Friday 29 February 2008

The Ray of Hope Appeal

I thought this was worth mentioning, Arsenal and Liverpool fans are being asked to contribute to a charity supporting their former player Ray Kennedy, when the sides meet in April.

Kennedy played for both clubs with distinction, but now sadly suffers from Parkinson's Disease. He played in the era when it was all about winning trophies, not about how much money you made. The sad fact being that he had to auction his medals to raise money to combat his condition.

Playing as a forward with Arsenal before converting to midfield after his transfer to Liverpool, Kennedy won every domestic honour in the English game. This included the historic double with the Gunners in 1971 and 5 league championships with Liverpool. He didn't do too badly in Europe either, winning 3 European Cups, 1 UEFA Cup, 1 Fairs Cup and 1 European Super Cup. He also earned 17 caps for England.

The sound is a little bit out of sync but the film below illustrates what a good player he was and shows some of his cracking goals.

Thursday 28 February 2008

It's Getting Out of Control

Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Seth Rogan? This is definitely Not Safe For Work.

Wednesday 27 February 2008

"We Must Hang Ourselves Immediately"

Since I'm currently trying to write a play I thought I should go to see more theatre. So with that in mind I went along to the Citizens Theatre tonight to see Waiting For Godot.

It was an enjoyable production. The bits I enjoyed most was where there was nothing much happening on stage. At one point I heard someone behind me murmur, "This play's crazy."

Monday 25 February 2008

Kimmel's Revenge

I'm sure you'll all have seen Sarah Silverman's hilarious song about Matt Damon by now. Well this is also sure to be all over the 'net. This is her boyfriend Jimmy Kimmel's equally hilarious reply.

Once...Twice

Here's a lovely moment from last night's Oscars. The stars of Once, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Sunday 24 February 2008

Football Moan In...

I enjoy listening to the football on Radio Scotland but I quickly have to reach for the off switch when it comes time for James Traynor's "Your Call" a section where supposedly "the fans" get their say on the big football talking points of the week. Of course this is Scottish football so this generally descends into tit for tat old firm sniping from the off, encouraged and abetted by the most desperate and nonsensical remarks from the baiter in chief, Mr Traynor.

Now I understand that someone in the sports media who has page after page or hour after hour to fill up with practically sod all ever happening means that you have to come up with some pretty ropey angles but last night's phone in took the cake.

Traynor, prone to contradicting himself, often within a single sentence, attempted to stoke the fires on a boring day of sport by saying that Celtic were chased off the pitch by Barcelona (and where were their superstars?) and also that Rangers will be secretly gutted they got through to the next round of the UEFA Cup because they will now definitely be too tired to win the league.

Hey presto, within minutes Jim had to two utter balloons who funnily enough shared Jim's notional relationship with common sense and completely agreed with everything he said.

Celtic had a good go at a team with 10s of millions of pounds more than them to invest in their playing staff and who regularly get 90,000 spectators at their games. Barcelona could have beaten anyone 3-2 that night. Did Celtic get a chasing? A bit aye, but there are solid common sense reasons why that happened, not that the Scottish media wants to go over them. As usual the reward of success in the media in Scotland is ridiculous over-praise, the price of failure is uncalled for castigation. And people wonder why we've been unsuccessful for so long.

Onto the Rangers, and they were actually being lampooned for winning through to the last 16 of a major tournament. Traynor, who's prediction that Celtic will easily retain the championship is looking dafter by the week has grabbed onto the idea that Rangers will tire in the title race like a credibility lifeline, sounding more desperate to be right about at least something as the weeks go by. This idea that Rangers are tiring and don't have the squad to win things this year is prevalent throughout the media. I read an article in the Herald last week wherein the writer posited that Captain Barry Ferguson and defenders Carlos Cuellar and David Weir require to be rested or all will end in tears. Is there any evidence that Rangers as a squad or these specific players are indeed tiring? No. They haven't lost a game in months and have conceded just one goal in over 8 hours of football. They have a lot of matches coming up certainly but came through a congested period at the turn of the year totally unscathed.

Traynor's angle, that Rangers boss Walter Smith will be secretly gutted that Rangers made it through against Panathanikos is simply a lot of nonsense. If this were the case, why did the bench clear and everyone associated with Rangers start dancing about as if, well, they'd just won an important game in Europe? Of course, Jim managed to find someone to agree with him within moments of his show starting, a so-called Rangers fan who thought that Walter Smith should be "moved upstairs".

What a shame that this is what it means to be a sport journalist in this country. What a shame that you can't just evenly measure achievement or rationally analyse defeat.

