobody will be short on toilet paper for a week or two.
 Then maybe we can convince some of their more famous members that it's actually not a big deal to be gay these days...

*Each, individual
**Posesses, is attached to, owns
***One of those little explanatory passages at the bottom of the page

An Important Debate

 I've dealt with heavy themes around here in the past, but I think it's time I really dealt with some of the big issues in the modern world.
 Here goes.
 There's a new Superman trailer out, and he's got a beard in it.
 This is literally bothering me more than any of the world's other problems.
 I'm not the first person to point this out, I won't be the last, but Superman cannot have a beard.
 He can't.
 He'd never be able to shave it.
 This is a man - or, more accurately, a being - who can literally stop a nuclear warhead with his face. [Fun fact: If you Google "Superman nuked" in search of images, it asks if you actually wanted "Superman naked." I did not. Still, take it from me, Superman has been nuked a few times in comic history, and he deals with it pretty well.]
 Bearing in mind that his whole body is able to shrug off nuclear missiles, there's no way you can damage his beard.
 The last Superman film went to great, CGI pains to establish that even his eyeballs are bulletproof.
 The only sensible thing to do to put a stop to this lunacy would be to have it mentioned, somewhere, that people from the planet Krypton don't grow facial hair.
 That would clear this whole issue up nicely.
 But it wouldn't be as fun as my solutions.

 1. Just don't shave.

 This would never work out, because it would blow the whole "secret identity" thing right out of the water.
 It's obvious that people in Metropolis are, charitably, thick as fuck, because they're fooled by a pair of glasses, but it would still be obvious if Superman had a huge, Grizzly Adams beard down to his knees and the only other guy rocking that look was Clark Kent.
 Even if this was somehow explained away, history would interject. Post 9/11, when the Jihadist look was really unpopular, a group of drunk bigots would have attacked the Osama-bearded Mr. Kent and quickly noticed that he was suspiciously immune to things like punches, blunt objects, guns, cannon fire and the like.
 The only way I can see this plan even kind of working is with some sort of elaborate comb-over effect when in one persona or the other.

                                                                         Yeah. This.

[Fun fact: I was initially searching for the above sort of image by trying to find pictures of that old kids' toy which consisted of a bald face, a magnet and some iron filings. Turns out the name of that toy was Woolly Willy, meaning that in the last ten minutes I've added "Superman Naked" and "Woolly Willy" to my search history. I'm probably looking quite interesting to the folks at Google right now.]


2. The Gillette 9000.

 With the fad for adding more and more blades to razors, it's possible that Superman could be using some sort of enormous, washboard-sized appliance to trim his facial hair. He'd have to build it himself, or have one specially made under a pretense, and even then he'd probably wear it out with a single use.
 Even then, it's doubtful. You could hit Superman in the face with a battle axe and he'd barely register it, so any kind of blade literally wouldn't cut it on this job.


3. Dark Side of the Moon.

 Non-geeks might not be aware, but Superman is effectively solar-powered; his whole arsenal of abilities stems from the energy he absorbs from the radiation of Earth's yellow sun. (Planet Krypton had a red sun, which meant he was essentially a normal person there.)
 Theoretically, Superman could be sleeping in a darkened chamber, or shaving on the dark side of the moon, where the lack of light would deplete his power.
 This is also flawed, as he seems to have some sort of "battery" effect. His powers don't instantly vanish as soon as he's out of the light, and presumably he doesn't spend his mornings charging himself up, led out in the sun like a lizard on a rock or Donatella Versace.*
 Therefore it would take several days of hiding in the dark before Superman became de-powered enough to shave, and that means he'd miss work, or not be around to stop whatever calamity is befalling the city of Metropolis this time. Also, he'd have to be in total darkness, as even a chink of sunlight would logically reset the whole process and he'd have to start over. I like to imagine that The Flash or Green Lantern come around and open the curtains just to fuck with him on these days.
 Shaving in the dark would also mean that he'd always be missing a patch here and there, and would end up with a weird, irregular five o'clock shadow.
 He could always leave the solar system, but as Einsteinian physics are still broadly in play, he can't travel at light-speed and thus it would take him several years to reach another star.
 Also, he'd have no way of getting back once his powers were depleted, and being stranded billions of miles away in space seems like a bit of an arse-ache when all you wanted was to trim your beard.


4. Manual Labour.

 Logically, the only thing that can really damage Superman is Superman, or a being of equal power.
 So, he could just pull his own beard off every day.
 This would be both painful and impractical; he'd have to spend hours every morning yanking his own beard out, which would mean he'd invariably turn up to work three hours late and bleeding heavily from the face. Aside from the fact that he'd be fired over his time-keeping, it would become farcically difficult to keep making excuses about why his cheeks and jaw are constantly covered in patches of raw, weeping agony. He'd probably not only lose his job but his apartment, too, as he would spend every morning shrieking and disturbing the neighbours.
 Neighbours who came over to complained would, at least, be treated to the sight of a tearful, pained alien with half his beard pulled off answering the door, but this is little consolation when you're trying to sleep in.


5. Veet?

 Shit, for all I know, that stuff has Kryptonite in it anyway...








