Thursday 29 May 2008

Tom Reviews

Here's the latest couple of reviews I've written for Artrocker. Firstly I went to see The Zombies a couple of weeks ago. They were good in places and dull in others. Rod Argent and his rock 'n' roll ancedotes from the 60s reminded me a little of Les McQueen from the League of Gentlemen. "He was ever such a nice chap. He said to me Les, to you it's 80 sheets." Here's my review.

Secondly I reviewed The National's DVD 'A Skin, A Night'. Now I love The National, but the film was hugely disappointing. A lot of arty pish in the main. However it's not a total loss as it comes with a decent 12 track EP. Here's my review.

Mr. Rock

Along with nearly ever other comedian in Scotland last night the 'Pish boys were at the Edinburgh Playhouse to see Chris Rock strut his stuff live. I would have had a photograph to illustrate but as all the signs told us there was to be absolutely no recording equipment in use during Mr. Rock's performance.

Support for the evening came from Mario Joyner, who you may know from his appearance in the penultimate Seinfeld episode. He had a pretty solid, funny 25 minutes.

Then it was time for the main act of the evening. Chris Rock performed for about an hour and a half and I thought he turned in a polished performance with plenty of highlights.

He hit on the US election race, imagining a black woman as First Lady, he did a routine about his job scraping plates in a fast food restaurant, on his rich neighbourhood where every black person there, Mary Jay Blige, Denzel Washington and Jay-Z is the best in their business but their white neighbour is a dentist. He also had a long routine on the difference between men and women. His routine on the 'N Word' (although he didn't call it that) and how he may not be allowed to use it anymore was possibly my favourite bit of the night.

On the whole it was great. He's got the act down to a fine art and from a comedy perspective it was good to watch a master of his craft at work.

Sunday 25 May 2008

Phil O'Donnell Tribute Match

Along with Tommy I was at the Phil O'Donnell tribute match between Celtic and Motherwell this afternoon. A team made up of Celtic's 1998 title winning side beat a team largely containing Motherwell's 1991 Cup-winning side by 5 goals to 1.

Even with a 60,000 crowd the match was oddly devoid of atmosphere for most of the day. It not being a competitive game of course had much to do with that. Video tributes played for both O'Donnell and Tommy Burns and they elicited a big response from the crowd. So too did the comeback of one Henrik Larsson, although we did worry that his appearance was all too brief as he left the field in the 2nd minute after clashing heads with Chris McCart. Enrico Annoni was another player who received a big welcome from the fans.

It was a nice day out, good weather and a game played in the right spirit. Larsson scored a good goal, as did Darren Jackson with a diving header in the last minute but the only moment of the match that made me go 'oooh,' was when Larsson chipped the ball onto the bar from about 25 yards out midway through the second half.

From my own personal interest, the match featured several former Clydebank players, Stevie Woods, Darren Jackson, Rab McKinnon, Fraser Wishart and Tommy Coyne.

There's a brief match report and a selection of photos on the BBC website. Here's the report featuring the teams and list of rotating substitutes from the Celtic website.

Shawfield Dugs

I was at Shawfield Greyhounds on Friday night with folk from work. It was the first time I had ever been there. I don't think I had even visited Shawfield when Clyde played there.

It's certainly a bit rough and ready but it wasn't a bad night out. I won on two of the 8 races I placed bets on, taking home more money than I went out with. One of the girls who had also never been (or placed a bet) before won on 7 of 10 races and took home over £100, while still acting like she didn't really know what she was doing.

Thursday 22 May 2008

Wasted Reviewed

Wasted has got a really good review in The List.

Monday 19 May 2008

'Tash Laughs

I did some more stand-up last night and I have to say I was reasonably pleased by how it went over. I got bigger laughs than the last time I was up, three weeks ago. That may be because I didn't have a moustache at the time. The moustache lines got the biggest giggles.

In fact my biggest laugh of the evening was a gag handed to me by Elaine, before I went on. The audience found it much funnier than I did. But anyway, go pal about with her on her MySpace and look out for her on the Scottish comedy circuit as she's very funny.

