YOMG Rehearsal Photos

Here’s a bunch of photographs from the last Glue rehearsal before tomorrow’s show.

Slow to Learn or Understand

It just gets better and better for You Owe Me Glue. You'd think with only 30 words or so The List could list us without slurring the good Glue name.

Wounded Knee @ Glasgow Project Gallery

After rehearsals last night I went to see Wounded Knee perform at the Glasgow Project Gallery. Tucked away behind the 13th Note on Osborne Street, the gallery is easily mistaken for a close.

I ignored the old style lift with its gates (though I did take it on the way down) and climbed the four flights of stairs to the venue right at the top. It was an unusual setting for a gig, being an art gallery and all.

Wounded Knee’s folky loops went down well with the reasonably sized crowd. This time round he dedicated his set to Argentina’s second goal in the 6-0 win over Serbia & Montenegro.

Glue Rehearsals

Here are some photographs from last night’s YOMG rehearsal. Only one more to go…

Thank You For Smoking

Over the weekend I saw Thank You For Smoking. Based on a novel by Christopher Buckley, the first feature film from Jason Reitman, son of Ivan, it focuses on Nick Naylor, a lobbysist for the tobacco industry.

Aaron Eckhart is an actor I’ve liked since In The Company of Men. He plays the character as a good guy aware of his flaws. He never comes over as dislikeable no matter how much his actions may be.

It’s for this reason that you never feel that a syrupy redemption is on the cards. As easily could be in this type of film.

There is a strong support cast

It says a few things about debate and spin. There’s a nice scene where Naylor discusses with his son, what is the better flavour of ice cream – chocolate or vanilla. It’s a clever dissection of debate, as Naylor doesn’t prove that vanilla is the best flavour, but disproves that chocolate is.

There is a strong supporting cast with JK Simmons, Robert Duvall, William H. Macy and a hilarious Rob Lowe as a Japanese obsessed movie producer.

It’s a solid satire, well worth seeing.

I’ve just discovered that Eckhart will play Sgt. Lee Blanchard in the film of The Black Dahlia. I posted a rant about this production a while ago. However this changes my stance on it as Eclkhart was one of the actors I always said could play that role. (The others being Russell Crowe and Eric Bana). In an ideal world I would have Edward Norton as Bucky Bleichert.

It's Chappelle

Here’s a review of a recent Dave Chappelle show in San Francisco. It’s more of a summary than a review.

Theatre Glue

Look at Theatre Glue. This is from the ents24 listing.

No Press is Bad Press - Unless you're the Guy with the Sportcoat Over Your Head Being Lead From the Courthouse

Talking Pish's favourite comedian Doug Stanhope recently got himself into a lot of bother over at the comedy festival in Kilkenny.

He was booed off stage after making jokes about the changes to Ireland's rape laws.

The papers quoted him as saying that Irish women were 'too ugly to rape'. What he states he actually said was...

The next night I ventured - on the issue of one making an "honest mistake" and having intercourse with someone you beleived to be of legal age - was that most of the women there were such misshapen pigs, that if you actually were to fuck them, you would be more concerned about what species they were and that you wouldn't ever consider how old they were until days later when - still staring at it - you'd wonder "How long can one of these live?"

He tells the whole story on his MySpace.

From the moment I stepped off the plane, you would have thought that rogue pedophile cells had flown hijacked planes into the asses of Ireland's innocent youth.

To my great fortune, this segued perfetly into my favorite new material. With all the Myspace/child predator fear-mongering over here in the U.S., it didn't take much coffee to make the two into one long rant about people's over-reactions and delusions to the risk of their child taking unwanted cock.

Later...

I'm going to suggest that you watch Later... tonight (who am I kidding? No one is reading this in the evening) simply because The Fratellis are on it.

They took a mild pounding in the comments over at TPID and to be honest I've never heard them, though they do have a MySpace page.

I plug their appearance simply because singer Jon Fratelli has been to see You Owe Me Glue. Apparently he thought it was really funny. I guess I'll watch (or tape it at least) and post my review.

EDIT: I thought they were all right. Perfectly catchy songs, though I could see why some folk will say they've heard it all before.

I’m Not Moved by This. Woodward

I’ll try to keep sticking in a non-football post or two to balance out Fizzy’s World Cup Fever.

This is a blog by Peter Mehlman who wrote many great episodes of Seinfeld. It is an account of his time as a cub reporter at the Washington Post. In particular it deals with him trying to impress Bob Woodward.

It also takes in the Janet Cooke controversy and as it was written several months ago it relates to this event.

Woof!

What a performance there by Argentina eh?

6-0 against a team who conceded just one goal in qualifying.

Holland v Ivory Coast next…..mmm…..potentially tasty.

And what about England last night? Best team in a generation? I think not. They will be destroyed in the latter stages.

