Posted in April 2009 …

Apr 27 2009
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Life

Manic May Madness

Busy

This week I am back at university for three final weeks of the second year. This in turn kicks off a manic five weeks of activity on all journalistic and university fronts. Here’s what I’ve got lined up:

27th April-3rd May: Three days of university to carry on with projects that still need to be finished. On two of those days I have uni in the morning before coming straight home and then travelling again to London for not only two gigs but also two band interviews. The Rakes and Doves are the bands in question and they’re my first proper band interviews so I’m going to be prepped to the max.

4th May-10th May: I have a couple of deadlines. My online projects need to be in by the 6th May and my essay, which is so nearly finished that it now hurts to find more words, is due in on the 8th. My gig week looks less frantic but on the 8th I will be going to the Forum to see Beirut and Shearwater.

11th May-17th May: Absolutely soul-crushing but also exciting at the same time. I have a Placebo gig on the 12th, followed by a trip to uni the following day to hand in my remaining pieces of work (my print assignments and dissertation proposal). The day after that I go down to Brighton for four days – the first three covering The Great Escape, which will see me run all over the city to various venues, and the Sunday chilling out with a few friends.

18th May-24th May: My girlfriend’s parents and brother are in town for a week so I’ll be seeing them at some point as well as going to Thorpe Park on the 20th with some uni friends. It’s now yearly tradition to get 2-for-1 vouchers from a retail store and head there.

25th May-1st June: The month ends with my birthday.

Phew! That’s everything.

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Apr 25 2009
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News, Media & Sport

The week of on-air tirades

Chris Moyles

Radio is a funny world. On the one hand there is nothing better in the daytime than listening to some banter on 5 live whilst getting on with work because the tone of the radio relaxes you – providing you’re not listening to George Lamb on 6music – and is in general very peaceful. But recently this week the air has been turned blue by not one but two on-air tirades and were both were related to recent reports made in the press about the person doing the shouting.

Firstly, there was the astonishing eleven minute monologue made by Chris Moyles on his breakfast show earlier in the week. Earlier in the weekend The Sun went to press with a story that the BBC were going to sack Moyles and replace him with Scott Mills because he was younger (albeit by a single month as Moyles pointed out). The entire rant can be read here and it’s still available on the BBC iPlayer for a couple of days (it happened just after 8am on the 20th April) but here’s an excerpt:

Here are the facts – we ain’t going anywhere. We are staying on the show as long as you want us on here and as long as me and Radio 1 are happy doing it. There are no plans to take me off in September or August or November at all. ‘I am too old for the show.’What they are doing according to Gordon is get Scott Mills to come in and fill in until they find a replacement. Scott Mills is one month younger than me. It’s such a stupid, stupid article Gordon. What have you done?

Chris Moyles probably wasn’t necessarily in the wrong to use his show as a platform to defend his position because it is his own show but it did go on and on for a while and about five minutes in you kind of think ‘Well OK Chris I get it now but can you just shut up and play a bloody song?!’

If you want to defend yourself on air, do it like Frank Lampard did on London station LBC yesterday, defending judgmental claims by presenter James O’Brien over reports of him being a bad father:

I find it insulting that you’re telling me you would fight tooth and nail and insinuating that I wouldn’t fight tooth and nail.

Sometimes you should think about things before you speak about them because you are speaking about personal people now. Next time I’ll speak to you man to man, forget the radio show, I’ll speak to you man to man about that.

That is how you defend yourself on radio. I’m not a fan of Frank Lampard to be honest but his response was dignified and he should be applauded for that.

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Apr 24 2009
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News, Media & Sport

The bra that beats bullets

Gun shirt

There are some words in news stories that just spell out in the opening sentence ‘this is going to be a funny/weird/quirky story’like ‘lucky escape’. Today is no exceptions as BBC News tells the story of a bra that fights back against bullets:

A US woman had a lucky escape when a burglar’s bullet bounced off the metal underwire in her bra. Police in the city of Detroit said one of three intruders fired a shot when the woman looked out of her window and saw them raiding the house next door. The bullet smashed the window and hit her, but instead of causing serious injury – or worse – it was deflected off the wiring in her bra. The unnamed 57-year-old woman was taken to hospital and released the same day. “It did slow the bullet down,” said a police spokesman. “She sustained injuries but they’re not life-threatening.”

All news clichés aside that truly is a lucky escape. It made me wonder whether any of my clothes are good in the fight against crime. I suppose if a gunman aimed for my balls, in the event that they are a sick individual, they could misfire and get the metal cover just above the trousers. I swear it would do the job nicely.