Sunday 18 May 2008

Powwkipsie

While we're on the subject of comics and Iain Laurie, here's his latest work,Powwkipsie.

In it, Iain moves away from the pay-off based humour of Blackcape to produce something starker and altogether more disturbing. He also continues to make strides as a visual storyteller, testing his own boundaries and those of the reader.

Chapters 1-3 are up already, so have a look and see what you think.

Wasted Available For Download

Most of you will (hopefully) have read Blackcape, the comic strip I do with 'pish mucker Iain Laurie. It has been due out in the shops for a while now in Wasted, a comic magazine put together by Alan Grant, Jamie Grant, Frank Quitley and several other comic book mega-talents.

While the printed edition of Wasted has been held up for a further short spell (hopefully available mid-June-ish), there is now a PDF download of the whole shootin' match so have a look and see what you think.

There's two of our strips in it, beautifully coloured by the soon-to-be-far-to-good-for-us Derek Dow and loads of other stuff by really great, talented people. Iain and I have still no clue what we're doing among them...

GUM Glue

I've only just discovered this is online, but I did an interview with Glasgow University's Magazine a couple of months ago about the business of comedy. Here it is. Don't worry they spoke to more than just me.

The Big "Manchester Debacle" Post

Ok, here goes.

I had it in my head that the trip down on the train would be a pretty grim affair, but it wasn’t a bad as I expected. It was busy, but not as mobbed as I though it would be. That said, there were still plenty of dull bams on board to make the trip seem all the longer.

In particular there was the completely steaming teenager who seemed focussed on letting everyone know that he intended “no surrender”, although he seemed unable to express who or what he was unprepared to accede to or for that matter, express any other cogent thought. He also insisted on hugging anyone he felt was a Rangers fan referring to them as “brother” whether male or female, although I managed to stave off his attempts at friendly interaction by reading a book which acted as a reasonable tit-repellent I would assume only because it delineated the dividing line between our man and those able to express themselves multi-syllabically.

There was also another drunk twat who hassled a thankfully nicely natured girl heading home to Manchester FOR THE ENTIRE JOURNEY with his tiresome and utterly boorish brand of pissed up flirting. Wherefore art thou Romeo? The offy by the looks of things.

I arrived about 12.30 am and was picked up by my wee sister and her boyfriend, who looked after me really well throughout my trip, more of which later. The Glasgow influx made sure Manchester knew we’d arrived with some choice choruses of that particular brand of song that seems forever associated with Rangers despite having nothing to do with football.

On the day, I headed into Manchester for about 11am and the town was even at that stage totally jumping. I walked up from the already packed Piccadilly Gardens Fanzone to meet old work mucker Ian at the Albert Square Fanzone and availed myself of a 3 quid Carlsberg from the beer tent while I waited for him to show up.


Ian introduced me to his mates who very nicely allowed me to tear into their beer and grub pretty much for the full day. The place was filling up steadily throughout as we drank and chatted and a local ska band entertained the masses. The facilities were a bit basic – the loos were inadequate in number and I saw one bin in the whole zone. On top of that there was nowhere on site to buy food that I saw and even in terms of souvenirs there was a low turnout of chancers with gaudy crap to peddle.

Heading towards match time, the most pleasant incident of the day took place. One of our group who I kid you not was called David Cooper, presented his father (also David Cooper) and his mother with 2 tickets for the game. It was a lovely gesture and seemed at the time to typify the mood of togetherness that had built up.

Then things started to turn just a little bit. We heard that the screen at the Piccadilly Gardens Fanzone had gone down and our zone began to get really rammed, we presumed with people moved to the Albert Square zone. The game kicked off and again, the atmosphere remained jovial until we conceded the first goal, after which it began to turn to mounting disappointment. Predictably after final whistle there were a few fans moaning about people leaving, but nothing untoward. My sister was picking me up from Piccadilly Station, so I left with the initial exodus. As we approached the exit, I and several others were puzzled to see that barriers erected during the day to designate the zone were still in place. I remember thinking this was odd and potentially dangerous as it meant several thousand people would be heading towards an eight-foot across bottleneck all at the same time. By the time I reached the exit, I was shocked to see several coppers in riot gear who were responding to people asking why the street hadn’t been opened with shoving and aggressive remarks. “What the fuck’s happened here?” I wondered.