Perhaps even by Ecuador, who looked more mobile, more solid at the back and more dangerous up front than Sven’s under-performing toothless lions.

You Gonna Ask That Question With Shades On?

This was a story that made me laugh on The Daily Show last night. Basically President Bush mocked a reporter for wearing shades. The reporter is legally blind. As Jon Stewart brilliantly added though, “To be fair to the President…he doesn’t give a f***”.

Bush has now apologised.

Fizzy Has His Say

Congratulations to me on getting an email published on the Rangers website.

It’s nothing spectacular, I’m just on asking the club to have a look at buying Scott Brown of Hibs.

Since you need a pass to view the site, click on the picture to enjoy the magic in full.

I know this is of no interest to anyone really, I was just chuffed that once again, Rangers have looked to me for some advice.

If you have a trawl about in the archives, you’ll find a post Tom put up about how I once appeared on RTV, which is basically a Rangers shopping channel interspersed with comment from fans and players.

I went on to name my “all time Rangers 11”. And was the best looking guy on the show.

No, really.

Glue Rehearsals

Preparations for the latest You Owe Me Glue are as up in the air as usual. We should be used to being under rehearsed by now though.

Anyway here’s a few photographs from last night. Mainly from the sketch Fat and Stupid Two.

I Crush Your Head

I found this on Yewknee, I thought I'd post it here to celebrate my Kids in the Hall season 4 DVD finally arriving in the post, after 4 months on order.

Government Grants Torturers Charter

Well done the Government once again.

In denying 3 Britons the right to sue Saudi Arabian “officials” who tortured them in order to gain confessions for crimes they never committed, they have basically told every state who has something to put on the table “It’s ok to imprison and torture our citizens”.

To give this story some context, these guys were convicted of a series of bombings in 2002. The Saudis said they were part of an illegal alcohol supply turf war. This was a complete fabrication, a cover up for a Government who didn’t want to admit that al-Qaeda were active within its borders.

It has been independently confirmed that all 3 Britons and a Canadian were tortured in a variety of ways including sleep deprivation, beatings and being force-fed drugs.

Unable to get any other kind of justice and faced with a government unwilling even to criticise it’s oil-rich buddy, the victims of this horrific series of events were granted leave to sue the men who tortured them by the Court of Appeal in 2004.

Now the Law Lords and the Government have over-turned that decision, saying the “officials” are protected by state immunity.

So rather than stand up for the rights of it’s own citizens or for any kind of justice, the Government have sided with one of the world’s most evil regimes, simply because it has lots of oil.

A disgusting state of affairs, and everyone involved on the side of our Government should be thoroughly ashamed.

Not that they will be – the country now appears to be run by people who are not only clueless but also gutless, utterly devoid of conscience and of any sensibly applicable idea of what is right and wrong.

Elektrotherapy

Here’s a shout out to John Kennedy and his radio show. First a mention in today’s Metro, now one on Talking Pish. Can it get any better for you John?

John’s show Elektrotherapy is on The Shed Crew Dot Com and here’s Elektrotherapy’s own site.

The Great DAB Con and the World Cup Liars

My lovely wee sister spend what appears to have been a lot of money on a gift for my birthday, a DAB radio so I could listen to the World Cup. The problem?

DAB Radio, which has been financed in large part by the licence payer, just doesn’t work.

Trying to listen to the match last night on my way home from work ranked pretty high on the frustrateometer, remarkable when you consider just how calm and unflappable I normally am.

For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of trying to listen to the radio with one of these daft things, it’s sort of like being broadcast to by Norman Collier, as it constantly cuts out and breaks up as well as producing a range of painful and very annoying sonic screams and screeches of interference on a regular basis.

I discover on investigating the invention that instead of actually improving the ability of the radio signal to travel around obstacles such as buildings or the roof of your enclosed space, it’s actually worse at doing that than an analogue signal, so essentially, you have an expensive technological “development” that is actually less effective in practical terms then the technology we already had.

I had always been under the impression that technological “advances” were mean to be better than whatever already existed but apparently I was wrong.

The BBC and their partners have basically replaced surgery and anaesthesia with a saw and a bottle of whiskey and not only that. Having had us pay for the development of this rubbish technology, they now want to flog us virtually useless radios at £30-£70 a pop. Fucking scandalous.

And while on the subject of Radio, I would just like to expose Five Live and Talk Sport as big, fat liars.

“…Every World Cup match live…” is the proud boast of both stations. Except it’s pish.

Both stations have failed to cover all the matches live online, which, given the fact that my fucking rubbish utterly useless DAB radio doesn’t get a signal in my place of work, was my only means of tuning into the game.

So there’s another instance of The BBC just knowingly leaving licence payers in the lurch. And an example of how truly shit the UK’s home of borderline racist football comment is as well.

