Thursday 30 November 2006

When is it Time to Walk Away?

John August has some good advice for writers who are beginning to think that the project they've got involved with is nuts and it might be time to walk away.

More From Stanhope on Michael Richards

Normally I just update all the day's Michael Richards news and views into the original post. I thought I'd chuck this one into a separate post.

Doug Stanhope has more to say on the subject, or the media furore about it at least. Again, he has a fair point and nothing that Fraser for one hasn't said in the comments.

"Jesse Jackson - and if you are black and don't consider him or any other human being to be your leader or spokesman, please be vocal about it - is on CNN to discuss Michael Richards outburst as though it were as significant as MLK's assassination on the same day that a 92 year-old black woman was murdered by police in a drug raid and an unarmed black man was killed by police on his wedding day."


I should say though, scroll down for it. Stanhope has developed some sort of serious problem with his penis, and if you don't want to read about it or see diagrams, scroll down quick.

"I'm Going to Kill You, and I'll do the Time"

It will never end. Here is the latest on Michael Richards.

Sam Simon is one of the producers on The Simpsons. He alleges in this interview with Howard Stern that Michael Richards is the "angriest," "craziest," and "worst" star in the business.

Don’t worry Michael, you have another celebrity defending you. It’s Mel Gibson. “My heart went out to the guy.”

Earl Ofari Hutchinson in The Huffington Post attempts to get Richards to take part in a roundtable discussion with black community leaders, residents, and activists

Some good news. According to this article sales of Seinfeld season 7 in Britain are up by almost 7,000 per cent in Britain and 75 per cent in America.

Gothamist reports that Tom's Restaurant, the establishment that doubled for 'Monk's' in Seinfeld, is keeping up its poster of Kramer.

Wednesday 29 November 2006

Can That Place Do Nothing Right?

When I went into the nearby cafe this lunchtime I initially walked back out because I didn't fancy my lunch cooked by a spotty youth wearing a Celtic top with his nickname on the back.

Faced with only the office snack machine as my lunch choice I went back down to the cafe and chose a sandwich.

It was only halfway through eating it when I noticed it was half white and half brown bread.

They cocked up fish and chips, they've cocked up burgers, they've cocked up pasta, they've cocked up bacon rolls, they've cocked up rolls and sausage, they've even cocked up toast. Now they've cocked up a simple sandwich. I think I should make more effort to make my own lunch in future.

A Fool Too Far

I love Only Fools and Horses. For my money it’s the best British sitcom ever made. The scripts, characters and acting were all top drawer. Situations, one-liners, pratfalls, the show had every type of gag imaginable over the course of its run.

From its debut in 1981 to when Del and Rodney became millionaires in 1996 it had maybe only one or two weak episodes. And even they still had more laughs in them than the majority of the UK’s current crop of sitcoms.

Then a few years back they returned to our screens in a Christmas special, which was followed up by another then another. They were nowhere near as good as the show’s glory days. In fact by the very final episode I think they had slightly tainted a great show.

John Sullivan is perhaps Britain’s most talented solo sitcom writer. Practically ever other great show I can think of has been written by duos. Clement and Le Frenais, Galton and Simpson, Croft and Perry, Linehan and Matthews. The last thing that Sullivan had on our screens was The Green Green Grass, a Fools and Horses spin-off where Boycie and Marlene go to live in the country.

This is surely one step too far. He’s now planning a Fools and Horses prequel. As much as I could see the potential in that and I’m sure it could have some funny moments, I hate the idea of John Sullivan becoming UK TV’s George Lucas, peddling one good idea for 30 years.

I think a prequel would have been great years ago, for a Christmas special, but now I just wish he would move on and give us something fresh and new. Quite rightly the BBC will jump at whatever he turns in, I just wish it wasn’t a re-hash of his best idea.

It's Your Money or Your Career, Kramer

The Michael Richards debate rolls on.

His publicist has now been forced to offer a garbled explanation of why the Catholic Freemason Michael Richards can consider himself Jewish.

“Technically, not having been born by blood as Jewish and not formally going into a conversion, it was purely his interpretation of having adopted Judaism as his religion."


In the New York Observer, founder of the ‘Can’t Stand Seinfeld Society’, Ron Rosenbaum offers five theories on Michael Richards.

At Counterpunch, Richards has now been lumped in with the New York cops who shot dead a black man at the weekend. Karen Finley in the Huffington Post does the same thing.

On Court TV lawyer Gloria Allred’s daughter, Lisa Bloom, discusses the merits of her mother’s possible case against Richards and comes to the conclusion that racism is nothing a little bit of Seinfeld cash can’t sort out.

“A jury of Doss and McBride's peers might have acquitted them had they lashed out in violence after such vile provocation. Instead, they took the nonviolent high road and consulted an attorney.”


Ken Levine enters the Richards debate, though his post is more about how improv is ruining comedy.

As for an update on Mo’nique’s career, she’s still been in fuck all since Mo’nique’s F.A.T. Chance where aspiring plus size models attempt to lose weight.

WWE stars JTG and Shad Gaspard (aka Cryme Tyme) ‘kicked the crap’ out of a Michael Richards lookalike to show their displeasure with the situation.

One of the stars of Chappelle’s Show, Paul Mooney, has also called for a ban on ‘the N word’, claiming that Michael Richards has ‘cured him from it’.

”We’re gonna stop using the “N” word,” said Mooney during a recent broadcast on CNN. “I’m not gonna use it again and I’m not gonna use the “B” word. Just say no to the “N” word, we want all human beings throughout the world to stop using the “N” word.”


Fraser and I were talking about this as a sketch only this morning, but it appears that National Lampoon have gone and done it. Here is their Lost Seinfeld Episode.

New Neck

One Neck’s site has undergone a major overhaul, with lots of new illustrations, a bio and odds and ends.

Tommy appears to have been working on it for several months (or at least has given it as an excuse for not doing anything else for several months) and now that work has borne fruit.

So go check out the Neck and let him know what you think of his artwork.

5/4 Time

So, who knew what math rock was? Not me. I learned last night when I went to see Don Caballero at ABC2. Completely instrumental, it’s not usually my kind of thing, but I did enjoy them. They were more melodic than perhaps I was expecting.

Of course we were stood beside the gig bam who frequently shouted things like “Fuck off and play”, “This is Glasgow, cunts” and “Gettyfuck”. He was quite annoying.

Tuesday 28 November 2006

Clint Flicker

Here's an interesting (if you're into comics) thing about the lettering of dialogue balloons.

No Seinfeld For You!

Here’s your latest fix of Michael Richards news.

Jesse Jackson has called for a boycott of Seinfeld Season 7. Sorry Jesse, my Christmas will be spent watching George squirm out of his relationship with Susan, Jerry mug an old woman for a marble rye and The Soup Nazi denying George soup.(Incidentally I titled this post before I noticed the headline in that article.)

Michael Richards and Jesse Jackson both feel ‘the N word’ should be banned and Richards’ publicist confirms that he has sought psychiatric help.

Robin Williams is the latest comedian to defend Kramer the daft racist.

The Laugh Factory are insisting that Richards pays up $6 million to charity. That seems like a cheap PR exercise by the club to me. You wouldn't pay that much money if you were convicted in a civil trial for murdering a black man, far less insulting one.

Actress and comedian Monique is on a complete Michael Richards boycott.

Monday 27 November 2006

The Best TV Show You've Never Seen

Through the wonder of the World Wide Web I have just finished watching season 4 of The Wire. I think Fraser did a post a while ago about how good the season was, but I’m going to add my tuppence worth.