As soon as I got out on the streets I was struck by a stark change in the atmosphere. It was tense and raw, like the Bell Street taxi rank at chucking out time in Glasgow. Suddenly, there were a lot of pished up people about all looking for as instant a way home as they could get. As I got closer to Piccadilly, it got even worse as it became apparent that there were some groups of lads hanging around intent on causing trouble, although I have to say all I saw that was really untoward was a group of lads lobbing McDonalds cartons at a passing police van.

I waited for a bit for my sister to pick me up and it was only then listening to the radio on the way back to her flat that I realised there had been big-time bother and everything started to make sense.

I heard a lot of mitigation for the trouble from the Rangers fans side of things some of which I buy, some I don’t. For example, it’s pretty obvious that there were plenty of well-known Manchester thugs involved in the trouble. One story, which I believe as I know the family involved, was that my friend, with her Dad, Uncle and Brother, found a young lad smashing up a car as they made their way to their mini-van. When my pal’s dad confronted him he was told, “fuck off you Scottish cunt” and the lad went for him, not realising he was with people. Sadly for this particular would-be rioter, the rest of my mates’ family piled in and he got the proper kicking he so richly deserved given the circumstances.

I’ve heard that the switch of fans from Piccadilly Gardens to the Veladrome was a dogs breakfast with virtually no transport and no-one even to offer directions and I’ve also heard that, vastly outnumbered and shitting themselves, the police were hugely over aggressive in a bid to compensate. Meh, maybe. The best one so far that I’ve heard is that the authorities decided that there were too many people at Piccadilly Gardens and that the game was switched off deliberately in an effort to get people to disperse. I have trouble swallowing that one - surely no one is that daft?

Whatever the catalyst for the bother, there’s no doubt that some Rangers fans decided a rammy with the polis would be more fun that just heading up the road and that’s not fucking good enough. The sad fact is that there is an element of the Rangers support that is steeped in thuggery – many of those involved were, we’re just starting to find out, convicted criminals.

But that’s no even the half of it. The big problem with the Rangers support is that they struggle to this day to define themselves in any way other than in direct opposition to their rivals Celtic. Despite the long history of the club and their tradition of success, most fans seem to associate supporting Rangers with being a loyalist and, more particularly, with not being a catholic. The vast majority of fans indulged in sectarian singing throughout the day and most faced down the news of the trouble by being as belligerently obnoxious as they possibly could be on their way home, playing up to the “no on likes us, we don’t care” stereotype.

I, like many others, found myself thoroughly embarrassed by the shambling bands of still-pissed muppets who were making the lives of ordinary people a total misery as they travelled home on Thursday, barely able to walk let alone show conductors their travel tickets. The sad news of Tommy Burns’ death only compounded a feeling that the actual result of the game was totally meaningless in the face of later events.

The media coverage of what had happened was very interesting. Thanks to rolling news, the trouble started out as “scuffles” developed into “skirmishes” and eventually became “rioting” once the tabloids had got a hold of things. BBC Manchester and the Manchester Evening News were particularly keen to ensure that no blame fell on their city and I was astonished at how quickly and how comfortably the Manchester media slipped into a means of reporting events that utilised broad nation stereotypes and a completely biased simplification of what had happened. Poor Manchester had apparently been invaded by “Drunken Glaswegians” who left their city strewn with rubbish and smelling of piss. That will happen when you invite 100,000 people to your town centre and neglect to provide bins and adequate toilet facilities though, won’t it?

