Idols from the ashes!

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My last post was a tad too acerbic so I have decided on a more upbeat message in this post. This time I will concentrate on those who have persisted and ultimately achieved success.

The starting point for this and countless other similar ideas is a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘There are no second acts in American lives.’ A quick google search shows that everyone uses this quote to start an argument against it. It would seem quite the opposite is true, if I were to describe each example supporting this, this post would very long, very quickly.

The person who’s story first drew my attention to this quote was Steve Jobs. In the days following his death the quote was used relentlessly to describe his eventual ascension back into Apple following his ousting by John Sculley. Of course we all know how this story unfolded, Apple on the brink of collapse, Jobs comes back, everything is peachy again.

Whilst this may have been a ‘second act’ for Apple, Jobs got busy in the interim. He invested in Pixar who made some of the highest grossing computer animated films ever and he also set up Next computers. Legend has it Sir Tim Berners Lee invented the world wide web on a Next machine although he pretty much says he’d have invented it anyway just quicker on a Next machine. Cocky b*st*rd. Anyway the point her is that Jobs never really went away, true he was no longer pulling the strings at the company he founded but he still managed to have his impact felt in other areas. Anyway the Jobs story is probably one of the most discussed in any critique of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote.

So who else? The examples are in abundance. Sean Parker crashed and burned with first incarnation of Napster but went on to play a crucial role in the early years of Facebook.

In the realm of film Clint Eastwood has successfully taken his place on the other side of the camera lens with some of his best work made as a director.

Ronald Reagan had made a name for himself as a B list actor and he ended up with his finger on the button, back in the days when someone could muster a meaningful retaliation.

In music examples are plenty too although you could argue that they stay in music so technically not really a second act. I was a big Nirvana fan in my youth and my reaction to the news that Dave Grohl had formed a band was one of despair and apprehension. The myth surrounding Nirvana was under threat, Kurt Cobain’s death whilst the band was in it’s prime kept the band and it’s image in a virtual stasis, never knowing what might have been or the depths they could plunge. So are the Foo Fighters a second act? Damn right they are, a bloody good one too.

It’s safe to say second acts are fairly plentiful in any area of life at any time. I would however recommend Googling this famous quote as the amount of writing that has started with the quote is quite astonishing. Some have even gone as far as to say it has been one of the stupidest quotes ever. Really? If I’d been responsible for a quote that generated that much discussion, I’d be pretty goddamn proud of it!!

Fallen Idols!

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Whilst I was pottering about looking up things on a previous post, I stumbled upon an picture of Louise Wener circa 1996. You remember her right? The poster girl of the Britpop explosion of the mid to late nineties, I’m almost surprised she wasn’t given a lucrative sponsorship deal with Kleenex. For anyone who’s forgotten, Sleeper weren’t the best of the crop by a long way but with a lead singer that looked this

it was easy to see how they became one of the iconic bands of the scene. All this makes the following image more disturbing

When the hell did she turn into the woman in the 4×4 who cut me up dropping her kids off at school this morning?? For me this has been a rather spectacular fall from grace, not to take anything away from her, she’s an accomplished author now, just not how I imagined she’d end up.

This got me onto the subject of Fallen Idols although calling some of these people ‘Idols’ is perhaps a little generous. My next example is the former Saturday morning game show host and gunge master, Peter Simon. His area of expertise was getting willing kids gooey in the name of fun and then theatrically falling over in the goo himself. Sadly for Simon, the goo based game shows he’d claimed as his own went out of fashion and his work began to dry up.  After a period in the wilderness he has since joined bid.tv,  anyone who has seen him on bid.tv may start thinking all those falls may have been genuine. This clip especially is quite a harrowing display of a man’s descent into madness. Not someone you’d trust your kids with anymore.

The last person I’m going to talk about here is controversially, Osama Bin Laden. True he wasn’t exactly an idol, but his assassination by U.S navy SEAL team 6 and eventual ‘Through the Keyhole’ moments on the news, showed a man who’d effectively put himself under self imposed house arrest. We were led to believe after 9/11 that he was a highly organised James Bond super villain pulling the strings of Islamic based terror. We can only speculate about what he did in the years before his death, I think it’s safe to say he achieved nothing approaching the scale of the 9/11 attacks if anything at all. It is believed he was shot and killed whilst he was unarmed.

So where is this going? Well I think it’s pretty obvious that how we see people can be pretty short lived. People have their defining moments, things they’re remembered for most it’s not necessarily their true calling. Don’t get me wrong I’m not defending Bin Laden for second, I’m just saying his life after 9/11 was not spent organising further attacks building up to a holy war. Likewise perhaps Wener was always the more bookish type and her affair with music was merely a passing interest. As for Peter Simon, well he still falls over…

Oscars 2012 continued!