I think the fact that I watched this season in 3 and 4 hour blocks tells you everything you need to know about how addictive it is. I’ve said it before, but here it comes again, this is easily one of the best shows ever to have been on television. I’ve even went for a hyperbolic NME style headline to convey my opinion.

This has more character development in one episode than a full series of any British drama you could care to mention. Characters have grown over the course of the 4 seasons like none I have ever seen in any other drama, and I include my other favourites shows The Sopranos, The Shield and The West Wing in that.

For example the fuck-up of series one is a total star in season 4, having found his niche and worked his heart out for it.

The show’s subtle and clever, having many important scenes play out without dialogue or having one line sum up what other shows would have taken a scene to do.

It’s also not afraid to be hard hitting, having shocking endings for some of the characters we’ve ridden along with for so long.

In the first season it was about the cops and the gangsters on the street. By season 4 the net has widened to include politicians and local government, the police hierarchy, the schools, social services, drug suppliers, dealers and users as well as parents and reformed gangsters and retired cops.

You wouldn’t think that they could do justice to so many characters, so many different plotlines, so many different personalities, but they so can.

If you haven’t before now get started on watching The Wire.

Some More Scraps of Michael Richards News

In the wake of the Michael Richards debacle some American comics discuss nights when they’ve been heckled. John Caponera tells of the time he bombed when opening for Night Ranger.

Thug Life Army says that, “Michael Richards can never be my ‘nigga’ no matter what Jessie says.”

In the Huffington Post RJ Eskow tells Richards to stop apologising, less he lose a lucrative gig as a CNN right-wing racist correspondent.

I’m Giving This Post 110%

In our day job, as most of you know, we get to tart up the language and phrasing salespeople scribble down on behalf of customers. This means we are faced with phrases such as “What makes our business stand out from the competition is that we are not cowboys.”

Or

“We do the job to completion” as if not fucking off in the middle of the work is a selling point.

We also get a lot of people saying that they “Give 110%” or occasionally “120%”. I think that’s been the highest percentage giving I’ve seen.

Anyway, Limmy started an amusing thread about the subject of “110%” over at his blog. Some of the comments are pretty funny.

Dave Cockrum 1943 - 2006


Comic book legend Dave Cockrum has died today, following complications arising from diabetes.

Although responsible for a veritable mountain of work in the 60s and 70s including groundbreaking work on DC’s “Legion of Superheroes”, he will principally be remembered for co-creating the “new” X Men, a hugely successful series of characters designed to re-vamp the original roster in the then ailing title.

Among his co-creations (with Len Wien) were Storm, Colossus and Nightcrawler.

He collaborated on several X Men issues with writer Chris Claremont, doing the groundwork for the classic X Men run by Claremont and John Byrne that would cement the success of the comic.

Typically, Marvel failed to compensate Cockrum for his massive contribution to their success until shortly before his death.

He will be sadly missed by all those who enjoyed his work.

From the creator of Fake Dilberts...

I still plan to stick up some more of those Dilberts I faked, but at the moment frankly can’t be bothered.

Have this mash up of the very first Charlie Brown strip instead.

The Hot Puppies and Hey Willpower

In my guise as sometime live gig reviewer for The Skinny, I was at King Tuts last night to see The Hot Puppies. What I expected from the two support acts, was your standard local bands and a packed room that then empties before the main act, when the crowd, there to see their pals, leave.

The first support, Racingreen, fitted this bill. Local act who were all right, if nothing special. The main support though was unexpected.

Hey Willpower are a dance act from San Francisco. When they started off with some choreographed dance moves I knew they’d be worth watching. Even although the singer was clearly miming through most of the songs they were highly entertaining.

I couldn’t help but feel however, that they would be more suited to an appearance at a gay club than supporting a Welsh indie-rock band. They invited the audience onto the stage to dance with them for one number and got no shortage of takers.

There was really nothing to do but enjoy them, their energy and the fact that they were obviously having a good time was just infectious. And it helped that the songs were for the most part quite good too.

Their set closer ‘Everybody Get on the Floor’ has hit single stamped all over. After they finished, folk from the crowd came up to hug them and get them to sign CDs. And no, they weren’t taking the piss.

As for The Hot Puppies, they were as good a rock band as I’ve seen this year. They have cracking songs, a great stage presence and a charismatic singer. That’s about all you need really. I’ll let you know if and when my glowing 150 word review appears in the magazine.

There are more photographs than are strictly necessary of both bands, over at my Flickr site.

Bus Bams

A couple of classic bams on the buses home from work on Friday night.

The number 40 certainly is in the running for the most bamtastic bus in the city and it served up a right heed-the-baw on Friday.

A lad and his young lady got on along Maryhill Road. Already wound up, by a guy in the pub ‘staring at the burd’ it was pretty clear that it wouldn’t take much to get him started.

And start he did, on a couple up the back, claiming that the girl had been talking big about some ‘kid-on hardman’ that he knew. Of course she hadn’t, and she attempted to explain this to him, in her Kelvinside accent.

Our bam preferred to treat this as a Maryhill-Parkhead dispute. They were from Maryhill he insisted and Parkhead boys could fight like fuck and would sort them out. He even went through the motions of taking his jacket off as his skanky ladyfriend held him back while also mouthing off at the couple.

It thankfully came to nothing as they got off a bit further up Maryhill Road. As Fraser pointed out though, someone was getting off him that night, most likely the bird.

On the bus from town back home there was a far more entertaining bam. The driver. From his accent he was obviously a Scouser. He attempted to rip the pish out of every second passenger.

He started off by dishing our general cheek to folk, about how many stops they intended travelling or how slowly he felt they were getting on the bus.

A young lad approached the driver clutching two tickets for Pink. Obviously heading for the SECC, he attempted to ask our boy where to get off.

“I don’t read Chinese mate.”

At the stop before the SECC, the driver gets out his carriage.

“Where are those boys for the Sec? Right get off here. You see that roundabout? Yeah? Okay, now walk round it three times. No mate. No mate. I’m joking.”

Every time he passed a girl he tooted his horn. However he was prepared to go further than that. “You’re not getting off now love are you?” he asked of one female passenger. “Cos I was going to ask you out.” He then printed out a ticket. “Stick yer number on that.” Amazingly she did.

“Have you been drinking?” he asked of one girl as she got off.

“Naw. But I think you have,” was her, probably quite accurate, reply.

“I’m only going to Partick station,” he told a bunch of women as they got on, when in fact the bus was destined for Drumchapel.

“Aw right,” they said as they got off the bus.

“I’m only jokin’ yer!”

Across the road from Kelvingrove, folk get on the bus, another guy asks, “What number are you?”

“61 mate.”

Except he wasn’t. It was a 9.

Instead of putting on the brakes at each red light, he chose to slow down, while activating whatever system they have for rocking the bus up and down.

“If you’re gonnie dae that, at least pit some music on,” shouted one of the women who had almost been duped by his Partick ploy.

“No bother,” said the driver as we were treated to a dance tune at full bung. “I’ve got some dirty ones as well. A bit early for that though.”

He made for a lot more entertainment that the nutter on the 40 that’s for sure.

Apologies, Reparations and the Michael Richards Thing


Good post by Doug Stanhope about the Michael Richards affair, talking about something we’ve discussed – the fact that Richards isn’t a comedian and tried to pull off something he simply wasn’t capable of.

He also made a few good points about the ridiculous “power” of the word nigger. He is quite right to say that anyone who believes one particular word is somehow “worse” than any other is, as he puts it, an idiot.

Black people in America have been sold a bill of goods on “the n word”. Living in a country where the only thing going into black communities are drugs and army recruitment officers, black people have been denied an equal stake in society and have instead been palmed off with the “magic beans” of a taboo word no-one can call them.