*I am so, so fucking sorry for the unprepared who didn't get the reference and clicked that link...

I'm Going to the Movies. Unprotected.

 I'm writing this drunk and on-the-fly, which is sometimes when I do my best work and often when I break off halfway through to take a piss in the kitchen sink, so I have no idea where this is going to end up.
 Nonetheless, I'd like to address (in my very, very limited capacity) the Colorado shooting that happened earlier today at a Batman screening.
 For the three people in the world who aren't aware, some pitiful, dickless loser snapped and launched a Columbine-style attack on a screening of the new Batman movie. He killed fourteen people.
 Although I'm obviously depressed and upset that this sort of thing can happen, and feel awful for the victims and their families, what's really bothering me right now is the response.
 In the (nearly) 24 hours since the shooting, the following things have happened:

 * Police have been stationed at screenings of the film in New York.

 * Advertising for the movie has been pulled.

 * The wearing of costumes has been banned at screenings of the movie in AMC theatres in the states.

 * Director Christopher Nolan has spoken out expressing "profound sorrow" on behalf of everyone involved in making the film.

 To recap: A lone, crazed sociopath has wreaked havoc on an innocent populace, and draconian measures have been used erroneously in response.
 Excuse me for being pedantic, but wasn't that the exact plot of the previous Batman movie?!
 Seriously. Last time around, the Batman franchise spent 152 minutes explaining how we should not stoop to the level of violent, soulless anarchists when presented with their threats.
 Let's gain some perspective: Someone who is deeply fucked up (kinda like the Joker) committed a mass killing (kinda like the Joker) at a Batman movie.
 The previous film went to great, great pains to show how invasion of civil liberties, police-state tactics and mass panic are not the way to respond to arbitrary violence perpetrated by the mentally ill.
 So what happens when life imitates art?! They post armed police in movie theatres.
 I do NOT, incidentally, wish to compare the asshole in Colorado with the Joker. That's already frustratingly prevalent in the press, with one source mentioning that the perpetrator had "dyed red hair like the Joker." Whichever reactionary hack came up with that one was apparently unfamilliar with one of the most iconic fictional characters of our time, but for once around here, that's by-the-by.
 Here's what happened: A mentally ill and cowardly loner committed a terrible crime. Everyone responded by reacting in a way that elevated that crime to something it wasn't.
 It enrages and depresses me in equal measure.
 What should have happened is this: We - as human beings - should feel angry and sad about what happened. The people of Colorado - if not the world - should mourn the dead. The perpetrator should be punished as harshly as possible.
 That's it.
 We shouldn't be behaving as though the actions of one lone crazy person should dictate the movie going habits of the masses. We shouldn't acknowledge that what he did had any effect on the wider world outside of the poor bastards who were shot, and their families and friends.
 This guy isn't the Joker. He's just some sad shut-in who snapped. To treat him like his crimes had larger meaning is to glorify a desperate, petty and senseless act.
 Let's all wear costumes to the movies. Let's all see this film unafraid.
 Because whoever this guy was or is? Reacting to him is what he wants.
 Let's just remember him as some sad, lonely, crazy asshole. Acknowledging him as anything else just gives other sad lonely assholes fuel.
 In the real world - which, let's remember, is where this took place - crazy mass-murderers aren't going to orchestrate extremely complex schemes. We don't have to pick which boat gets blown up in Gotham harbour.
 Even September 11th was a relatively small-scale deal. It only required enough people to hijack three planes.
 I'm hammering the point, but as The Dark Knight already explained, it's not right to react with draconian measures when faced with arbitrary threats. By dictating how people can dress when seeing a comic book movie, or by having the viewers overseen by armed guards, we're essentially hacking the phone network of Gotham.
 Jesus, I hate that this metaphor is so easy.
 My basic point - and the point of the last Batman movie - is this: We should not live in fear of the crazy, murderous outcasts. Because if we do, then they've already won.
 Let's be sad for the victims, light a candle, and go and see a movie in freedom.

Where Are They Now?