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Apr 22 2009
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Life

I’ve been featured by MOG!

Mog Music Network

I got an e-mail this morning from Sonic Dice with something interesting. Apparently, the MOG Music Network had featured the review that I did of the new Art Brut album (brilliantly titled Art Brut Vs. Satan) for Sonic Dice in their newsletter. Considering that the newsletter goes out to a lot of people around the world that is pretty big exposure not just for me personally but for Sonic Dice as a website. I was very humbled but I didn’t know much about MOG so I did some reading up.

Upon investigating I signed up The Musical Chairs to the service as what it essentially is as a form of advertising for independent music blogs. Websites sign up for the service for two reasons – exposure and advertising money (it should be pointed out that at this time I currently have no revenue for The Musical Chairs – it is all out of my own pocket). Here’s a much better description:

MMN’s purpose is to help affiliate sites drive more traffic and generate revenue from advertising. MMN builds online advertising packages that deliver unique benefits over typical ad networks or Google AdSense, including the opportunity to:

— Increase exposure and drive traffic: Headlines and excerpts from MMN affiliates’posts are published via RSS to an audience of millions of music fans across MOG and the entire network, who click through to read full posts. — Increase search engine rankings. — Get access to premier brand advertisers. — Command premium CPMs. — Control the kinds of ads and advertisers displayed. — Set CPM minimums exceeding leading third-party ad sales solutions.

“We’re not just repping ads here,” said David Hyman, MOG’s CEO and founder. “MOG has already built the largest pure music blogging platform. Now we’re opening MOG’s doors and integrating independent music blogs into our platform. They get to find a brand new audience while benefiting from our back end of community and streaming music.”

It’s all very exciting because I’m always looking for ways to promote my site in a way that doesn’t feel contrived or non-beneficial to the reader. I like MMG because not only will it (I hope) bring new readers to the site but also link me up to read other music blogs and websites that are under the radar that I’ve completely missed. I’m always on the lookout for new sites to add to my packed bookmarks and this is a good way to do it in my opinion.

And it’s sunny outside! Yay!

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Apr 21 2009
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Arts & Entertainment

Summer films for 2009

Star Trek

It’s nearly here. Summer is tantalising close for me as I finish uni in about four weeks time. One of the joys of being off for the summer as a student was that you have time to watch all the blockbuster films. Of course, this is only good if you want to watch them and for the last few years there hasn’t been a lot to entice to the cinema on a summer evening. So let’s see what treats there are to look forward to this summer.

Star Trek:

I have been apprehensive about this for a long time. Even though the initial trailers I’ve seen for it have been very promising and exciting I worry that JJ Abrams, who himself confesses not to being a huge Trekkie in his childhood whilst growing up, would mess up the story. However, after the premiere of the film last night the very early press is promising. Digital Spy described it as “funny, moving and fine escapist entertainment.” The original plan from the producers seems to be that the franchise needed a shock to the system like the Batman franchise. I hope it’s a good shock.

Release date: 8th May

Coraline:

It’s a brave gamble by the producers to pit this against the behemoth that is Star Trek but it might just have enough firepower to be stiff competition for the sci-fi franchise. Unlike its rival, it’s also in 3D. The film is based on the novel by Neil Gaiman and has apparently been given rave reviews for the use of its 3D visuals and has been rated by many celebrities on Twitter (that’s what it seems like anyway) so I’m keeping an eye out for this.

Release date: 8th May

Termintor Salvation:

I haven’t been a big fan of the Terminator franchise at all because I quite frankly cannot stand bodybuilder/actor/politician/kindergarten cop Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, the news that Christian Bale is playing the lead role in the film makes it almost like a second chance for me to get into Terminator.

Release date: 3rd June

Public Enemies:

The only Michael Mann I’ve seen is Collateral, which has fine performances from Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, but this cops and robbers story is on my wishlist. The cast list looks very promising providing that Christian Bale doesn’t sound like he has inhaled far too many cigarettes, Johnny Depp isn’t too zany and Marion Coutillard isn’t…anything other than the Mario Coutillard I like very much.

Release date: 3rd July

Up:

I love the Pixar films. I haven’t seen them all as not all of them have been to my taste but the ones I have seen have always made me smile, laugh and come close to tears on the odd occasion. The first two Toy Story films and Wall-E are some of their best work. Up looks set to build on the success of those films. Admittedly, I don’t know too much about it and my first look at it was a brief snippet on Film 2009 the other week but it looks like it’s going to have a great story attached to it. And before you start, it technically is released in British Summer Time, so there.

Release date: 16th October

I think these are the main five really. Any films this summer you’re dying to see?

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