It’s ironic that the people Richards abused are now seeking financial remuneration for the incident. They do so of course because they are nothing more than callow opportunists, seeking to profit from the oppression borne by their forefathers.

But money and lots of it should be exactly what the black community in America are demanding. Not in some reparatory gesture of apology or guilt but simply as a matter of common sense, decency and necessity. It is imperative to America’s very survival that the endemic practice of simply writing off generations of people to poverty, crime and drug abuse are ended sooner rather than later. Otherwise, the cancer of the ghetto will eventually destroy the whole nation.

We have our own race debate here of course, with the bi-centenary of the abolition of slavery coming up next year.

There have been faint stirrings of discontent following the Prime Minister’s “expression of deep regret” regarding the slave trade with some calling for a formal apology.

Really, what’s the point? Weak point-scoring by the loony left it may be, but it’s a perfect illustration of the calibre of politician we have at our disposal these days, people concerned more with posturing than delivering genuine improvement in peoples lives.

Besides, surely asking someone to apologise for something they are not responsible for simply because they are the same colour as those who centuries before enslaved black people is in itself racist.

You’d think the abolition commemorations would be an issue we could all get on board with and plan a meaningful, united and reflective series of events around.

The bi-centennial should be a measure of how far we have come and a time to discuss what remains to be done, not grist for political opportunists.

Of course the Government can’t apologise for a historical wrong, otherwise they’d never have time to do anything. They’d be too busy apologising for those who died securing the right to vote, to women, for continuing to deny that right until 1918, for setting the police on the working classes in the 80’s, for the poll tax and for prosecuting a hugely expensive, un-winnable racist war in the Middle East.

Hmm. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all…

Sunday 26 November 2006

Richards on Jesse Jackson Show

Still creating great column inches for everyone in America (and posts for me), Michael Richards has appeared on Jesse Jackson's radio programme.

"That's why I'm shattered by it. The way this came through me was like a freight train. After it was over, when I went to look for them, they had gone. And I've tried to meet them, to talk to them, to get some healing."

Saturday 25 November 2006

Stanhope's Take on Richards Racism Row

No Michael Richards stuff for a couple of days, you must be worried. Here is Doug Stanhope's take on the subject. As you may imagine Doug defends him, and gives the most intelligent defence of him I've read yet. In fact it's probably the most intelligent assesment of the incident I've read yet. Oh and he also hates him.

The guys involved want a personal apology.

Bob Parks has quite a good, humorous look at the fiasco on Mens' News Daily.

"Gimme a break. Those men could have walked out any time they wanted, but as insulting as it was, they were involved in that train wreck everyone wanted to watch. It’s not like this traumatic experience was the first time those men ever heard the word directed at them. For Gloria Allred to act like it was and demand a monetary payoff is shameless."


Kenny Kramer is finding his phone ringing off the hook.

Tom Green is another to defend Richards.

Friday 24 November 2006

The Re-Addiction of Fizzy


One of the most irritating things about getting back into comics after about 10 years is the plethora of cool stuff I’ve missed. It’s costing me a fortune to catch up.

Thankfully, there are torrents available on most popular comics so I’ve been able to catch up with a few long running titles I otherwise would never have read.

The availability of these torrents for me at least give the lie to the notion that copyright “piracy” for want of a better expression kills the medium it shares with other users.

I have spent a significant amount of cash recently on titles I would never have bought had it not been for the availability of early issues on the net.

In many ways, comics are the ideal medium for internet sharing. Small and easy to download, comics are also hard to track down if they’ve been out for a while.

A factor that puts people off comics is that fact that when they come to the medium, they feel they’ve missed too much to just dive into most titles – they’ve missed the beginning of the story.

This is a fact acknowledged by Marvel, who deliberately “re-launched” a number of heroes, (most successfully Spiderman) in the “Ultimate” series, a title specifically designed for more casual comic readers. The idea is you can pick any issue up and you won’t have missed too much.

But most titles really have to be read from the beginning, so it’s either expensive trade paperback collections or the even more expensive practice of collecting back issues.

Well, not anymore. I’m sure the availability of comics online is of concern especially to the larger publishers, but as I’ve said about TV in the past, it’s as much an opportunity as it is a problem.

Most of the people in comics who are any good are also fairly prolific. One of the busiest over the last 10 years has been 30 year old writer Brian K. Vaughan.

A film school graduate, Vaughan manages to do all the things that are difficult to pull off effectively in comics extremely well.

Vaughan has exposed the myth that there is nowhere left to go in super-hero comics and has created three best selling titles with simple yet ingenious high concept premises which illustrate this perfectly.

“Ex Machina” asks the question: “What if a superhero felt he could do more good as a politician?”

“Runaways” asks: “What if a bunch of teenagers found out that their parents were an evil cabal of super-villains?”

And “Y: The Last Man” asks: “What if you really were the last man on earth?”

All these fun ideas could still be shit as comics of course, but Vaughan is also an adept and witty writer of dialogue and has been blessed with the rare skill of being able to genuinely develop individual characters in the pacy manner the limited pallet of the 24 page regular comic book demands.

I haven’t read many comics books where all the bases have been covered quite so well.

Media icon Joss Whedon agrees with me there and is set to take over writing duties on “Runaways” in the near future after his successful stint on his own X title, “Astonishing X Men”.

I’ve also just finished reading an impressive run of “Powers” by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming.

I’ve said before I was a bit non-plussed by this much-hyped title when I read it initially, but the scope and imagination involved in the “Forever” storyline blew me away. The writing in this instance more than matches the clever stylistic touches it always had and took the whole series on to a new level.

I’ve recently finagled a bunch of Bendis’ “Daredevil” run which I’m looking forward to reading now all the more.

Thursday 23 November 2006

Hocemo Li Na Kafu?

Moving away from Michael Richards for a moment, and we probably should, I have been meaning to direct you all to Graeme’s blog Hocemo Li Na Kafu? Filled with discussion on politics and books among other things, it should give you something meatier to read that my look at what the US are saying about a former sitcom actor.

His co-blogger Anna wrote this excellent piece about the Holocaust.

The Richards Race Debate Continues

For some reason this still seems to be the biggest story in the US at the moment. Michael Richards has hired New York publicist Howard Rubenstein, a man with ‘deep contacts in the black community.’

Larry Thomas, The Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, cancelled a signing session yesterday.

More people have conveniently remembered another time when Michael Richards has been abusive. Apparently he hates Jews as well.

Ray Hanania again, this time in Arabisto, comparing the situation to Palestine and Israel.

Some people have been fast getting the Michael Richards merchandise out.

The Huffington Post invites us to watch Michael Richards, wearing face paint pretending to be black.

24 Hours Vancouver looks at how the outburst will affect people’s viewing of Seinfeld season 7.

Over on News From Me, Mark Evanier says he’s starting to feel sorry for Michael Richards.

Jamie Foxx and Tyrese sound off about Richards' remarks backstage at the American Music Awards on November 21, 2006



Naked Gord has an exclusive mp3 interview with Kenny Kramer about Michael Richards.

Have a look at Al Sharpton on television telling how he refused Michael Richards’ telephone apology.

This is Andy Kaufman’s infamous appearance on the sketch show Fridays. It features man of the moment Michael Richards.



This is Jerry Seinfeld and David Letterman talking after Michael Richards has apologised on Monday night.

Wednesday 22 November 2006

Why Would I Thank Hitler?

The fall out from Michael Richards’s racist diatribe continues. My view on it is that his outburst is indefensible, he lost his temper, and when he got going he couldn’t stop. Is he a racist? Well, what do racists do? Long for the days when ‘blacks were strung up’? Shout ‘n*****’ at black guys who annoy them?