 I don't know if it was just my generation, but kids TV was fucking shit.
 When I look at old clips of Bagpuss, or The Clangers, I can see a genuine warmth and charm in them.
 My generation didn't get much of that.
 I think it's largely down to cable TV. With 24-hour kids channels suddenly available, network heads had a lot of space to fill, and stuck on any old shite they could think of.
 Who can forget that thing with the Japanese kid who had the big robot? Or that series with the thing and the stuff in it?
 I can, evidently, and I'm willing to bet the rest of you probably have, as well.
 My personal bugbear was the Super Mario cartoon they used to air on - I think - ITV, in which every episode the evil King Koopa would enslave a world, and Mario and his entourage would arrive and thwart him.
 Then, with the bad guy defeated, Mario would pause to deliver a long speech, at which point the bad guy would sneak off. This was the point where that dozy bitch who was always getting kidnapped would cry "Oh, no! He's escaping into a Warp Zone!" and the whole cycle would begin again. Next episode, Mario and co. would arrive in the next dimension, logically only a few seconds behind Koopa, to find that Koopa had already managed to enslave everyone.
 This "escape into a warp zone" bullshit happened every single fucking episode.
 I'm not an expert in capturing runaway dinosaur overlords (that'd be my cousin, Turok Haines) but it would seem to me that after the second or third time he'd escaped during your soliloquy, you might want to consider tying him up whilst you give a speech. Or just being quiet. Or, fuck it, I don't know, hitting him over the head with a spanner so he can't get up; you are a plumber, after all.
 Anyway, kids programmes weren't overly concerned with quality when I was growing up, is my point. Most of them fell into a sort of beige, mulchy middle ground where they were just sort of "on."
 They weren't quite crappy enough that you'd leave the room and go and play outside, but they weren't diverting enough that anything ever really came of them. They were just something to look at that provided a distraction.
 One of the more popular (by which I mean ubiquitous) examples of this style of programming was "Rugrats", which dealt with the adventures of a group of infants who could talk to each other, but never spoke to adults.
 Imagine my surprise, then, when last night I was trawling through Netflix and found out that Rugrats actually had a follow-up series.
 Entitled "All Grown Up", it looks like this, and I warn you now, if you're my age, this will melt something deep inside your brain:

 Something about that just seems deeply, deeply wrong to me.
 Cartoon filler material should not be aging in real time. These aren't real, living people, and they shouldn't be treated as such. The bland filler on my TV shouldn't be making me think about mortality.
 Cartoon babies shouldn't be getting older, in the same way that nobody likes to be reminded that the Marlboro Man is probably somewhere in an iron lung, right now.
 This is also baffling from an in-universe standpoint. At what stage did the kids actually acknowledge to their parents that they were capable of speech?! Or is this a show about a group of 10-year-olds who are constantly pretending to be mute? Or communicating solely through gurgling noises? Either way, those are probably more entertaining ideas than what's actually being broadcast.
 I did a bit of wikipedia-ing (wikipeding?) on this one, and the show seems both as bland as you'd expect and inbued with that irritating, relentlessly upbeat quality that American kids shows in particular always have. All of the characters are apparently special and gifted, and none of the background characters from Rugrats have died in the interim decade.
 As an antidote to this, and in the spirit of "All Grown Up," I've decided to start making my own sequels to the Kids TV lineup of the mid-nineties, as I remember it...


Doug: The Later Years.

 Terminally bland cartoon creation Doug has hit the glass ceiling in his career as a postal worker and spends most of his evenings lonely, playing the banjo and wishing his dog Porkchop hadn't caught rabies and mauled his family to death.
 He still loves Patti, whom he had a brief relationship with before she ran off with his best friend, Skeeter, saying only "Once you go blue, with white guys you're through."
 Series ends when Doug is arrested, drunk, whilst tearfully trying to burn down a tank top factory.



Sister Sister (And One Lucky Mister)

 Hardcore porn hi-jinks as Tia and Tamera are reduced to debasing themselves sexually for the niche twin-porn market.
 Will Tia's mom Lisa find out about their naughty shenanigans?! No, because Tamera's father Ray shot her years ago for being a nagging bitch, before turning the gun on himself...



Hey Arnold! Stop Gay-Bashing!

 Arnold is all grown up and mad at the gays. After his first (and only) sexual encounter in high school, it turns out Helga, the butch, muscular girl who had feelings for him, was actually a lesbian.
 Breaking off their affair, Helga leaves town to become a welder, devastating Arnold leaving him sexually confused and angry.
 Now in his early twenties, Arnold divides his time between right-wing Christian rallies and late-night truck stops, his life beginning to unravel as he struggles to understand himself. Finally pushed over the edge by his inability to find a hat that fits, Arnold becomes a serial killer, targeting women on the urgings of his invisible friend, a talking cow (played here by Heifer from "Rocko's Modern Life.")


Drugrats: Life Turned Out Shit.

 Tommy Pickles, now in his late twenties, is a dreamer who longs to escape the drudgery of his I.T. career and make something of himself, but who finds solace only in a bottle. His best friend Chuckie is long gone, his inherent fear of the world causing him to spiral into drug addiction and leaving him a crack-addict living in an abandoned building which is about to be demolished by the company owned by Angelica, who is herself now addicted to vicodin and beginning to hallucinate the ghost of her old rival, Susie, who was killed before her music career could take off after her first time using MDMA.
 The twins, Phil and Lil, are the main competition for Tia and Tamera in the niche twin-porn market.


Super Mario: Behind Bars

 Mario is doing fifteen years to life after King Koopa tried to escape during a monologue and Mario, on the advice of an internet hack, beat him to death with a length of pipe, screaming over and over again that he just wanted to go home, he just wanted to go home.
 Unfortunately, Mario got his wish when the mushrooms he'd been taking wore off and he realised he had in fact beaten to death a man in a Barney the Dinosaur costume at an amusement park.

Seventh Heaven?