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So how did I do with my predictions for the Oscars? No real surprises meant that my record was only marginally better than your average man on the street.

Best Motion Picture of the Year – The Artist 

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role – Jean Dujardin

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role – Rooney Mara - This one went to Meryl Streep for her performance in the Iron Lady, I can’t comment much as I watched it for half an hour not seeing a single snippet of anything resembling the Thatcher I was familiar with. Perhaps my initial judgement was *ahem* skewed a little for this one.

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role – Jonah Hill - This went to Christopher Plummer for Beginners, I haven’t seen it so I can’t comment. It was always going to be difficult for a guy who started his career playing supporting characters in slacker comedies  to make the transition to serious acting. I hope he makes it, so long as he doesn’t appear in any adverts for Call of Douche 9.

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role – Bérénice Bejo - This one went to Octavia Spencer for The Help, I haven’t seen that either although looking at Oscar history it’s hard to find a Black actor who’s won in a film where there isn’t a race/biopic theme.

Best Achievement in Directing – Martin Scorsese - I’ll concede this one, the best director was Michel Hazavanicius for the Artist, no complaints there, although Hugo got some token technical awards.

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen – The Artist - This went to Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris. This is another one for my ‘to watch’ list. I initially thought this film was something else…

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published – Moneyball - This one went to The Descendants, not a bad film really given the theme, that said 50/50 does a much better job of being entertaining.

Best Achievement in Cinematography – Hugo – Kerching!

3/9 isn’t the best score especially as the three I did get right were firm favourites to win anyway. That’s it for today, I shall retire to my quarters and contemplate the next post. I’m thinking Fallen Idols.

Oscars 2012

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I’m not going to go through every single category and give a prediction because a) I can’t be bothered and b) I’d have no idea what I’m talking about. For the main categories here are my predictions.

Best Motion Picture of the Year – The Artist

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role – Jean Dujardin

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role – Rooney Mara

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role – Jonah Hill

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role – Bérénice Bejo

Best Achievement in Directing – Martin Scorsese (the Academy compensating here for overlooking his earlier work)

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen – The Artist

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published – Moneyball

Best Achievement in Cinematography – Hugo

I’ll probably get these totally wrong as my favourite films rarely win the big prizes at the Oscars. Without dwelling too much on the past 1994 stands out as a vintage year for film. A few of my favourite films of all time came out that year. The Oscars have generally been an ‘of the moment’ awards, previous big winners then get superseded by films that gather moment and pace more slowly. See any of the Coen Brothers films, Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner. I can see why there weren’t Oscar material at the time, they didn’t really fit.

Anyway these are my predictions for tonight! I’ll be back tomorrow to see how they shaped up!

 

 

What I’ve learned this week…

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So what have I learnt this week? Well we’ve found out that the speed of light really is the maximum speed that anything can achieve. The experiment that showed some neutrinos travelling faster than light speed appears to have been flawed and this has been put down to er…a dodgy cable. From my very basic knowledge of the subject largely based on this http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/relativ/muon.html I’d made my own mind up Einstein was right. The experiment basically shows particles travelling approaching the speed of light and their half lives. There is a difference between how much the static ones decay and how much the travelling ones decay, this basically suggest time dilation dependent on the speed they travel. Anyway the scientific community is yet again put in a position where years of research supporting an idea is brought into question by an over hyped media story contradicting the general consensus (MMR vaccine causing autism anyone??). I just hope that everyone else forgets about it for now and they don’t get caught up trying to prove the faster than light theory wrong.

Perhaps even more shocking than travelling faster than the speed of light is the fact that the word ‘Ewok’ is never actually said in Return of the Jedi. This is true, I’m not sure how well this is known, I imagine it’s quite widely known amongst the hardcore Lucasites. I think I’m fairly proud I don’t fall into that category although I seem to remember doing quite well on Mastermind at Star Wars as a specialist subject, thank god it was the junior version.

Speaking of Star Wars I came across this video that basically says Lucas stole borrowed many ideas for Star Wars from other films. Some are quite obvious however I resent the fact that having a small robot was borrowed from Silent Running which by the way is a brilliant film. I thoroughly recommend it, have the tissues to hand when droid no.3 meets his end. The good doctor Kermode describes it best here. It’s an interesting idea that seems to permeate most human ideas in general. It is well known that Apple didn’t invent any of their flag ship products.