His apology on Letterman seemed genuine enough though, he looked nervous, and seemed to have trouble articulating just why he did what he did. He didn’t read from a prepared statement he seemed sincere. When he states that he’s fine with the people involved in the incident to go to the papers he adds that this type of behaviour should be exposed. Sadly, for those of us who loved him as Kramer, he also looked like a bewildered old man, desperately hoping for a lifebelt with which to save his drowning career.

Perhaps he didn’t feel as bad as he seemed on Monday night when he woke up on Saturday morning, perhaps he only felt that way when footage of the incident appeared on Monday.

There’s a Kids in the Hall sketch where an actress accepting an Oscar sees her career end on the podium, as in among her thanks to managers, directors and parents, she absent-mindedly thanks Hitler. “I thanked Hitler?” she asks her manager as he leads her away from a stunned and silent audience. “I never! Why would I thank Hitler?” I can only assume Michael Richards had a similar conversation with his manager at the weekend.

Now let's have a look at what everyone else has been saying about him.

Jay Leno has been having a dig at him.

The New York Times has a good article on how Jerry Seinfeld got Richards on Letterman and how Richards might be able to recover.

This is another New York Times article analysing his apology.

Canadian comics condemn him in this article from CTV.ca. The article also highlights the fact that he repeatedly referred to ‘Afro-Americans’ in his Letterman interview.

This is an article in The Independent analysing the incident.

BetUS posts odds on what he will do next.

He will confess to being a KKK member- 50/1
He will write a book titled the Kramer Mein Kampf- 150/1
He will marry an African American man- 20/1
He will donate a million dollars to the NAACP- 10/1
He will attempt to start Kramer Arian youth groups- 150/1


Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks out on Richards in the Chicago Defender.

"I think number one, clearly it is obvious that Michael Richards engaged in a racist rant," Jackson Sr. said. "This is not the first time he has said these things, because he went beyond using the N-word. It seems to me that it's not enough that he should apologize and get treatment.


In the Huffington Post Earl Ofari Hutchinson thinks the incident marks a good time for everyone to take a look at the 'N' word.

The Chicago Tribune provides more analysis from a crisis management expert, as well as TMZ.com’s Managing Editor delight that the video of the incident had been viewed on their site more than 1.5 million times.

Oscar winner and stand-up Jamie Foxx says, "I would have whooped him on sight."

The New York Post digs up no shortage of people prepared to say that Michael Richards was a ‘ticking time bomb of rage’.

Melanie Chartoff, who worked with Richards on the sketch comedy show "Fridays" in the early '80s and had an appearance on "Seinfeld," said he becomes enraged "when someone disagrees with his point of view."


On a similar path, MoronLife.com says 'Kramer called me a c***'.

Someone prepared to defend Michael Richards is Chicago based columnist and stand-up Ray Hanania.

"But Richards isn’t a racist. His act doesn’t feature racist attacks against other races and ethnic groups.

Still, African Americans seem set on making an example of him, even though African Americans use the “N” word more often than others on and off comedy stages."


Dave McGurgan of Phillyburbs.com is another to come to the aid of the 57 year old actor.

“How much do you want to bet Jesse Jackson gets involved or even worse - sicks his posse on Richards over this?

Unfortunately Richards has already lost the battle.

Which is a shame because it's impossible to logically draw the conclusion that he's a racist from the incomplete and edited piece of tape that only runs two-and-a-half minutes.

Sure, he says "nigger" an awful lot, but without the entire context of the show, we don't know what factors led up to Richards' tirade against the heckler.”


Kyle Doss and Frank McBride, the two guys Michael Richards directed his anger at have spoken to NBC about it today. Funnily enough the word ‘compensation’ is now being bandied about.

They told "Today" show host Matt Lauer they did nothing to warrant Richards' racially charged invectives and called the comments hurtful and disrespectful. They said they can't accept the apology the comedian issued before cameras on the David Letterman Show because if Richards really wanted to apologize he would have sought them out.

Later in the show, celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, who now represents Doss and McBride, issued a challenge to Richards to meet with her clients to hear the pain his "racist" words caused.

She said he should take the recommendation of a retired judge to determine the compensation for Doss and McBride.


CBS News asks, Richards Facing Ruination Or Opportunity?

Tuesday 21 November 2006

The Prestige

Over the weekend I went to see The Prestige. Christopher Nolan directs Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as two rival magicians in late 19th Century London.

After the disaster that was Velvet Goldmine, Bale has shown himself to be perhaps the best actor of his generation and he puts in another top drawer performance here. Jackman too is solid, as is Michael Caine.

There are a few twists and turns and you can argue about the merits of a couple of them, certainly. But as far as I’m concerned they all made sense and nothing sits out of place. Over the two hours plus running time, The Prestige never once failed to hold my attention.

It’s hard to tell, from his accent, if David Bowie is from Aberdeen or Azerbaijan but that’s only a minor quibble.

So far, for me, Nolan has yet to make a bad film, and I hope that continues.

Robert Altman 1925-2006

Robert Altman died on Monday night. Altman was a maverick director known for his large ensemble pieces.

He frequently employed a technique of overlapping dialogue, notable in films such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville. He directed a fair amount of stinkers in his long career as well as a handful of classic films.

MASH, Nashville and The Player are some of his great successes, while Beyond Therapy, Popeye and Dr. T and the Women will be the films he'll be less remembered for.

Personally I've always thought that MASH, The Player and Short Cuts were all excellent, though Short Cuts was on TV recently and I didn't fancy sitting through it.

He had enjoyed recent success with the Oscar winning Gosford Park. Here's an extensive article on him from Senses of Cinema.

A Horrible, Horrible Mistake

Seinfled season 7 is now out on DVD, oh and it turns out that Kramer is a racist. There's a transcript of his apology on Letterman in this article.


"That's what happens when you interrupt the white man."
Have a look at the video of the incident. It gets hard to see what's going on, due to the number of people getting up to leave.



Here’s a news story on it from CNN.



Here's his awkward apology on Letterman.



CBS Broadcasting requested that the video be removed from YouTube and Google, though it seems to be back up. Here’s a link to the appearance on the Letterman website.

Here’s some more comments from a Newsday article.

Friends of Richards came to his defense, saying his outburst was just a poor attempt -- by a talented physical comic with little experience in stand-up -- to pull off a shock tactic that only someone with the savvy of Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor could pull off.

"He had a tantrum," said Kenny Kramer, the real-life inspiration for the TV character. "Michael is not racist; he is just not a very streetwise performer."

Phil Morris, the actor who portrayed Jackie Chiles, the Johnnie Cochran-esque lawyer who defended Kramer in three episodes and appeared in two other 'Seinfeld' episodes, did not return a call for comment.


Here’s some more, this time from the Chicago Sun-Times.

Adding to the controversy, the Laugh Factory allowed Richards to perform again Saturday night. That led to an impromptu boycott of the comedy club. At a news conference Monday, club owner Jamie Masada faced a number of unhappy protesters who wondered why he allowed Richards' return.

Along with apologizing for the incident, Masada claimed he had only allowed Richards back with the understanding he would issue a formal apology from the stage. That did not occur. Masada made clear Richards was no longer welcome in his club -- either as a performer or a guest.

Calls to Richards' representatives were not returned Monday.

Comedian George Lopez told television station KTLA that he thought Richards' lack of stand-up experience may have been a factor. "The question is you have an actor who is trying to be a comedian who doesn't know what to do when an audience is disruptive," he said.

City comedians: 'He can afford a decent writer'

Look for Michael Richards on a local comedy stage this weekend -- as the punch line.

"I will be discussing this," said Frank Townsend, a Chicago stand-up who's headlining at the Improv in Schaumburg.