 Meanwhile, over at the New Statesman...
 ...Helen Lewis has declared war on the number seven.
 Alright, that's a bit harsh. She doesn't have anything against sevens in general. She's not, say, the worst person to play craps with or show a rainbow to; she doesn't hate David Fincher movies or ensemble westerns. She just wants a score of "seven" to be banned from video game reviews, or possibly reviews in general.
 I'm actually on side with this. She's right. A score of 7/10 denotes a sort of ambivalent shrug. "It was alright. Not good, but not bad or mediocre."
 This, Lewis argues, represents a failing - or at least, an inherent laziness - on the part of  reviewers.
 She also makes the accurate point that seven occupies the logical place of five. If something is average, then, according to all known laws of mathematics, it should score a five out of ten. Five is the middle ground.
 However, when something scores 5/10, everyone assumes that's a low score. So a seven is usually substituted.
 So far, I'm in agreement with Helen Lewis on these points, at least superficially.
 Then she goes off the deep end, all the way to eleven.
 She argues that scores, in general, are a bad idea when it comes to reviews.
 Reviews, she believes, should be conducted entirely through words, not through a points system. A reviewer should be able to paint a detailed enough picture of the subject in question that a numerical ranking would become redundant.
 Which is nice, and all, but seems to be asking a lot.
 First and foremost, I think I can speak for a large swathe of the population when I say I'm not reading reviews for their literary content.
 If I wanted to read something with excellent storytelling and deep thematic undertones, I wouldn't start searching for it in "What Car?" anymore than I'd look to see if a product was worth buying in the back pages of "Oliver Twist."
 Lewis seems to argue that scores out of ten (or five, or 100) represent a sort of "dumbing down" of the consumer public, but computer game reviews - her chosen medium - are shaky ground in which to plant the "intellectual improvement" flag. Whilst I profoundly disagree with Roger Ebert, Mark Kermode and other head-in-the-sand film reviewers that games are a worthless medium, I am also more than happy to admit that I often buy or play games just to blow shit up.
 In the same way that I'm not looking for artistic merit in a Call of Duty multiplayer match, I'm also not looking for Shakespeare in the reviews.
 Lewis says that the dumb-down factor in reviews reduces the whole process to a warning for the consumer as to whether the water is hot, cold or lukewarm.
 This isn't a bad thing.
 Personally, if I employed someone to review my water, say, in a bath, I don't need them to compose a haiku every time I'm about to bathe. Being told whether it's hot, cold or lukewarm is actually exactly what I want, and nothing more.
 Unpleasant though it may be for journalists to admit, reviews are essentially part of the marketing machine; they're designed to tell us what to buy. Nobody is going to buy a bad game on the justification that the reviews had strongly developed character arcs, a clear through-line and muscular prose that recalled Cormac McCarthy anymore than they're not going to buy a game they liked the look of because it had nothing but five stars and the phrase "fucking awesome" as the review.
 As I mentioned, I broadly agree with a lot of Helen Lewis' more basic points: The distinction between a 56% score and a 57% score is arbitrary and ridiculous, the whole 7/10 thing is a cop-out, and reviews do need at least some depth.
 But ultimately, the hard truth is this: Nobody is reading reviews as literature.
 We just want to know if something's any good or not before we spend our money.

 Still, here are some video game reviews that don't quantify anything:

Red Dead Redemption:

 Like being given loads of chocolate as a kid by a relative who smells like whiskey, who then drops you and shatters your hip, but it ultimately makes you a champion contortionist.

Dead Rising 2:

 Like losing your virginity in a small car. Especially if you're a necrophiliac.
 

Duke Nukem Forever:

Y'know when you really need the toilet, but then it turns out you didn't as much as you thought you did? That.

Little Big Planet:

 Like rain on a corrugated roof, which you know doesn't leak, and will make interesting patterns in the grass on the hills.

The Movie We Deserve, But Not The One We Need Right Now...

 Here's an interesting - if slightly worrying - fact: Nobody knows how much money a country is actually making.
 I don't want to over-complicate the already labyrinthine financial picture, but the total output of a country, the GDP, is measured by a system devised decades ago.
 The formulas used are fine for measuring, say, tonnes of steel, but weren't designed for the modern world, in which a lot of what we buy and sell is basically intangible.
 I'm sitting here right now, paying for minutes on my phone.
 That's not something that can be measured easily as a product. How much does a minute cost? How much does it cost the next person? And so on.
 This is why any picture of the GDP of a nation is always going to be, ultimately, a conjecture of best-guesses.
 This upswing in the immaterial seems to have found its apex in the gold-standard of modern ethereal currency: Hype.
 We're churning out tonnes of hype, every day. Immigrants toil for a pittance in hype mines, day and night, to find the raw materials that advertising execs can then inject into your eyeballs, just trying to get you to be slightly more excited about the new iPad.
 We're hyping everything. New Samsung Galaxy phone?! It's like getting to third base with Jesus.
 Next-generation consoles?! They'll be so good your brain will rupture and leak out of your ears just from opening the box, and there'll be nobody to clean it up because you'll have already sold your family to acquire the thing in the first place.
 This week's Heat magazine?! So interesting that everyone at CERN has downed tools and started re-training as a paparazzo.
 Everything is over hyped these days, but weirdly, the effects of hype are inversely proportionate. The closer you get to it, the less of an effect it has.
 It's a bit like a magic eye painting; mind blowing if you stand back a bit, but then when you get up close you realise it's just a splodgy, incomprehensible mess.
 Samsung's new phone might be awesome, and there might actually be an interesting story in this week's "Heat" [spoiler: there isn't] but by the time these products actually arrive, we're all so burned out from the jumping up and down and salivating that they always feel a little anticlimactic.
 Take, for example, The Dark Knight Rises.
 It's out on Friday, but everyone I know is still more excited that the sun came out yesterday for thirty nine seconds.
 The story couldn't have been more different six months ago. Everyone was atwitter - and, invariably, on twitter - about the new trailers, the first clips, the leaked information.
 Now it's finally upon us, and I feel like the whole hype machine blew a gasket a few miles back, leaving the Batmobile to limp into the multiplex, being pushed by a dishevelled and exhausted butler.
 I also think this is for the best, because, much as people hate to face the truth, this is the third film in a trilogy, and the third part of a trilogy is always, always crap.