As for the game itself, we were well beaten in the end. Now we have also blown the league, we’re looking at the prospect of Cup double that I would happily have taken at the start of the season. It seems the people who were saying Rangers would run out of steam were right after all. It’s totally gutting that we won’t win the league now, but disappointed as I am, I think the recriminations towards Walter Smith should be kept to a minimum. A consolidation team put together with less than Zenit paid for their captain did us proud, even as we let them down so badly.

And that sadly is what I will take away from this season. When once there was so much promise, now I feel barely able to say I’m a Rangers fan without feeling anything but shame. I reckon it’ll be a good while before I’m back at Ibrox to mix with the legions of bams who are simply not good enough for the brilliant team of gutsy players they claim to follow. At least the team adhered to the true traditions of the club throughout the season. Shame more of the fans couldn’t do the same.

Friday 16 May 2008

Never Hope Folks, Never Hope.

Well what a fucking shambles that ended up eh?

I'll be putting loads of photos and adding my thoughts on the days events a bit later as I'm just in the door, but I have to say I've rarely been as happy to get home in my life.

Suffice to say that I was one of the 199,800 supporters who had a peaceful, relatively fun day until right up at the end, but that's certainly not how Manchester treated me today. In particular, the old man who berated me for "making the streets smell like urine" as soon as he heard I had a Scottish accent was not happy when I suggested to him that the smell might just be him. This sadly was a good example of just how quickly, vigorously and happily the Manchester media and residents resorted to crude national stereotyping in a bid to absolve themselves of any blame for daftly trying to hold an event twice the size of Glastonbury in their toon centre.

Of course they were helped out considerably by a large chunk of the Rangers support who, while not violent, were out to counter matters by being as obnoxious as possible.

Anyway, like I said, full report the morra on what was a dictionary definition mixed bag of a day.

Tommy Burns 1956-2008

Scottish football's been brought back to to earth with a bump. Tommy Burns was universally liked across the football world and he'll be a sad loss to the game.

He was a tremendous servant to Celtic and played in their last great team that was full of Scots. As a manager he got a raw deal. His style of play provided many exciting, memorable games for the Parkhead faithful. Although he couldn't stop Rangers run of titles he did manage a season with only one league defeat.

There's not many former managers who would come back to the club they ran to take on a youth development role, but Burns jumped at the opportunity. He served Scotland well too. As a player he got only a handful of caps playing in an era when we had a wealth of midfielders, but as a coach he came into his own. It was a shame that the SFA didn't have the balls or the sense to give him the manager's job full time.

Parkhead this evening was a very sombre place, with hundreds of people coming and going to pay their respects. A Rangers fan received a spontaneous round of applause as he laid a shirt down and there were a few UEFA Cup final scarves and banners there too.

David Ross, who runs the Scottish League Forum has posted a nice tribute here.


There are a few more photographs of the tributes paid on my Flickr page.

Wednesday 14 May 2008

Ibrox - The Beamback


Well, first of all I have to extend my apologies to all you Rangers fans out there. I didn't think youse were that mental. But you are. I went along to Ibrox for the Beamback. What a blunder that was. I have never seen such a badly organised shambles of a major event.

By the time I got there, after work, at 4.55pm, there were, by the police's own reckoning 60-70,000 fans both inside and outside the ground. The capacity for the evening is 30,000. Rangers seem to have got the organisation of this badly wrong. On their website they suggest 'fans are encouraged to be there by 7.15pm to guarantee a spot'. The capacity must have been reached by around 2pm.

What I saw in the 25 minutes or so I spent there was utter chaos. People were changing queues when they saw that one queue seemed to be moving while the one they were in wasn't. There appeared to be far less police and stewards than on a normal matchday. Fans were stood in the queue drinking, in more than one instance making their way through full cases of lager. Now would you be allowed to do that before a normal match? Naw. So why were folk being allowed to do it here? Is drinking not still illegal on the streets of Glasgow? So why is it allowed somewhere where there should have been a strong police presence?