"You must be brave enough to suffer the consequences and you also need to have a point. . . . His rant came out of anger when his act was bombing," he said.

And that shouldn't have happened to Richards: "He's rich," Townsend said. "He can afford to hire a decent writer."

Kenny Kramer, the man Richards’s character was based on, wonders how this might affect his ‘Real Kramer’ bus tours.

This is an opinion piece on it from BlackProf.com.

This is The Laugh Factory's official statement on the matter.

Here are a lot of readers’ opinions on it from Canadian paper The Toronto Star.

The Jewish Journal want to point out that Michael Richards is NOT a Jew.

Michael W. Robinson, vice president of Levick Strategic Communications, a Washington, D.C., PR firm provides some damage control advice for Richards and some analysis of how Richards and Jerry Seinfeld have been handling it.

On the Huffington Post, Eric Deggans asks himself the question 'Do I remain a Michael Richards fan?'

In the Chicago Tribune, Mike Marino talks about going onstage after Richards. The article also provides some comedians and booker's opinions. Bert Haas, the talent booker and executive VP of Zanies is asked if he thinks Richards would be forgiven.

“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “Please. Robert Downey woke up in a kid’s bed. He makes five movies a year. If I’m not mistaken, Mel Gibson has a movie coming out this year which will probably be nominated for an Academy Award."

Saturday 18 November 2006

Puskas Video Tribute

I doubt you'll be able to follow the commentary, but here's a video tribute to Puskas.

Friday 17 November 2006

Scottish Football Museum

As I mentioned in my last post I spent an afternoon today at The Scottish Football Museum. I've been meaning to go for a while and it was certainly worth the trip.

I took the stadium tour as well, and as it was a wet afternoon in November, I was the only one on it. To be honest the dressing rooms aren't all that exciting, but it was nice to get an inside look.

I hit 38mph on Hampden Hot Shots, the electronic shot measuring device in the players' warm up area. As there was only me I got to take as many shots as I liked. Thumping balls into a net at Hampden is a far better way to spend an afternoon than in an office.

It was also good to walk out of the players' tunnel and onto the edge of the pitch. As Scotland Today were filming in the area where the cup gets presented I got to take a seat in the Royal Box, with its padded seats and carpeted floors.

The museum itself has a wealth of great things, with caps, medals, trophies, shirts, programmes and various other souvenirs from Scottish football history.

The Scottish Cup, on show in the museum, is only taken out of its display case for the presentation at the final. It's then taken from the winning side, who are handed a replica, as the original is locked back up.

I enjoyed seeing shirts and medals from famous games like Aberdeen's European Cup Winners' Cup win and Dundee United's 1987 UEFA Cup final, as well as Scotland shirts from throughout the 20th Century.

For some photographs of my visit, have a look at my Flickr page.

Ferenc Puskas 1927-2006

As Fraser has already noted the legendary footballer Ferenc Puskas died today. On Talk Sport this morning they were humming and hawwing over whether he was one of the greatest players ever. "A great player, one of the greatest?" 83 goals in 84 matches for Hungary, 1 European Cup, 5 Spanish titles, 5 Hungarian titles, 1 World Club Championship, 1 Olympic Gold Medal and 4 times top scorer in the Spanish league. Aye I think fair to say one of the greatest footballers who ever lived.

Fittingly I was at Hampden today to visit the museum and take the stadium tour, so I got the chance to stop for a moment and take in the place where he scored those 4 goals in what is generally acclaimed as the greatest club game of all time.

I also listened to former Aberdeen manager Alex Smith recall the match he went to as a young player with Kilmarnock. He remembered it as the best club match he'd ever seen and recalled the fantastic celebrations of the Real Madrid side as they took the time to acknowldge the entire crowd who applauded non-stop as they did their lap of honour.

Having made his name in pre-revolutionary Hungary playing with Honved, Puskas was 31 when he arrived at Real Madrid in 1958, having defected to the West 2 years earlier. He helped Real reach the European Cup Final in his first season, although he missed the final through injury.

No one else has ever scored 4 goals in a European Cup Final and we may well wait a long time before someone else manages it. Puskas himself had another go, scoring a hat-trick in 1962 as Real Madrid lost the final to Benfica. In all he played 39 European games for Real, scoring 35 goals.

In all competitions for Real Madrid his record was 528 appearances scoring 512 goals.

In addition to his caps for Hungary he played for Spain at the 1962 World Cup Finals, winning 4 caps.

Still at Real Madrird he retired from playing in 1966.

As a coach he went back to the European Cup Final in 1971 with Greek champions Panathinaikos where they lost to Ajax.

In 1993 he returned to Hungary to live for the first time since the uprising, to become Caretaker Manager of the national side. He was in charge for four World Cup qualifiers.

Honved have pensioned off his jersey number for good, in honour of the great player.

The Federation of Football History and Statistics named Puskas the all time best scorer of the 20th century.

On Puskas's 75th birthday in 2002, the Hungarian government renamed the country’s biggest football stadium, The Budapest "Nepstadion" (People's Stadium) to Ferenc Puskas Stadium.

Puskas suffered with Alzheimer’s disease and had been confined to a government-run hospital in Budapest for the last six years.

Football should colllectively hang its head in shame at the way one of the greatest players to ever kick a ball was forced to see out his last days. How so many players can happily trouser obscene amounts of money while one of the guys who made the game what it is, had to look at selling his medals to make his last year more comfortable, is beyond me.

Players like Puskas made the game the thing we all love today and it's terrible that the game, with all its new found wealth, couldn't have shown him the same respect.

The picture above right hangs inside Hampden Park. It shows Puskas celebrating one of his goals in the 1960 European Cup Final.

There's a good round-up of tributes to him on the BBC.

Let’s All Work Together, You Moaning Bastards


Government advisor Matthew Taylor has come out with a bleating attack on citizen’s use of the internet today, accusing users of making “incommensurate demands” on politicians via “hostile” blogs and other means.

A lot of the points he makes would hold water, were they not coming from a man representing a government who have taken us to a catastrophic war no-one wanted and who plan to spend billions tagging and branding us all like cattle via their idiotic ID card scheme.

He accuses the British public of acting like “teenagers” – making demands without being prepared to help in the process of change. That view may have some validity as part of a debate about a complaint culture, but firstly, why are we obliged to help highly paid politicos do their jobs for them? I don’t see Tony Blair hefting any of my workload.

More importantly it exposes the political classes true view of the people they seek to govern, that we are seen as nothing more than bleating children who should just stop whining and let our betters get on with tackling things we don’t really understand.

We are somehow infatised in comparison to politicians, manipulated by the media, unable to take care of ourselves without the aid of our politicians who understand our “real” needs even if we do not.

I’m personally sick of this Government’s “…ask not what you can do” bullshit. They don’t consider for a second that people are unhappy with them because they have stuttered from one calamity to another since taking office. Their triumphs have been utterly engulfed by their disasters and the reason that people view politicians as mendacious and venal is because there is amble proof to support the view.

But no, we just don’t understand the “real trade-offs politicians face”. We all just want everything we want now and are incapable of the kind of joined up thinking required to see the real picture, which is that the Government are brilliant and are doing a tremendous job. What patronising crap.

I think people are fully capable of understanding that new housing has to go somewhere, but are still entitled to have concerns about vast expansions of stock in their area. The general public are fully aware that the things we want actually cost money, but they are fed up seeing it pissed away on a racist crusade and a daft idea about logging pictures of the entire populations eyeballs. It is our fucking money afterall, a fact politicans always seem to forget.

Taylor suggests government has to "develop new forms of consultation and engagement that are deliberative in their form and trust citizens to get to the heart of the difficult trade-offs involved."