Instead sport's chat in the Scottish media it's this circus of utter lunacy. Entire debates based on moronic predicates that bear no relation to reality, hosted by squawking wee-brains more concerned with their careers than the sport and contributed to by members of the public hand picked by research staff for their desire to hold forth a view so idiotic it becomes worthy of being in the paper or on the air.

What a shame as well that in this age of ID card proposals and mooted DNA databases that we seem happy to trade genuine freedoms for the fake democracy of saying something daft to an idiot on a radio show.

Its another example of how people in this country, completely engulfed in misunderstood Riki Lake style cod notions of self-worth, have erroneously become bewitched by the notion that anything that pops into their heads counts as valid opinion.

Friday 22 February 2008

Thursday 21 February 2008

First Bus Do It Again

So, two months into full-time employment and I'm getting up in the morning joyful with the knowledge that death can only be a decade or two away...at most. The early morning journeys with First Bus will be one of the things I'll think of on my deathbed and be grateful I'll never have to experience ever again.

No matter how early I catch the bus to work it's always mobbed, packed to bursting with rucksack carrying office employees and schoolchildren. Routinely swelteringly hot I have to push my way through the crowd to get off at my stop each morning. But that's to be expected I suppose. At least I've got music to listen to on my mp3 player while I dread the day ahead.

Or have I? Today First Bus decided otherwise. This morning I was subjected to First TV, a screen up the front of the bus showing dull films about fun runs and architecture, trailers for films that have been and gone at the cinema and promos about Glasgow inexplicably set to pumping dance music. All at a deafening fucking volume. So loud that I just gave up trying to listen to my own music.

Now as far as I'm aware passengers on First Bus's services are not allowed to play any devices at a level that may irritate or annoy fellow passengers. It would appear that their own rules don't apply to the good people of First Bus. As I got on this morning I felt I was queuing up to get into a disco.

First Bus - constantly finding new ways to fuck off their passengers.

Sunday 17 February 2008

The Guardian Gogarty Gaffe

There's been an almighty hoo-ha on the Guardian's website this weekend over a travel blog. Max Gogarty is a 19-year-old embarking on a gap year trip to Thailand. The Guardian thought it would be a good idea to let him document his journey in a weekly blog. The readership thought otherwise.

Firstly the many dissenting comments felt that young Max had fuck all to say. Then someone spotted that he was obviously the son of a Guardian writer (his dad is actually a freelancer who has had articles in the Guardian amongst other publications). If you read the piece it's dull as fuck pish, but the newspaper seems stunned that it launched hundreds of furious comments.

This is just the nature of the internet. I've said before if Charles Dickens or Albert Einstein had blogs on the Guardian's website, within ten minutes five folk would be on calling them plums.


This is Max's blog entry here. This is the travel editor's response to the many, many comments saying the Guardian's standards have slipped dramatically. Finally the editor sums the situation up.

The other odd thing about it is that Max writes 'bits' for Channel 4's yoof drama Skins. Inexplicably the url includes the words 'skins_blog'. The travel editor says this was a working title he forgot to change and in no way was it a plug for Skins. Why the fuck would you use it to save the piece if you didn't want to link the two?

Anyway here's a round up of forums and such discussing it.

Junior Football

Ronnie and I have been talking about going along to a Junior football match for some time. We eventually plumped for this weekend and my hometown team Clydebank.

We saw them win a thrilling Scottish Junior Cup tie against Lochee United by 3 goals to 2. Clydebank's second and third goals were both awesome 25-yard strikes. The winner being described as 'a wonder goal' by one Lochee fan attempting to console his shattered pal at the the final whistle.

We were behind the Clydebank goal for the second half and the keeper, Barry John Corr, formerly with Celtic and Motherwell impressed me. In addition to making a few vital saves late on he marshalled his defence well, constantly shouting instructions and amusingly screaming at his outfield colleagues to cease their pile-on celebration inside their own half after their equaliser as Lochee were preparing to kick-off.

A report of the game from the Clydebank website is here. My photos are here and Ronnie's are at his Flickr page here.

Saturday 16 February 2008

The Smoking Permit

I don't smoke and therefore I'm not keen on people smoking around me and smoking in general. However, even I think that this latest proposal by a government health adviser is insane. Why is the government paying for inane pish like this? You could run a competition in primary schools and get better suggestions.

Monday 11 February 2008

Awright, I'll post...or (to sound more positive) Creative News!


Tom has thrown down the blogging gauntlet so here's my first entry of 2008, which so far has been a busy and remarkably shite free year.

As Tom was saying, Iain and I have had Black Cape, our strip about unemployed superheroes, accepted for publication. We're told that we're just about certain of inclusion in the first issue in new underground style humour comic "Wasted" which should see print within the next few weeks and if last minute advertising squeezes us out, we're certs from #2 onwards.