The only person who doesn't look like he's reconsidering his career choices here is Richard Pryor, and that's only because he'd finally found a way to get higher than he already was...

 Okay, so that's hyperbolic.* There are a couple of threequels that were alright. "Die Hard: With a Vengeance" might actually be my favourite entry in the series, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" was brilliantly enjoyable, and "Return of the Jedi", for all the fan-bashing, was still a pretty good movie.
 By and large, however, third movies in a series are terrible. If an original idea is good and the second film expands on that, the third film is usually the point where everything implodes and the franchise disappears up it's own arse. Either that, or it's the point where a series has hit the event horizon of bankability and everyone just stops caring, because whatever they shit out onto the screen, people are going to pay for it.

                                                  I can literally do this all fucking day...

 For the record, I don't think Christopher Nolan is out of ideas with the Batman franchise. As one of the more interesting and creative directors currently working, I'm sure he has big plans for the story.
 I do, however, think there's a very real danger of the story getting weighed down by it's own themes and ideas.
 I'll still see it, don't get me wrong, and it's not like I'm known for my uncanny foresight (I thought Dereck Chisora would beat David Haye, and my house is currently being protected by G4S.) I'm just fully prepared to be disappointed by this movie, and I think everyone else should be, too.
 It goes without saying in the modern world, but don't believe the hype; The Dark Knight Rises might actually be a bit crap.
 I hope I'm wrong.


*See?! Even I'm doing it these days...