But in the absence of any real ideas along that line why not just accuse us all of being whiney and demanding with an impared capability for understanding, eh Matthew?

Goodbye, Galloping Major


The name among football names, Ferenc Puskas has died today aged 79.

Since Tom did a big article on him fairly recently, I’ll let him do the full obituary.

In this country, Puskas is probably most famous for being in the Hungary team that crushed England 6-3 at Wembley and 7-1 in Budapest in the 50s and for his 4 goals in Real Madrid’s 7-3 win over Frankfurt at Hampden in the European Cup Final of 1960, a game many regard as the finest ever played.

Suffice to say Puskas was one of the all time football greats and it’s a shame his final few years weren’t more financially comfortable.

Thursday 16 November 2006

First Suck As Only They Can


Well done to First, who pulled a big performance out of the bag last night in terms of getting me home.

2 hours it took me to get from Maryhill back to Falkirk.

Firstly (mewh hey), the bus never showed up until quarter to 6. Then it broke down. Then it started up, and then broke down again. The driver sat in his cab like the fucking dummy he is and waited until people started asking before confirming that the bus was in fact “going no-where”. Plum.

So I end up in Glasgow about twenty past 6, fully 50 minutes after I got out of work. Having missed the 6.15 train from Queen Street I now dash to just about make the 6.30. But of course it has been cancelled due to “vandalism”. I’m assuming the vandals spray painted a big word and they had to send out for a dictionary. This is about the 4rth time this month that a train I’ve been going for has been cancelled, not delayed, that’s a matter of routine, just outright fuck-you cancelled.

So it was the 6.45 for me. Of course it was carrying 2 trains worth of folk, but that didn’t stop them reducing it to a 3 carriage service.

You can always trust the money grabbing scum at First to turn a routine 10 minute journey into a harrowing 45 minute nightmare, especially if it’s raining which seems to add at least half an hour to any journey time.

First manage to combine everything that is bad about dealing with a British company. High prices, belligerent, in fact outright rude staff and shit service combine to revive the “Whit ye gone dae aboot it?” attitude of the 70’s.

It’s a real pain in the ass to have to rely on shitheels who just don’t give a fuck to get me back up the road on a daily basis.

Wednesday 15 November 2006

Chris Morris on YouTube

Yesterday I was on about Borat and Chris Morris nudging people into saying stupid things on camera. Here are some good examples. This is a ten minute compilation of Morris’s ‘Speak Your Brains’ segment from The Day Today.

Below that are some other Morris moments.



This is his infamous appearance on The Time, The Place. “You dye your hair Stapleton”.



Morris and Armando Ianucci accept a 1992 British Comedy Award for On the Hour



Mad as a Lorry. ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser appears on Zeitguest.

If I Did It, Here's How It Happened

This is great and to be honest sounds like a joke.

Tuesday 14 November 2006

Comedy Terrorist Nicked

Just a week after gigging with me this idiot has got himself the jail yet again. He’s certainly better at getting arrested and drumming up publicity than he is at writing comedy.

Jack Palance 1919 - 2006


Veteran character actor and old favourite of mine Jack Palance has died peacefully aged 87 today.

Oscar nominated twice in the 50’s, Palance eventually won an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1992’s comedy City Slickers.

I enjoyed him most in the schlocky dramas of Robert Aldrich like Ten Seconds To Hell, Attack! and The Big Knife but of course he became widely recognised and a little typecast after he shot to stardom playing the evil Jack Wilson in Shane in 1953.

Pish buddy One Neck often remarks upon his bizarre performance in Tango & Cash – Palance himself often remarked that most of the roles offered to him were “garbage” and that most directors he’d worked with “…couldn’t direct traffic”.

Ukrainian by descent, he is survived by two daughters and his second wife.

I’ll always remember him as an intense and engaging performer, whose physical energy and emotional power made him never less than a pleasure to watch - except maybe in Hawk the Slayer…

"Sexy Time?"

Over the weekend I went to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. It was absolutely hilarious. I can’t remember the last time in a cinema I have laughed so hard I missed the next few jokes.

It’s funny all the way through, there is barely a quiet moment throughout the whole thing. On the New York subway, at the rodeo, in hotels, at dinner parties, everywhere he goes is laugh out loud funny. You never feel like any of the people he’s fooling don’t deserve it, although the sequence at the TV station apparently indirectly cost one producer her job.

It mixes scripted comedy and ‘documentary’ really well. Directed by Larry Charles of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, one of the writers was Peter Baynam, co-writer of Alan Partridge and frequent Chris Morris collaborator.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat manages to do what Chris Morris does well, and that is to just nudge people’s predilection for talking rubbish out of them. He subtly coaxes their prejudices and hatred from them, their supposed social an intellectual superiority and in the process makes them look extremely stupid.

I remember the late TV producer Harry Thompson wrote an article in The Guardian about Borat’s predecessor Ali G. In it he spoke of why Ali G worked so well and what he had that reminded him of Morris.

“I had the opportunity to observe Chris Morris at first-hand, in what would have been his first British TV series had a contractual difficulty with another performer not prevented it from reaching the airwaves. I hired him to interview members of the public who had sent in letters of complaint about TV programmes. During the interviews, he hardly spoke. His genius lay in knowing when to nudge them gently and when to let them talk; and talk they did, spouting the most amazing bollocks and making Morris's point for him.”

Thompson also highlighted the difference between this type of comedy and shows that seem to think that going up to people and merely saying or doing something stupid and then watching their reaction is where funny lies.

Balls of Steel and Phonejacker didn’t exist at the time this article was written, but they are perfect examples of this type of horrible, humourless and hateful programme.

There’s a fine line between the idiot baiting that Baron Cohen has perfected and simply attempting to make a fool of someone.

Here’s that article in full.

So to recap, go to see Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, it’s funny.

David Edelstein a film critic in the New Yorker hated the film and here he explains why. Basically his argument is all the things I said the film was not. He thinks Borat made fun of people. He sure did, but pretty much all of them thought they were smarter or superior in some way to him. Never once did anyone say, ‘hold on, you’re taking the piss’. (Although I guess some people must have, in footage that wasn’t used.)

And although Edelstein points out that Borat was rude to some people who were being nice, (if acting superior) to him, there were plenty of people who were extremely rude to him. If you’ve seen it leave a comment to say if you enjoyed it or thought it was offensive.

This is an article from Salon.com about what was real in Borat and what was not. You probably don't want to read it unless you've seen the picture.

Wednesday 8 November 2006

YouTube Stuff

So once again to follow up a morbid post here’s a few things from YouTube to cheer you up.

This is the video for ‘Sundress’ by Ben Kweller, who plays Glasgow next week.



Mac McGlashan has a few words of advice for the English.



This is Larry David and Michael Richards from the sketch show ‘Fridays’.



Caitlin Moran attempts to interview Mark E Smith on Naked City in 1994. now I think about it we should have a regular MES video on here.

Construction Worker Charged With Murder

In a follow up to my post of last week, a 19 year old construction worker has confessed to the murder of actress Adrienne Shelly.

Glue is Frank’s Firm Favourite


On yet another miserable day at work, I was cheered somewhat by the news that one of my all-time comedy heroes, Frank Sidebottom has added the Glue Myspace site to his list of good muckers.

Frank’s comedy stylings, which involve George Formby type renditions of the latest pop hits while wearing a giant Paper Mache head, inspired me to “permanently borrow” my brother’s copy of his EP “Firm Favourites” some years ago, and I still count it as a prized almost-possession.

Frank is still gigging apparently and I strongly advise anyone reading to go and see him.

Here he is pictured with his puppet sidekick, Little Frank.