Old Ground Covered, New Ground Broken

Australia broke their World Cup scoring duck last night as a very generous Japan surrendered three late goals to Everton’s Tim Cahill and striker John Aloisi. The euphoria was such that it even glossed over the fact that Cahill isn’t Australian – a technicality the Samoan-born player wasn’t dwelling on during the wild celebrations.

Great stuff and a great match, but ohhhhhh, Japan! What about that defending?

Cahill’s first was the result of a 10 yard dash from the line by the Japanese keeper who managed to get precisely zero on the ball, a curious goalkeeping tactic which is fast becoming a feature of the tournament. For Cahill’s second, he was allowed three unhampered touches 18 yards from goal. For Aloisi’s goal, the defending was stunningly ineffectual, allowing a not-that-great striker to waltz Zindane-like into the box as if he had pre-paid tickets.

The irony here is that Japan had chance after chance at 1-0 to put the Aussies away, and will have to vastly improve to take anything off Croatia. For Australia, it’s bring on Brazil.

While the Czechs proved to be the classiest looking side of the competition so far with three terrific goals against the USA, it was the Italy v Ghana match that proved the most interesting encounter of the day.

Ghana looked excellent in the first half, but ran out of steam in the second, leaving only the class of Michael Essien to shine through. Italy on the other hand were solid if less than ruthless in front of goal.

I was disappointed firstly that Lippi left Alessandro Del Piero out of the side, then with Del Piero himself and his lacklustre performance once he did appear, albeit as a late substitute.

Given the win, obviously no-one is going to argue with Lippi’s tactics (except me) but you’d think the man who first gave Del Piero a game would realise just what the great man can do for his side.

Without Del Piero, Italy rely heavily on Totti, who played behind the front two last night, leaving Italy with a very exploitable narrow middle three. With Del Piero in for the largely ineffective Gillardino, you’d have the possibility of something special, plus a guy who gets you free kicks all around the box thanks to his control and ability to hold off defenders.

Perhaps his omission has something to do with his association with the Italian tragedy of 2000. With seconds to go, Del Piero looked a dead cert to take a glorious chance to make Italy European champions. Instead, he missed and France came back to win 2-1. In some ways, despite further domestic success with Juventus, Del Piero’s reputation has never really recovered. I however, feel his redemption may come in this tournament.

Which is a round about way of saying “Italy are Fizzy’s dark horse for the cup”.

Brazil debut today, which reminds me of something. A few years ago, an article I had written was rejected by "When Saturday Comes" for talking about things that had already been covered. It was an entirely fair point.

How refreshing it was then to read about how Brazil, with their close ties to Nike and other corporate sponsors, were not the peoples champions they make themselves out to be for at least the tenth time in some journalistic form in the latest issue of WSC.

Personal bitterness aside, I think making this rather obvious point is churlish to say the least. Of all the teams at the World Cup, the Brazilians are the ones most aware of their duty to entertain, the players whose financial success we begrudge the least.

Yes, the Brazilian stars are ridiculously wealthy. Yes the team is a brand, a vastly powerful marketing tool. But they are not merely thus, they are a wonderful football team, capable of breathtaking skill and vastly entertaining play, which is why they are so valuable to marketers in the first place.

I’m no fan of corporations or their lackeys but at least these constructed “peoples champions” actually give something to the people; a sense of magical possibility that even the likes of Nike cannot corrupt.

The Fizzy BBQ

To celebrate his birthday, his new house and the World Cup Fizzy held a barbecue on Saturday. As you can see by the photographs there was meat aplenty, enjoyed by all.

World Cup Musings

He’s only 22, going bald and has already battled testicular cancer. Good thing that Arjen Robben’s misfortunes in life have been offset by the fact that he earns wagon-loads of cash at Chelsea and is looking already like one of the stars of the World Cup.

A smashing goal and fleet-footed performance by the former PSV winger was enough to see off Serbia yesterday, even it did expose the fact that Holland will be heavily reliant on him if they are to seriously threaten in the latter stages.

Of the other opening matches, Riquelme of Argentina Toure of the Ivory Coast and Zinha of Mexico have looked the most composed and creative players, while Figo rolled back the years in last nights match against a plucky Angola side.

With France, Italy, Brazil the Czech Republic and Spain still to get started, it’s obviously too early to pass conclusive comment on the way the Cup is shaping up.

But I think it’s fair to say we have seen the usual World Cup mixture of good, bad and indifferent in terms of the matches so far.

One refreshing point has been the standard of refereeing, which has so far been commendable.

I’m still a little bit saddened by the fact that FIFA reckon players shouldn’t be allowed to tackle one another anymore, but to be fair, the refs have largely ignored the diving, booked the imaginary card flashing moaners and let the games flow where possible.

They’ve also got one or two decisions glaringly wrong; another element of the game I’d hate to see eradicated by technology. Injustice provides great drama and is also a great motivator.

Anyway, a mixed bag so far as you’d expect and 3 more interesting if not mouth-watering games today.