An Unstoppable Farce

 In a move that has stunned bookies and pundits alike, British boxing is doing something interesting, tonight.
 I say "British", but it's actually two British fighters using a license obtained in Luxembourg to fight in London to settle an argument started in Germany, but let's not split hairs.
 I'm really in two minds about the fight. I'd genuinely like to see it, except I would never actually give money to do so, as I don't like either fighter. Ultimately, it's Saturday night, and that means I can watch two wankers punch each other unconscious for nothing if I go to Wetherspoons.
 This isn't me being cheap, you understand. David Haye is, to my mind, everything that's wrong with modern boxing.
 Since Lennox Lewis retired in 2004, the heavyweight division has become a fractured, depressing cluster of disparate groups and territories. Fittingly, the people who have ruled it are invariably from Eastern Europe, a fractured, depressing cluster of groups and territories in itself.
 These lumpen ex-Soviet bruisers have dominated heavyweight fighting with all the media savvy and charisma of a roofing tile catalogue.
 Then David Haye, who had amassed an impressive cruiser-weight record, made the step to the big leagues.
 Haye was young, handsome, and full of ego, exactly as Muhammad Ali had been before him.
 Unfortunately, Ali's ego had a solid foundation, as it stemmed from the fact that Ali was one of the greatest boxers of all time.
 David Haye's ego, it soon became clear, was more to do with the fact that he was young and handsome.
 After making a lot of noise about fighting either one of the Klitschko brothers (including turning up at press conferences in a T-shirt depicting the brothers' severed heads), Haye succeeded in winning a belt in an unconvincing - and in my mind politically motivated - points victory over that bloke from Mordor.
 Shortly afterwards, he battered Audley Harrison. This isn't really noteworthy, as Audley Harrison is only a marginally better fighter than the late George Harrison, Rex Harrison, shortest-serving U.S. President William Henry Harrison, or Harrison Bergeron, the blind, deaf, shackled teenager in Kurt Vonnegut's story.
 Finally, Haye secured a fight with reigning champ and high-scoring Scrabble entry Wladimir Klitschko. After twelve draggy 3-minute rounds that somehow seemed to take about an hour and a half, Haye was declared the loser on points and blamed it on a broken toe.
 It's worth noting that foot injuries are a handicap in boxing; a properly delivered punch should involve the whole body, starting with the balls of the feet, and as such a broken toe would be a handicap. Haye's toe, on his right foot, made it harder to throw big right-hand punches.
 That being said, Muhammad Ali once boxed eight rounds with a broken jaw, and he didn't complain. (He might have, actually, but nobody would have understood him.)
 Haye's broken toe was no excuse for a dull, uninspired and skittish performance.
 Haye finally proved that he was a blowhard. Years of trash talk and braggadocio disappeared in one night, as he got the fight he'd been asking for and blew it. He immediately retired, at the age of 30.
 Nobody bought it for a second.
 Haye stayed in the lime-light, or at least close to it. The lemon-light, maybe. He kept making noises, and made sure we didn't forget him, and everyone with even an ounce of foresight could see he was waiting to announce a comeback.
 The opportunity came after his much publicised brawl with Dereck Chisora, in which he appeared at the press conference following Chisora's loss to Vitali Klitschko and basically called him a pussy. Ignoring the fact that both men are black, this was a clear case of the pot calling the kettle a pussy.
 A fight broke out, during which Haye glassed Chisora. He later claimed that he'd reflexively punched him and happened to be holding a glass bottle at the time, which had shattered on impact. This might have been an accident, although the "accident" excuse was less believable when Haye picked up a nearby camera tripod to swing at someone's head.
 Shortly afterwards, Haye anounced that he was coming out of retirement for a grudge match with Chisora.
 It was a spectacularly exploitative play that exactly everyone saw coming.
 So, David Haye is what's wrong with modern boxing. Arrogant, cynical and only in it for the money, he's going into tonight's fight as the bookmaker's favourite, if nobody else's.
 So, Chisora is my horse, right?
 No, because Chisora is what's always been wrong with boxing.
 A sullen, untalented brawler, Chisora disgraced himself on multiple occasions before the Haye brawl, slapping Vitali Klitchsko's face on their first meeting and spitting on his family before the fight.
 He has also been convicted of assaulting an ex-girlfriend.
 There's nothing wrong with bogeymen in boxing; Sonny Liston was seen as sullen and frightening. But Liston was, at heart, a shy and awkward man who, despite his functional illiteracy, made a point of always finding out what unfamiliar words meant when he heard them in conversation, and using them at the next opportunity as a way of bettering himself.
 Max Baer, the giant, snarling villain of the movie "Cinderella Man", who killed a man in the ring, was in reality a jovial, pleasant character who wore a star of David in sympathy with the oppressed Jews of Europe and wept at the bedside of the man he killed, never truly forgiving himself.
 Dereck Chisora, meanwhile, is a cunt. Almost anyone who's ever hit a woman is, but in the case of trained fighters, it's especially low.
 Of course, David Haye is a whore and a cynic, so his entire pre-fight rhetoric has been based on reminding everyone that he's fractionally more palatable than Chisora.
 Overall, this means a win-win situation for me. One of these fucking bell ends is going to get his head stoved in, and I really don't mind which one it is. Ideally, they'll manage a photo-finish knockout like the end of "Rocky 2." If I'm especially lucky, one or both of them will fall out of the ring and crush Chris Moyles to death, but this is probably asking too much.
 Unfortunately, as both men stand to profit from this fight, I'm not going to be able to bring myself to order it on the TV.
 So I'm off to find a pub that's showing it.

 My prediction? Chisora for the win. Violent, unskilled asshole over preening, flashy choker.

 

Public Service Anouncement:

 I'm on hiatus this week as I work on some grinding manual labour, with people who are best described as the salt of the earth. (They're unhealthy and normally found in chip shops.)
 If anyone wants me, I'll either be on a building site, or drinking coffee that tastes like it was made by someone who'd never actually had coffee, but had heard about it from a friend and figured he'd have a go.
 Happy days...

Mail Warns Males of Rampaging Frails

 [Seriously, I need to work on these headlines...]


 Women! Are YOU pregnant?!
 No? You fucking will be if you read this!
 That's right; according to the ever-reliable Daily Mail, smash-hit porn novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" is going to cause a baby boom in nine months, as the clumsy prose and stilted dialogue of E. L. James' humptacular spankathon turns formerly prim housewives into ravening whores, bulldozing their way across the sexual landscape on a tidal wave of horny estrogen!
 Lock up your womenfolk! Ban your daughters from even going NEAR a bookshop! Burn your Kindles before it's too late! Arrgh! AAARRRRGH!!
 ...Or something like that, anyway.
 I don't know where to start with this headline. First of all, the man who is predicting this enormous population spike is Professor Ellis Cashmore, who sounds like he's the protagonist in a ridiculous shag-book to begin with.
 Professor Ellis Cashmore, who I'm forced to assume has steely eyes and a powerful jaw tapering to a dimpled chin, with hair the colour of an approaching storm at sea, apparently doesn't trust women (or men, but, realistically, women) to read books anymore than the prosecutors of the Chatterly Obscenity Trial did. It's too much for their fragile little minds to be able to read about two people fucking without leaping, legs akimbo and mouth afoam, onto the nearest tumescent object they can find.
 "By the very nature of the subject matter I'm sure we can expect to see some couple's revisiting and reigniting ideas that may have lay dormant for some time in the bedroom," he said, handsomely, his warm, velvet tongue crushing the English language into submission like a naughty schoolgirl in need of stern discipline.
 His interviewer, Eileen Overdesks, felt her throat tighten and her heart begin to race at the velvet boom of his voice, which is probably why she lost her grip on her apostrophes, and immediately afterwards, her knickers.
 Seriously, even by the standards of the Daily Mail, a paper so astute and forward thinking that it managed to renounce all of it's ties with Hitler as early as nineteen-thirty-fucking-eight, this is drivel.
 If sales of bad literature were responsible for any sort of real-world consequences, there would be nobody left to read this because we'd all have been murdered by anagrams in the Louvre in 2003.
 In fact, given the propensity of the Mail for bandwagon jumping, racism, reactionary thinking and doom-mongering, why haven't they already called for Stephanie Meyers' head?! Surely, she's almost solely responsible for the number of teenage pregnancies these days?!
 Come to that, Stephanie Meyer is probably responsible for the upsurge in vampire pregnancies, too, and that's going to be far more of an issue as soon as Tesco stops selling that garlic aftershave I've been wearing to bed.
 Which they will, because the demand for all agricultural produce will skyrocket to feed the army of BDSM children that will be spawned in nine months time.
 Repent! Repent! The end is nigh! Buy garlic aftershave while you can! If not to stop the vampire children, at least to keep your missus away from you after she reads a book where someone gets their arse slapped and loses control of her man-eating birth canal!
 ARRRRGH!!