He is sort of a genius.

Tuesday 7 November 2006

Tom @ The Stand

Before I sat up late to watch crime thrillers I was at The Stand in Edinburgh. I never seem to do much preparation for these gigs anymore, mainly cos I’m trotting out the same material.

I was on first, which seems to be a permanent spot for me at these gigs. I think that’s 3 times in a row I’ve kicked the night off. I don’t mind though it’s a good spot to be if you can do well.

And it did go pretty well. The audience went for it from the off and I actually enjoyed myself on stage. In fact it’s a shame that I wasn’t on for longer. They were a nice crowd and seemed to enjoy pretty much everyone that was on.

Aaron Barshack ‘The Comedy Terrorist’ was also on the bill. You may remember him for this incident a few years ago. Or maybe even from this one. He finished the evening’s first section with a routine based mainly around religion and the Middle East.

With a long beard, even longer hair and white robes, he’s still a passable young Osama bin Laden. His stagecraft and microphone technique may have been the worst I’ve ever seen. Frequently he wasn’t even speaking into the mic. He also brought with him a 5 foot tall shepherds crook that he leaned against the back of the stage. It repeatedly fell to the floor. It was never apparent why he brought it with him.

Although he had but two good jokes, he managed to over-run by 5 minutes, with the tech guy furiously flashing the light at him, while the compere stood to the side of the stage.

Some folk in comedy are oddballs who are actually turn out to be geniuses, some folk in comedy are oddballs who turn out to be just oddballs.

The shepherd’s crook reminds me of when I went to see Emo Phillips at the King’s Theatre in 1990. To the stage he brought with him a trombone in its case. Over the course of his set he assembled all the pieces together. ‘He’s going to play it now’ I thought. He didn’t, slowly he took it all apart again, while still continuing with his act. Once it was back in several pieces he began to juggle them all.

That was a really nice trick, during one of the best comedy performances I’ve ever seen. A daft lad in a white robe continually picking up a shepherds crook that had fallen to the floor, while muttering to himself, was a mere distraction while I drank my pint.

I left the night early in order to get the 10pm bus, but it seemed like a good night overall. I don’t know if I’ll jump into doing it again for a while though. I should probably go away and write some more stuff, before I have another stab at it.

Infernal Affairs

Well, I stayed up until 2am last night watching Infernal Affairs and had a nice bit of lie-in action this morning. I bodyswerved that daft job and its 5 tests, skills matrix and prying medical forms.

So I stayed up to watch the Hong Kong cops and robbers flick. I’ve seen The Departed, the US remake, and although I haven’t written about it on TP, boy did I have my problems with it.

Infernal Affairs tells the same story almost note for note, but does it tighter and allows the audience to have more sympathy for the characters. One of my main problems with The Departed was a scene that is also in the original. It seemed to make more sense in the context of IA. The scene in question is IA’s ending, although the scene is the second ending of three in The Departed.

I doubt I can stay up tonight and tomorrow to watch IA2 & 3.

Scott Pilgrim


Can I just reiterate my love for Bryan Lee O'Malley’s Scott Pilgrim comics?

I’ve just finished the third book in the series and it’s a real breath of fresh air.

Although he refutes the “pioneer” tag, O'Malley is a veteran of comics created distinctly for the internet and there’s plenty of stuff first published for the web on his site.

I think comics on the web is a great thing in as much as it offers unpublished cartoonists and writers the chance to publish and publicise their talents, but, being and old fuddy-duddy, I still like to feel an actual book in my hand and struggle with reading comics off a computer screen for any length of time.

O'Malley apparently has a bunch of friends and collaborators including Josh Lesnik, Alex Ahad, Andy Helms, John Allison and David McGuire, all of whom use the web to spread good comic craziness.

Hopefully, Talking Pish good buddy One Neck and I can come up with the collaboration comic we’ve been talking about for ages and we can snag a ride on the web comic bandwagon too.

Monday 6 November 2006

A Case of the Mondays

As everyone who knows Fraser and I are aware, we are eagerly kicking our heels awaiting our big break in comedy. A break that seems to be getting closer and closer, though still remains elusive.

As such we still have to pay the rent, buy gadgets and DVDs etc, so we have to plough on with daytime office jobs. In that regard I’m constantly on the lookout for a new job that might just give me an extra 30 quid a week in pocket money. Not a lot to ask surely?

However I’m discovering that the market for soul crushing office jobs is just as packed as any other job market. My reluctance to become a ladder climbing, authority respecting dullard is really putting me off making any progress on this front.

Last week I turned down the chance of a job interview when I re-read the advert for the job I had applied for. The first line read ‘If you like filing then this is the job for you!’ who the fuck ‘likes filing’? If you like putting things away in alphabetical and/or chronological order prepare to be happy!

Anyway I’ve been debating with my colleagues whether to go for a job interview tomorrow morning. The interview has already been outlined to me in painstaking detail by the company, who telephoned me a total of 5 times.

It is set to take 2 hours to complete and consists of 5 different parts. It begins with a standard interview going over my CV, then there’s one of those ‘give an example of a time when…’ nonsense series of questions. That is followed by a series of 3 tests, in order to ensure I can read, write, spell and count.

Prior to the interview I’ve been provided with a ‘competency skills matrix’ to complete as well as a medical form, which requests permission to contact my doctor to provide them with details of my medical history.

I know what you’re thinking ‘MI5 don’t just hire anyone, you have to clear these hurdles if you want to mix with the elite’. This is for a bog standard office job dealing with customers who have complaints about stuff.

Also despite there being 2 A4 pages listing the job’s duties the company have neglected to be clear on the wage. The bottom figure they previously outlined is less than 11K

So what d’you reckon? Am I going through all this for a job I don’t really want that might not pay me less money than I currently earn?

Or am I staying up to 2am tonight to watch ‘Infernal Affairs’ and using my morning off for having a lie-in? Watch this space.

What The Fuck Is Going On In People’s Heads?


As regular readers of Pish will know, Tom and I are always on the lookout for opportunities to better ourselves and develop our careers as menial office fodder.
We’re both looking for other jobs just now and, having been on the lookout for a while now, you have to ask what the fuck people are thinking when they set out to recruit people these days.

Tom has been asked to go to an interview by Esure for an entry level job. In order to get it, Tom must subject himself to a 2 hour interview, 5 tests and fill out and submit 5 pages of medical forms which basically allow his prospective employers full access to his medical history.

They won’t tell him what the wages are of course, but they expect him to let them shine a flashlight up his arse.

Can I just make one thing perfectly clear to any management/recruitment bods who may stumble upon this entry.

The word “matrix” maybe used to mean something else, but it now means 3 alright films starring Keanu Reeves.

Using it in any other kind of context means you are an UTTER WANKER.

I’m hearing the word more and more often these days, usually as part of the kind of wee grids and graphs middle management create to justify their existence and to make sure they never get called out on their own judgement.

“I didn’t know he’d stab folk! He scored great on the competency matrix!”

In other words: “Don’t sack me, I’m not wrong, this grid is. Please oh please, I need stuff, my wife will leave me if we can’t afford new stuff.”

We get pish here about developing our “skills matrix”. What kind of an idiot would even think of using that phrase in any kind of serious context?

Just stop using the word. It’s not cool, you are not Keanu Reeves, it doesn’t make work “more fun”, just stop it, stop it, stop it. You are a dead husk sucking the life from the living. Go back to hell where you belong.

It used to be that you turned up for an interview and were judged on your merits. You were looking at an hour tops. You go the job or didn’t depending on how you did.

Nowadays the norm seems to be some Krypton Factor-esque psychometric nightmare the likes of which even Kafka could scarcely have imagined which takes up your entire day if you're lucky.