I saw one girl run past me with blood pouring from her head shouting to a policeman "I need someone tae look at my heed. Some cunt's just pure cracked us." Then one guy shouting at a policeman while clutching his greeting kid. There were many children there, 'a real family occasion,' according to Reporting Scotland. One guy even had a wean in a pushchair. I suppose it was easier to transport his carry-out to the ground that way. Then your man upstairs in the photo there passed me shouting, "I've been bottled."

I think panic had set in as fans realised that they possibly weren't making it into the ground to see the game. The final straw for me came when I had to alert a mounted policeman to a mass brawl that was taking place 100 yards from the Copland Road stand entrance.

I think it's obvious now this should have been an all-ticketed affair with police and stewards turning folk away at the underground. Staff at Rangers can only have assumed, much as I did, that the heed-the-baws were all away to Manchester and the folk that wanted to drink all day wouldn't want to sit in a no-alcohol environment. Wrong on both counts.

I think I learned on the day of the Scotland-Italy game that too many folk just want to use these occasions to drink all day and get up to bammery. The TV coverage of Ibrox portrayed it as a happy, family occasion, but I think their cameras were there early in the day when folk had no worries about getting in and the numbers had yet to swell to ridiculous levels.

So I'm settling down to watch the match in the house with a few Belgian beers and my free souvenir Rangers v. Zenit magazine. Let's hope Fizzy, Ronnie and everyone else down in Manchester are having a good time out in the fanzones.

More Beamback photos at my Flickr page.

The Rangers of Glasgow

Well that's Glasgow calmed down a bit eh? What with tens of thousands of bams (and Fraser) taking the short trip south to Manchester to watch Rangers in the UEFA Cup final. Actually I'm not sure if Glasgow will be mental or a ghost town tonight.

Everyone who possibly feels like it has gone Rangers daft, with shops selling out of everything but small and XXXL size replica Rangers shirts. Including perhaps this stall selling Rangers merchandise that suddenly sprung up at the top of Buchanan Street. 'Businesses' in Manchester are reportedly delivering carry-outs to fans in the street. "So that's four bottles of Buckfast to the three guys with their shirts off waving a Gregor Stevens Bishopbriggs Loyal flag."

Do we think the Teddy Bears will triumph? Something tells me that they will. However don't underestimate Zenit, who humped both Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen. Much like Celtic when they played in the same match 5 years ago Rangers are meeting an emerging European force. Porto weren't really rated back in 2003 until they gubbed Lazio in the semi. After narrowly beating Celtic they went on to lift the Champions' League trophy the following season.

There's been a lot of 'omens' written in the papers comparing Rangers chances tonight with what happened when they last lifted a European trophy in the 1972 European Cup Winners' Cup final. Such as the opposition that night being Russian. Here's another though. Next week's Champions' League final is an all-English affair featuring Manchester United and Chelsea. The last time two English clubs played each in a European final was in 1972 when Spurs beat Wolves to lift the very first UEFA Cup.

This seems to me to be as good a time as any to celebrate a former Rangers legend.

Tuesday 13 May 2008

Manchester


Well, in what could be one of the biggest mistakes of my life, I'm about to embark on a journey down to the festival of Glasgow bammery that will be the UEFA Cup Final.

We here at Pish know you want the most thorough coverage of this historic occasion so while I'll be reporting back from Manchester City centre's fanzones, Tom will be at Ibrox for the beam-back (or should that be bamback?).

No other blog will be delivering this level of coverage, probably.

Keep 'em peeled for pics and posts on what promises to be one of the strangest and potentially momentous occasions in Scottish Football history!

Popular in the US Not Popular in the UK

Here's a pretty pointless feature from The Guardian asking why Seinfeld wasn't a hit in the UK. Simply because the BBC could not give one fuck about it. Once I sat up to watch an episode, scheduled for around midnight, and I'm not making this up by the way, this did happen, only to discover that it had been cancelled to make way for shinty. That's no wacky random thing I've came up with, it was genuinely cancelled in order that BBC show highlights of a shinty match that had by the looks of it only about 30 spectators at the actual game.