Jack? Shit...

[I've really tried not to go on and on about this, but I think I need to get it out of my system. This is the last I'll say on the subject, I swear.]


 The trailer for the new Jack Reacher movie is out.
 I'm boycotting, and so are a lot of fans. Reacher is a huge, blonde haired, muscular brawler. In the movie, he'll be played by Tom Cruise.
 Lee Child, the author whose work the movie is based on, has been nothing but supportive of Cruise playing his much-loved hero, despite the fact that it's painfully awful casting.
 I can only imagine that it has something to do with the Krusty the Klown defense; y'know, where he screams "It's not my fault! They drove up to my house with a dump truck full of money!"
 Still, it's sticking in my craw, and a lot of other peoples', too. (Is there a specific plural for craws? Someone look that up...)
 Lee Child doesn't need the money. He's already written fifteen best-sellers. He has a rabidly loyal fanbase and plenty of awards. He has, according to his book jackets, a residence in New York and one in the south of France.
 This isn't a guy living on the breadline.
 Simillarly, this isn't a case of Hollywood butchering source material. There are plenty of movies, even recently, that were almost nothing to do with the source material, and ultimately, all the authors can do is shrug. Or, if you're Alan Moore, scream and rant like an incensed hobo.
 Child hasn't done that. He's pretty much fallen over himself to give his blessings as many times as he can, calling Tom Cruise "the best actor of his generation."
 This means, in the eyes of the seemingly intelligent Mr. Child, Tom Cruise is a better actor than, say, Ralph Fiennes ("Schindler's List", "The English Patient") or Danny Huston ("21 Grams," "Children of Men") or Eddie Izzard (equally at home as a surrealist comedian, or a dead-eyed fascist dictator in "Day of the Triffids.")
 Of course, I'm using a narrow definition of "Generation," here. I'm just picking people who were born within 12 months of Cruise.*
 If I were to expand it, say, five years in either direction, we could look at Brad Pitt, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Robert Downey Jr., or Don Cheadle.
 But no, none of those guys compares to the greatest actor of his generation, who is famous for sliding about in his pants and running a lot.
 Maybe I'm being harsh. Lee Child has pointed out that Cruise can play "intense" quite well, and that Jack Reacher is about brains and aggression, not just size. Cruise can embody key aspects of the character, so the rest doesn't matter.
 Alright; by that logic, Steve Coogan does a really good Stallone impression. But nobody's asking Alan Partridge to lead The Expendables.**
 For all his talk, I just can't escape the feeling that Child has sold out.
 He's sold himself out, and that's fine.
 But he's sold the character and the fans out, too.
 Jack Reacher wouldn't be impressed.


COMING SOON - Movies that Lee Child is okay with!

Gone with the Wind
 Spirited and beautiful young heiress Scarlett O'Hara (Bob Hoskins) must struggle with her feelings for the dashing and roguish Rhett Butler (Rick Moranis) against the backdrop of an American South devastated by the war with the slug people of Zivron Seven. (Rated X for a fifteen minute scene of chicken rape.) 

Blood Meridian
 Cormac McCarthy's violent western sees teenage runaway The Kid (Tommy Lee Jones) join with a brutal gang of scalp hunters in 1830s Texas. Over time, The Kid is drawn inexorably closer to the mysterious and terrifying figure of The Judge, a giant albino pederast who seems to be immortal. (Played here by Elmo from Sesame Street.)

Moby Dick
 Crippled by an immense white whale named Moby Dick, the aging madman Captain Ahab (both Olsen twins) swears revenge, gathering a motley crew to scour the oceans for his nemesis. Among them are the savage Polynesian harpooner Queequeg (Danny DeVito) and the traumatised orphan Pip (Grace Jones.)
 Special guest appearance by Stephen Hawking as the voice of Moby Dick!
 



*Also born within 12 months of Cruise? Adam Baldwin, who was my top pick for Reacher.
**Except me. I've just realised I would pay SO MUCH MONEY to see that film.

What's Wrong With a Little Showmanship?