All for the off-chance of a job, and all because someone already employed there can’t be bothered doing theirs properly.

I think Big T’s going to give it all a miss tomorrow anyway and good on him. Turning up to these things only encourages them.

Should Saddam Hang?


Not a surprising turn of events in the end for Saddam Hussein, guilty and sentenced to death.

There won’t be many outside of Tikrit with much sympathy for him but there are more raising justified questions about the veracity of his trail.

I don’t really see the point in replacing one rail-roading bunch of bloodthirsty bastards with another, but that appears to be what Bush and Blair in their oh-so-very finite wisdom have done.

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have slammed the trail as seriously flawed and have highlighted the fact that the Iraqi government have illegally interfered throughout.

Really, what is the point? If you’re going to topple a corrupt, evil regime, the idea must be to replace it with something better. But instead of showing “them” how it’s done, this trail has simply highlighted how massively pea-brained the whole notion of Westernising Iraq was in the first place.

The corruption, the race hate, the senseless violence, the incompetence – our presence has made it all much, much worse. And now, even the trophy capture of the great butcher has turned into an embarrassing fiasco for the “coalition of the willing”.

Of course, now that we’ve made a horrible mess of the place and losable elections are coming up, the US and the UK powers-that-be are starting to make sure that the topic of withdrawal pops up with alarming frequency in the media.

No wonder the people of the Middle East hate us. We swan in, wreck their countries infrastructure, allow religious militias to take virtual control of Baghdad, railroad their former leader and then, when things are at their absolute worst, we fuck off and just let things disintegrate.

But that’s not even why they have ever right to despise the West. It’s the arrogance, the crypto-imperialist assumption that we would be able to order and manage their frigging country better than they could. That after the toppling of Saddam, there would somehow just be this organic development of Western ideas and customs. At best, the US and the UK have made a disastrously over-ambitious mistake in good faith. But most see the truth.

This baneful episode in human suffering was borne of a racist urge for revenge against Arabs, any Arabs in the wake of September the 11th and was fuelled by a desire to control a strategic area of the Middle East.

In many ways, US and British business interest in the country has been like the mafia “bust-outs” from the film “Goodfellas”.

We’ve set alight the joint, taken the valuables and offered to re-build the place at a price we decide upon. The Iraqi people thought Saddam was bad, but now find themselves paying protection money to the biggest bully around. All in a country where they can be murdered at random by barely-checked nutter brigades who’ll butcher you for wearing the wrong kind of hat.

Applause, applause Blair and Bush, a bang up job indeed. Not opportunistic incompetent liars at all.

So should Saddam hang? Hardly the point, is it?

Scottish Films

I went to see a couple of films over the weekend. They were both Scottish in setting. First up was Red Road. It’s been getting a lot of good reviews at the moment, The List hailing it as ‘the best British film of the year’. I’m not sure it’s quite that, though I can’t, off the top of my head, name another British film better than it.

It is very well shot, it looks great and its cast are very good. Personally I wasn’t 100% convinced by the story. It’s puzzling at times why characters make the choices that they do and the twist seems to have come about more by chance than the character’s design.

All in it takes 3 Tom stars. A decent enough film, but not the masterpiece a lot of people seem to be shouting about.

The other film I saw was Night People. Set in Edinburgh, at the moment the film doesn’t have a distributor. I was actually made aware of its limited release through an e-mail from the producer.

The film charts the lives of a group of people one night in October. There are a few storylines, some I enjoyed more than others. In a way it seems like an amalgam of half a dozen shorts. The stories range from a priest trying to help an HIV positive girl, to a drug dealing single Mum being forced to reappraise her life after she takes her daughter out to work with her.

It hits on a few movie clichés - all old men provide sage, life changing advice; all kids under 15 out after 10pm are magnets to paedophiles and single fathers aren’t as bright as their kids.

For all that though it’s reasonably entertaining, it’s shot very well and makes the most of its Edinburgh setting. There are also a few decent performances in there. Katrina Bryan as the drug dealing Mum is very good and Alan McCafferty, who you’ll probably recognise from loads of adverts, is pretty funny as the single father trying to make the best of his lot.

It lands a solid 3 Tom stars. It plays at the GFT tonight and tomorrow.

Sunday 5 November 2006

Do You Recognise This Man?

Graham Linehan has this amusing post on his site.

Friday 3 November 2006

More From YouTube

After an obituary I should try to find something more entertaining for you. So here’s a selection of things on YouTube.

I’m writing an article on Davie Cooper for State of the Game, so here are some of his finest moments in a Rangers shirt. (I should say, when I posted this I couldn't play any sound. I now realise that the selection of clips comes with 'A Kind of Magic' by Queen. So, settings to mute.)



One of my favourite comedians these days is David O’Doherty. Here he is playing one of his unique songs in Dublin in March.



Peter Cook explains ‘The Three Ms’ as Alan Latchley on Clive Anderson Talks Back.



Here’s the great video for A Movie Script Ending by Death Cab For Cutie.

Adrienne Shelly 1966-2006

Actress Adrienne Shelly has died at the age of 40. I knew her work through the Hal Hartley films Trust and The Unbelievable Truth, both of which I have on video.

Police said on Thursday night that they are awaiting autopsy results before deciding whether to investigate the case as foul play.

An autopsy was performed Thursday, but the medical examiner's office did not have a cause of death.

According to The New York Daily News she was discovered hanging from a bedsheet.

Schmap Photo

One of my photographs from my Flickr site has been included in an online guide to Edinburgh called Schmap. Cynically I reckon this is just a way to get people to publicise their guide, but there you go.

Thursday 2 November 2006

That 70s Show

There’s a lengthy piece in the Village Voice about the current season of Saturday Night Live. The show had to lay off a few cast members in order to cut costs and the audience has been declining.

Dinner For Five

Tommy lent me the first season of Dinner for Five a while ago. The premise is very simple Jon Favreau invites four of his showbiz buddies along to a fancy restaurant and they talk for a while about the films and TV they’ve done.

Below are three parts of an episode featuring Jeff Garlin star and producer on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Wild Things star Neve Campbell, Kid in the Hall Dave Foley & Henry Winkler legendary star of Happy Days and Arrested Development.





Glue's Stand Appearance

For the benefit of Talking Pish readers who couldn’t make it along to The Stand last night to see YOMG take part in the Comedy Unit’s Rough Cuts here’s a quick run down of the evening. The night was compered by Reverend Obadiah Steppenwolfe III. Neil, one of the people who had come to see us, made the mistake of sitting down the front where the Reverend singled him out for the rest of the night.

The evening began with some short films. They were mainly from this guy and some that appeared to be made by the Comedy Unit themselves featuring Phil Nichol and Tony Carter.

After this a group of comedians including Susan Calman and Keir McAllister performed scripts that had been sent in for the night. That was the end of the first half. We were up next.

It was kind of odd doing someone else’s gig and having a lot of other people milling about, but it was nice to have a dressing room for one thing.

We kicked off with ‘The Old Mugging’ which got laughs in all the right places. Then we did ‘The Wifestealer’. Me in a wig and glasses always seems to get a laugh.

After that Bertie went down well, although we should have asked the lighting guy to keep the lights down until we set him up, some people still seemed to find that funny though.

All in all we went over pretty well and I think we were quite pleased.

When we came off there were some more short films from Limmy and one featuring and the aforementioned Reverend.

So it seemed to be a successful night and what’s more we got paid for it. And paid quite well considering the limited time we were onstage.

We’re at The Stand next on Tuesday the 5th of December doing a 10 minute spot at a Red Raw night that also features my pal Charlotte and Scott Agnew.