On the subject of reusing ideas (stick with me on this) Rick Santorum seems to be gaining momentum in the Republican primaries. Personally I don’t really think it matters who the Republicans nominate for their candidate they’re going to lose. Who stands a chance against a president who’s turned the economy around, killed Bin Laden and given millions more access to healthcare? Anyway back to Santorum, much of the controversy surrounding him seems nothing new in the realm of Republican politicians. The same questions get asked on religion, abortion and gay rights, there is Bill Hicks sketch for every one of them. Impressive that a guy who died coming up to 18 years ago, can still be funny and relevant today. Anyway the below clips explain a bit more and David Letterman shows us how to make a sincere apology.

Perhaps if we’d listened to him more carefully this may never have happened.

watch?v=ySsbkLVuYOs&feature=player_detailpage

Although if we’re to listen to Rick Santorum’s views on rape we should consider it a gift.

As ever I will be sitting back to enjoy the theatre of the coming months in the run up to the US Presidential election. By comparison to our elections where the best we can hope for is an egging followed by a brief scuffle to keep us interested, the americans have an insatiable to create a circus around their politicians.

 

Strictly Baby Disco…

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Right, so it seems there is a ‘scene’ that involves dressing up young girls in outfits that would be considered over the top for even the Lady Boys of Bangkok (it’s a stage show apparently – I don’t find them attractive just confusing) and then getting them to dance at break neck speed. In typical Channel 4 fashion they have decided to make a documentary about pushy parents and tarted presented in a similar tone to the Hotel . At no point do we hear anyone ask the parents ‘What in lord’s name are you doing?? She’s 9 FFS!!!’ and as such we are led to believe all it’s audience will view this with the same shock and distaste?

As you’d expect from anything involving dancing there’s lots of tears and tantrums and intense training sessions all to be crowned title of Disco Kid. Christ, if I was that age I’d love that title! Sadly I’m not, neither do I enjoy dressing up in leotards and feathers. To progress to the latter stages of ‘Disco Kid’ the girls must do a group dance in the hope to get selected. This involves running round jumping up and down and seemingly bone breaking bends trying to catch the judges attention. The result looks like a cross between gymnastics, Capoeira and stock footage of acid house parties you’d see on the news in the 90s.

Rather like it’s stablemate, Big Fat Gypsy weddings there is plenty of false tan involved and large sums of money spent on outfits, £900 a piece apparenty. Sheesh, my mountain bike didn’t cost that! Well I guess it keeps someone in a rather lucrative job. The parents don’t seem to have any issue parting with money like that and I can’t say any of them seemed especially affluent, well not unless they had rich husbands.

That leads me on to the main point of this. All these parents firmly believe that they are acting in their child’s best interests. To anyone watching most would be thinking ’Yet more parents trying to relive their childhoods through their kids’. If you want to blame the parents then go ahead, at some point though the child involved will have enjoyed this particular hobby and what parent wouldn’t want their child to do what they like? To the outsider it all seems very alien that it’s got as far as it has. When I was a kid I was into dinosaurs big time, I’m sure this probably started off innocently enough with parents getting me a book or something that I enjoyed. Then they would plan further dinosaur related activities (like watching the classic ‘One of our Dinosaurs is Missing’ – back in a time when it was acceptable to impersonate a different race) which would further stoke my interest in the subject resulting in more trips to the history museum, happy times. The people who go to ‘Disco Kid’ are no different, freaky as it seems they are helping their child pursue their passion, whether the kid thinks it or not. Sometimes the parents will lose sight of why they did it originally and that’s why we judge.

There are plenty of other things that these girls could be doing instead of ‘Disco Kid’ and I’m sure everyone would feel more comfortable if they were doing something else. Who knows some of them may even make it as er…dancers? Preferably gymnasts though as that would be a sport they could almost seemlessly transfer to.

One thing that did strike me is that whoever is in charge of documentaries on Channel 4 seems to have fake tan and prepubescent girls in gaudy outfits dancing like pole dancers as requirement. Worrying. My only hope is that anyone buying a ticket to ‘Disco Kid’ gets CRB checked first…

As a final note I found this quite interesting bit of news

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8660356.stm

 

 

Celebrating Lent like a true atheist…

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This year Lent started on the 22nd February, traditionally this has been the time of year those of the Christian faith give something up they hold dear by way of some tribute to Jesus Christ going off into the desert for 40 days.

I think it would be unfair to start looking for holes in that story so I’ll leave it there. Having racked my brain for something worthwhile to give up by way of some experiment, I’ve had the stark realisation that I don’t really have any vices, well none that would require much effort to do without other than the obvious, sleep, oxygen, basic food etc. with that in mind for the duration of Lent I will be doing something I don’t do currently. Surely the whole idea was all about discipline?? I’m already adept at not doing things so surely this works right??

Now I need something to do every day from now until Easter. Has to be challenging or there’s no point, it also can’t be anything anyone else has given up, cigarettes, chocolate,. It could be writing this blog page but I fear it will descend even further into the realms meaningless b*llsh*t than it already has…unsurprisingly this also is not a challenge for me.