 Why everyone is way less impressed than they should be, today...

 Science, can I talk to you for a minute?
 Yeah, in private. Just put down your microscope and your... whatever the hell else it is you use.
 Science, I've been elected to talk to you by all the other warm, fleshy organisms. The ones that sit and stare at screens all the time and contribute nothing towards you.
 It's not that we don't respect you, science, or even that we don't like you. We do. Really. That whole thing where none of us has smallpox anymore? That's awesome. And A lot of our phones would be far less interesting if we didn't have those cool pictures of stars and constellations as wallpaper. (Not to mention, y'know, having the phone in the first place. Props on that, too.)
 The problem, Science, is that you're just not workin' it, honey. You're not being all you can be.
 Take today, when you found that Higgs Boson. Did you actually find it? It's still not a hundred percent clear, and when it comes to making announcements that affect the future of mankind, "100% clear" is what we should really be aiming for.
 I know you're cautious by nature, Science. Really, it's commendable in most cases. Insistence on accuracy and attention to tiny details is what's got you where you are today.
 But the people who are doing your press just aren't cutting it. "We've made a discovery that's probably the thing we were looking for, or something very much like it," they say. It's not exactly setting the world on fire. (Or is it? I'm not entirely sure what a Higgs Boson is for. From the name, I'm guessing it's something to do with boats.)
 We're not asking that you become populist, as such. I mean, at this stage in history, scientific discoveries are so mind-bendingly complex that it would take several years of study just to understand what we're getting excited about. I'm not going to invest that heavily. I'm still struggling to keep up with "Game of Thrones."
 Still, when it comes to, say, finding concrete proof of the particle that helps explain how everything in the universe works, could you maybe try to be a little more bold? Even, dare I say it, impassioned?
 Otherwise, we're going to stop listening even more than we already have.
 You'll be like the boy who cried "wolf", except of course "wolf" is interesting. The boy who cried "mollusc," maybe. Well, not cried. Wrote it down somewhere. In small letters. When everyone was asleep.
 You're doing awesome stuff, Science, you really are. I just wish you'd shout about it more often to get people excited, instead of being the boy who wrote mollusc in small letters late at night.
 Atta boy.

Cruise's Blues Over Fleeing Flooze.

 Yeah. Like you had a better title...

 I will say one thing: It’s a good week if you hate Tom Cruise.
 Once an infallible, charming superstar, he couldn’t put a foot wrong at the box office, and even seemed to be a genuinely nice guy off camera.
 Then he fired his publicist, whose chief job appeared to be distracting the world from the fact that Tom was a crazy-eyed cult member with ADHD.
 The films started to falter, and with the exception of the creaking Mission: Impossible franchise, he hasn’t had a solid hit in years.
 His next movie is already at the centre of a howling, spittle-drenched fan backlash, and now, as he turns fifty, his wife is leaving, and she’s taking the kid.
 Tom Cruise may have just crossed the event horizon of mockery and fallen into the black hole of pity.
 Katie Holmes, meanwhile, couldn’t have come out of this better if she’d fled Cruise so fast that her slipstream put out a burning orphanage while her nipples sprayed beer.
 The Independent have joined in speculation that Holmes left Cruise due to fears their daughter would be raised a die-hard scientologist, and the writing is on the wall in every corner: “Good for Katie! She’s finally escaped that weirdo!”
 Except of course, that’s ridiculous.
 Because, ignored in all of this knee-jerk scientology bashing is the fact that Katie Holmes was raised a Catholic, and has sent her daughter to a Catholic pre-school, too.
 This means that Tom Cruise - a man who purportedly believes that the evil galactic emperor Xenu filled his soul with dead aliens - is being judged on religion by Katie Holmes, a woman who meets her fellow worshipers once a week to drink blood and eat magic crackers that become the flesh of a dead rabbi when you swallow them.
 I’m not saying scientology is blameless - scientology ruins lives. But, again, so does being abused by a priest who is then protected as a part of a much larger pedophile ring that is hidden for decades by the Church.
 Scientology claims to be able to “cure” homosexuals. Catholicism just advises that we kill them.
 Scientology takes its sacred text from a talentless hack of an author. Catholicism takes its sacred text from a group of third-hand accounts of stories by iron age shepherds.
 Scientology was founded by a man who claimed to be a heroic veteran of World War 2, but who actually only saw “combat” when he accidentally opened fire on Mexico, one time. Catholicism is led by a member of the Hitler Youth.
 I’m not just picking on these two belief systems, either. There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit to throw at any faith, but other faiths aren’t the ones that appear so diametrically opposed in the headlines right now.
 The attitude of “Kate has returned herself and her child to normal thinking” is laughable to an unbeliever. Catholicism is no more “normal” than Scientology, and no less sinister. It just has more of a pedigree.
 Nobody who is a card-carrying member of the “invisible friend in the sky” club should be pointing fingers at anyone else for their weird ideas.
 And when society finally stops listening to reams of ludicrous bullshit, maybe then we can focus on the important points.
 Like fans of bad science fiction brainwashing people into giving their money away in an attempt to prove to each other that they’re not gay.