Wasted should be quarterly moving to bi-monthly if successful and is the brainchild of a small core of creative people led by comics legend Alan Grant , who's famous in comic book circles for, among other things, long and extremely successful runs on Judge Dredd and Batman. Also contributing is the art team responsible for the best Superman comic in decades, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant. The former is cover editor, the latter art editor for the entire publication. There's loads of great folk involved from UK comics veterans to guys getting their first real break.

Quite what the fuck we're doing rubbing shoulders with these genuine talents is anyone's guess, but here we are.

Being comic geeks of the highest/lowest order, Iain and I are of course having a whale of a time doing stuff that would interest only a person entirely sappy for comics. We were practically shaking with pleasure a few weeks ago for example when we managed to sneak a peak at some art for the new issue of Superman. Iain is now basically in a position where his favourite artist in the world knows him and says hello to him, which is naturally blowing his mind.

So that's great and who knows, we may even make a few quid.

We've also been doing our wee silver age-y side project GoshWow Comics as and when we get the chance.

Right now, we're also doing a guest strip for fellow Wasted contributor Alan Kerr's very funny Kreepy Kat site. "Fans" of my old fake Dilbert's may get a fleeting sense of Deja Vu...

On top of that, Tom and I wait with baited breath to hear back about our Glue radio pilot, which is in the hands (or bin) of BBC Radio's top man at present and we're also cracking on with a play that we'll hope to perform before the end of the year.

Oh aye, wife, wean, job - still doing all that n'aw.

Let's Get Wasted

There's been very little comics news on here of late. So here's some. A new comic hits the shelves this month. Wasted is brought to you by comic veterans Alan and Jamie Grant. What makes it interesting for readers of 'Pish is that the magazine will feature this site's very own Black Cape.

This is an article on the mag and Editor Alan Grant. Perhaps Fraser will come out of blogging retirement to tell you more about it.

"There are reputed to be around 300 million marijuana smokers in the world. Our aim is to have all of them buying and reading ‘Wasted.’"

And here's a post by Gerry Alanguilan, who, several years ago, published another comic called Wasted, which you can read here.

Sunday 10 February 2008

Whiskerino Throwdoon

With Whiskerino near the end of its 120 days of beard growing, Ronnie organised the European Throwdown, held conveniently in Glasgow.

A good day out was had by all, beards, non-beards and beard lovers included. Some of the beards flew in from Germany, some flew back to Germany as soon as it ended, some drove from Yorkshire and back inside 18 hours.

I lifted the coveted Best Overall Beard medal, which you can just about see in that photo above. There was later some drunk talk of impeachment by the chairwoman of the judges, but the award now takes pride of place on the mantlepiece.

The contest still has another 19 days to run before we can start reaching for the razors. More photographs can be found at my Flickr page here and at Ronnie's page here.

Photo above courtesy of Graham.

Friday 8 February 2008

One Big Fat Mother of a Movie

You know a film is great when while you're watching it you're thinking about coming back to the cinema and watching it again. Juno is just that kind of film.

Ellen Page is outstanding in the lead role. She deserves every award she's up for. Michael Cera is of course also great, supplying a few of those great George-Michael looks of bafflement. The script is great, it's clever, funny and moving. The soundtrack too is charming, especially Cera and Page's duet on The Moldy Peaches' Anyone Else but You.

So in short, Juno is a cracking film that you need to see at least once. Down below is Micahel Cera and his Juno and Arrested Development co-star Jason Bateman promoting the film.

Tuesday 5 February 2008

"Oh my God! What is That?"

It's the kind of film I never thought they'd make again after 9/11 but make it they did and, perhaps surprisingly, Cloverfield is pretty good. It offers a real sense of danger and is genuinely scary in places. You see enough of the monster to get the idea, but not so much that it seems like Godzilla. Despite the warnings the camerawork didn't make me or anyone else that I could see sick.

Sunday 3 February 2008

Orny

Still on the subject of comedy, those of you who watched Jerry Seinfeld's documentary Comedian will be well aware of Orny Adams, the comic on his way up whose journey is juxtaposed with Seinfeld's in the film.

He of course comes off as a bit of a dick, although I always thought he seemed pretty funny. So putting the dickish behaviour to one side I purchased his debut DVD/CD The Path of Most Resistance. And the good news is it was very good.

He performs a tight, joke packed set that really hits the mark on several occasions. He also includes a 16 page booklet that quotes from Dostoefsky. The trailer is down below.

The Great Comedy Strike of '79

As the US Writers' Strike appears to be drawing to a close, Time Magazine has this article on the comedians' strike of 1979. This is an extract from a new book called Comedy at the Edge.