I once bought an
unofficial guide to Seinfeld. As you'll see by the photo in the link it's endorsed by the BBC. That about says it all on their commitment to the show.

You could ask why a lot of US sitcoms weren't hits over here and it's all pretty much down to scheduling. In the link on top US sitcoms that I featured yesterday Night Court is included. It also appears on one of the links in that article at 18th in the list of most watched TV show finales. Why was Night Court not a hit here? It wasn't because we didn't enjoy Harry Anderson and John Larroquette's clowning, it was cos it appeared infrequently late night on BBC2 (if I mind right).

A good and popular sitcom in the US has no guarantee it's going to be a success here and that's usually because whoever imports programmes and schedules them for the terrestrial channels over here has to be convinced first. Let's not even get started on Arrested Development.

Monday 12 May 2008

Getting Comedy on the Radio

This is a fascinating article by John Pidgeon, one time music journalist and until a few years ago the man in charge of putting comedy on the radio. He tells an interesting story of how Radio 4 resisted practically everything he brought them. Astonishing when you consider that what he brought them included Flight of the Conchords and Little Britain.

What Danny and Ross had in mind was going to be hard to sell, but the Boosh were ready to go. We submitted a proposal. The network responded: "The Mighty Boosh are a million miles from Radio 4."

This is
another article on Pidgeon from 2005.

Comedy Lists

Here's a couple of lists for you.

The 50 Best US Sitcoms. Obviously there's much debate to be had here. Hard to really judge as in Britain we probably only had about half of them on the telly regularly. I however disagree completely with the low ranking of Arrested Development.

The 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies. Heavy on SNL this one.

Note: A few of the non-YouTube clips on that one can't be played in the UK.

Here's one that they missed.


Young Patton

This is from The Sound of Young America. Here's Patton Oswalt from early in his career.

Wednesday 7 May 2008

Goal of the Season 82/83

Some great goals here by some well known Scottish names in Scotsport's Goal of the Season competition from 1982/83.

Tuesday 6 May 2008

Joy Division

Yesterday I went to see the Joy Division documentary, cryptically entitled 'Joy Division'. Directed by Grant Gee the film uses a lot of archive footage to recount the story of the Manchester band.

It talks to all the main players still around including the late Tony Wilson and the ever entertaining Peter Saville. The film suffers a little from attempting to be a wee bit too arty, using a lot of cutting and chunks of text. On the whole though it's a good film that adds to the story of the band that's already out there.

One thing I really enjoyed in it was hearing John Peel's voice again. Funny, his was a voice that was always around, if not on the radio then on countless TV commercials and it was nice to hear him again in an archive recording of him introducing some Joy Division records on his programme.

It also never fails to amaze me when I hear Joy Division on film just how otherworldly their sound was. Some of the TV footage from 1979 shows just how much a band ahead of their time they really were.

Here they are in September 1979 on Something Else performing 'Transmission' and 'She's Lost Control'.

Thursday 1 May 2008

Magnificent Night For Rangers


Way back on July 31st 2007, I wrote a wee article wishing Rangers well for the coming season - it inspired some fudbar to enter an inane and entirely irrelevant comment about Scottish Independence which is sadly indicative of how some people react to the mere mention of the word "Rangers" without ever considering you could support the club without being a child-eating demon of some variety.

Anyway, here we are 18 European matches later and Rangers, with a consolidation team, have reached the UEFA Cup Final, their first European Final since 1972.

No-one who follows the club would pretend for a second that it's been pretty, but for the management team to have taken our squad of floundering duds from the depths of Paul-Le-Guen-era-hell with a relatively small budget for reconstruction and a growing injury list to a major European final is frankly a miracle, and the greatest moment I have witnessed as a Teddy Bear, (I was 3 in '72).

I've just been checking the usually bam infested message boards and the congratulations from fans of clubs all over the country have been really refreshing to seen, drowning out the usual plethora of dull minded trolls by sheer force of numbers.

Manchester here we come. Amazing.