Posted in May 2009 …

May 10 2009
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Arts & Entertainment, Life, News, Media & Sport

A sunday brain dump

Bill Bailey

A collection of thoughts about various things. I may do this more often.

Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide To The Orchestra:

I was looking forward to this having found out about it during yesterday’s Simon Mayo show on 5live. I was a bit disappointed but not surprised that I was. Jokes fell flat a few times, there were a few re-uses of older material (EastEnders theme tune, Doctor Who jazz theme, news themes etc) and I didn’t laugh nearly as much as I have done during previous stand-up shows. Then again, I don’t think that was the overall point. As a ‘guide’it was actually rather entertaining at points and the cowbell playing was to be admired. I was very impressed by that and a few other things.

Premier League:

As you were really. Manchester United win comfortably, Liverpool win comfortably and the rest of the fixtures don’t yield any real shock results. However, the big game is tomorrow when Middlesborough take on Newcastle United. I can’t tell you how much I want Middlesborough to win so that Shearer’s men go down but we’ll have to see. Either way, I’m still sticking with the notion that the teams in the bottom three at the moment will be the ones that go down.

The Great Escape:

On Thursday I received the glorious news that I have been accredited for The Great Escape this coming Thursday. For a person who is maintaining and writing material without any real help, that is some achievement. I’m very happy and I can’t wait to get stuck in on Thursday.

University:

I have one dissertation proposal and one batch of print work to finish off before the end of Wednesday. After this I am free of all uni work until September when I start the third year. It’s super scary that I’ve already gotten to this point in education life and am amazed that I have only one year of it left. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad.

Russell Howard:

He is getting a BBC3 show! Well, a pilot anyway. Apparently it isn’t going to be too dissimilar from what he does on Mock The Week in the sense that it is going to be topical news. He’s been one of my favourite new comedians of late and I hope the new show is a good showcase for his talent. Otherwise it seems like a wasted opportunity.

Books:

I’ve almost finished reading Charlie Brooker’s Dawn Of The Dumb. Compared to his other book, Screen Burn, this has had a lot more chucklesome lines in it though I would have preffered it if it was laid out in actual chronological order as oppossed to one section of TV columns followed by general opinion columns and then TV columns again and so forth. Once that’s done with I am going to start on America: The Book, which is written by the writers of The Daily Show. The bad news is that I can’t carry it on public transport because it’s a big ol’hardback. Dang.

Computer woes:

Strange things are happening. Sometimes my computer will not load at all. It gets to the loadup screen with the teasing green bar at the bottom and either doesn’t stop loading or freezes up once it has stopped. Annoying.

Spotify:

I finally caved in and downloaded it. It ain’t bad and could be useful for The Musical Chairs.

Tomorrow I’m going to catch up on Sonic Dice reviews I think and try and get the majority of it all done before I head down south.

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May 08 2009
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News, Media & Sport

Will social networking eat itself?

LOLbook

Social networking. If anything has become big in terms of mass global success in the later half of this decade it is social networking. Whether you’re trying to de-tag yourself from painfully embarrassing photos from a night out, blogging about your emo woes, or telling the world what you think in 140 characters or less there are now several ways that people can organise their own lives online. The power of these services are certainly similar to that of a great destroyer – websites like Friends Reunited are declining in popularity due to the fact that people could get the same service for free on Facebook rather than having to pay.

But in the last three years something interesting has happened. In 2007, a year after the entire world went crazy for MySpace, Facebook was starting to make waves with the status updates, cleaner interface and much more in the way of actual networking. As a result, MySpace had to react and they instead copied everything that made Facebook really good. Facebook was on a roll until early this year when Twitter exploded thanks to a certain Stephen Fry and recently Facebook had to retaliate to keep people using it. How? By copying Twitter entirely. Soon, MySpace will copy those features that are now to be found on Facebook. Basically, social networks have become a chain where once something new and exciting pops up, the old services that were once the same thing will copy them.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that social networking is eating itself. It’s difficult to predict the future in the world of technology where every second will see something new develop. However, one can’t help but imagine what new social networking trend will emerge next and, perhaps more importantly, how other social networking services will try to make the most of it. There is a great skit on the brilliant The Day Today where they run through fake TV listings and mention an off-the-wall documentary that follows a family in their daily lives via cameras inserted right into the face of each family member. I think someday in the near future we will have that reality and what’s more, in keeping with the Web 2.0 theme, it will be a social networking site. Think YouTube but live streamed – just think of the number of things you could sneakily watch! If someone is reading this and wants to make it work, get in touch so that we can talk about finance…

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May 06 2009
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Arts & Entertainment

Is Anybody There?