So I will end this post here and move on…I may find something to take up for Lent but I do have a job to go to…

Brit Awards 2012

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I don’t remember ever watching Britain’s premier music award ceremony and being very enthusiastic over the nominees and winners (possibly Oasis era??) and this year is no different. I’m sure the talent is there just not to my tastes, or is it?

Awards for the Foo Fighters and Blur, result! Seems odd that after I have seen both bands live, both occasions have resulted in lengthy queues in a car park of two and three hours. The Foo Fighters much the worse, after their epic three hour set we left early to avoid queues assuming we’d seen all the ‘best songs’ only to turn round from a distance and watch Milton Keynes Bowl explode with fireworks and the opening chords of Everlong. My iPhone battery died before we’d got back to the car and I had foolishly relied on it to show me where I’d parked, lets just say Milton Keynes isn’t famed for any landmarks which made for a struggle finding the car.

Blur, Glastonbury 2009, made the silly decision to go home after the last act. Tent was already packed away in the car. Thought we get a head start, headed for the exit saw Phil Daniels on the way out, I should have had a picture taken with him but I imagined he’d have been exhausted from his one song with Blur and thought better of it. To cut a long story short, a weekend of music, camping, Michael Jackson’s death, three hours in the car park and driving down poorly lit country roads aren’t the ideal ingredients for avoiding a fatal accident. I’d have probably been ok with that had I not seen the other band I could have seen on tv the next day.

Slightly sidetracked, back to the awards. Tonight’s awards have been largely uninspiring with few surprises. PJ Harvey provided one of the few stand out moments saying she wrote songs for ‘Let England Shake’ after being emotionally affected by the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s nice to see an agenda that goes beyond promoting clothes you can buy in Top Man. Anyway she didn’t win.

A quick glance on Wikipedia shows notable moments from previous shows, of course everyone remembers Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox and the slapstick Jackson vs Cocker but the most epic incident has to be the KLF in 1992. Apparently they shared their award with Simply Red, I imagine that’s standard reaction to anyone sharing something with Mick Hucknall…

One interesting award that seems to have had a mixed bag of success are the breakthrough artists. They range from truly classic acts (Nirvana, Oasis, Bjork, Arctic Monkeys, Betty Boo) to the thankfully short lived (Mika, Busted, S Club 7, Bros) and the classic one hit wonders of MC Hammer, Tasmin Archer and Lisa Loeb who erm…didn’t ‘stay’ around very long (har har har!). Anyway without the latter’s contribution to the single take music video we may never have had this sickening video of workplace fun, not that I’m bitter or anything.

So what will next years awards hold? Will Adele be knocked off her perch like she did to Duffy? Will the X Factor curl out some more ‘also rans’ more successful than the winners? Could Simon Cowell be given an outstanding contribution award? Good Christ I hope not. I’ll be calling up KLF to hijack the next awards.

My Social Network Stalker….

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Just been watching the rather sad story of Ruth Jeffery who was stalked online by her own boyfriend. In hindsight I guess it’s very easy to spot all the warning signs, the controlling behaviour, insisting on taking lots of pictures and visits to adult chat rooms.

Ok so the girl was young and naive but surely she must have had some friends she could have confided in and they’d have made her see sense? Apparently she was studying Computer Science…I would have thought basic computer forensics may have been studied at one point??

I mean it must be pretty horrific to see nude pictures of oneself after a simple Google search but I personally can’t say I’ve ever Googles naked images of myself, I kind of hope my family and friends haven’t either. I have however Googled my own name with some of best results below….

http://www.markfarrell.com/

http://golf.about.com/od/thebigbreak/p/mark_farrell.htm

http://www.markfarrellmedia.com/index1.html

http://www.wppublicsafety.com/dc-mark-farrell.html

http://www.worldsweeper.com/ParkingContractors/StreetIntro/MoveMunicipalFarrell.html

I think the above are justification enough for this site, there is a certain douche-iness theme in those people and this needs to be redressed.

Anyway back to the program, ok a story about how he took pictures of his flat and then ‘someone’ photoshopped a naked girl into them?? He asked her to make videos, went on adult chat sites a lot and she suspected nothing?

So the dad ends it all when he gets an email and complains to the host and then he does a whois and finds a website registered directly to the boyfriend? *sighs* Such a simple thing that should have been done ages ago would have spared that nice family from all that grief.

The scumbag boyfriend gets 4 months for turning a girl into an emotional wreck, I’m sure he won’t do it again. Cue the astonished reflection from his friends with this little nugget from his best mate.

‘Why stalk the girl you have?’

Yeah I’d probably keep an eye on him too…