Caine and Milner

A couple of weeks ago I posted a list of films I wanted to see this summer if I could. A few hours after posting that list I was pretty sure I was missing something off of that list but it wasn’t until a few days later when I saw a link to a Michael Caine interview that I realised I had missed one out  – Is Anybody There? The film stars Caine himself, a child actor called Bill Milner (who also appeared in the much acclaimed Son Of Rambow) and David Morrissey. Here’s a summary of the plot courtesy of IMDB:

Set in 1980s seaside England, this is the story of Edward, an unusual ten year old boy growing up in an old people’s home run by his parents. Whilst his mother struggles to keep the family business afloat, and his father copes with the onset of mid-life crisis, Edward is busy tape-recording the elderly residents to try and discover what happens when they die. Increasingly obsessed with ghosts and the afterlife, Edward’s is a rather lonely existence until he meets Clarence, the latest recruit to the home, a retired magician with a liberating streak of anarchy. Is There Anybody There? tells the surprising, touching story of this odd couple – a boy and an old man – facing life together, with Edward learning to live in the moment and Clarence coming to terms with the past.

I have grown to love Michael Caine as an actor and in the trailers I’ve seen it looks like his performance is a brilliant one. If I have a chance to go to the cinema, I will definitely try to catch this.

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May 05 2009
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News, Media & Sport

Sorry Evening Standard but your advert won’t work

Sorry

Newspaper adverts tend to fall into one of two categories. They are the ones that make no sense whatsoever and the horrible cringeworthy ones that The Daily Mail or The Daily Express show on TV when they have something to give away with their paper. I’ve never seen anything like this though. Roy Greenslade from The Guardian explains the new strategy unveiled by the Evening Standard:

The London Evening Standard today launches one of the most daring of publicity campaigns by apologising to Londoners for its previous behaviour. Buses and tubes will carry a series of messages throughout the week that begin with the word “sorry.” The first says “Sorry for losing touch”. Subsequent slogans say sorry for being negative, for taking you for granted, for being complacent and for being predictable. The ad posters, some of which will also appear on hoardings, do not mention the Standard by name but carry its Eros logo instead. It’s the first stage in a three-week publicity blitz that will also see the Standard relaunched on May 11, though details of what that will involve are not yet clear [full disclosure: I write a weekly media column for the Standard].

This new campaign came about after market research discovered the Evening Standard to be very negative. Geordie Greig, the editor of the London paper, is addressing these problems head on it seems and apologising for their mistakes. It is certainly set to be a massive talking point but only because of the nature of the advert. There’s just one real problem though…

It won’t work. The free newspapers like the London Lite, The London Paper and the Metro have single-handedly wiped out some of the revenue of the Evening Standard and they are now struggling badly. Why would you pay 50p for a newspaper, which has featured some absolutely ghastly articles in the past few months and years, over getting a free newspaper? If you look at what papers people read on the Underground now, it ain’t the Evening Standard or any other proper newspaper but a free read.

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May 04 2009
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News, Media & Sport

The woes of Newcastle United

Alan Shearer

Oh my days. What on earth ever happened to Newcastle United. Earlier on in this decade they were contenders for a place in the UEFA Champions’League under the reign of Sir Bobby Robson. Now they are a joke that isn’t funny anymore. Yesterday they got predictably beaten comprehensively by title challengers Liverpool and given their upcoming fixtures I can’t see them surviving. Whatever their fate will be, it’ll be a dramatic end to a season that has seen the club been like some sort of crazy reality TV show with twists that never made sense in the first place.

It started with Kevin Keegan in August who managed a few games before resigning from the club over reported feuds with Mike Ashley, the owner of Newcastle United. In came Joe Kinnear, who wasn’t the saviour that Ashley thought he would be, and in a brief spell that was unfortunately ruined by medical problems he managed to find time at the start to distance himself and the media by shouting swear words at them during a press conference. The biggest twist came a month ago when Alan Shearer was announced to take charge for the rest of the season despite having no managerial experience. Sadly, his novice-like tendencies have showed and he still hasn’t guided the time to a win yet in his short spell.

I know I’m not the only one who thinks this but I will be so glad once Newcastle United are out of the Premier League. They deserve to as their performances for the most part have been utterly woeful. I bet Michael Owen was wishing he stayed at Real Madrid.

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