Adventures In Awesome: Want! Now! (1)

Note the (1) after the title of this post. I get the feeling I'm going to be doing this a lot, so totally plugged into the consumerist mindset am I. Every so often I rail against it, that ever-present unblinking pyramid eye that represents The Market, a monolithic soul-crushing generator of injustice every bit as invisible and dependent upon blind, unquestioning belief as all the myriad Sky-Gods of religion, and I worry that I'm nothing more than a brain-washed lever-pusher whose interaction with the economic machine amounts to little more than me chipping away at my own soul and handing over fragments of myself in exchange for fleeting moments of joy. It makes me sick to my guts. And then Activision announce (a month ago, but hey, I've been busy) they're releasing Guitar Hero for the DS, and look at the plastic rhythm-game pretty! ::enthusiastically pushes lever::


So purty! It will also include a special stylus pick to strum the screen, and other features include autograph signing in mid-song and using the mic to blow out onstage fires. And yes, it's all gimmicky surface stylings on a simple rhythm game, but it's the inventive use of the unique features of the DS that make it such a desirable object. The track line-up isn't announced yet (Nirvana and OK Go have been suggested, but that might be misreporting), and there will only be 20 songs, but I'm happy. I just hope the Guitar Grip peripheral fits into the clunky old non-Lite DS I have.

One thing I especially love about this is that it could be released at about the same time MTV Games finally releases the European version of Rock Band. Now, I'm angry that Activision have cynically blocked the patch that allows Guitar Hero peripherals to be used with Rock Band, and it's often little shitty manouevres like that that make me doubt the logic of allowing The Market to do what it wants. I mean, if the Market is the democracy-generating, self-regulating, benevolent and incorruptible God of Love that credulous evangelists like Thomas Friedman want you to think it is, how can Activision's mean-spirited anti-consumer move be good for anyone other than Activision's shareholders? Consumers get shafted, and somewhere in the world some corporate butt-nubbin gets to buy himself a brand new golf bag. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. Here is an accurate visual representation of the actual relationship between The Market and the consumer.


And yet, I can't help but congratulate Activision on possibly spoiling MTV Games' rollout by bringing out a sensibly priced mini-alternative to Rock Band Europe, which is sickeningly, prohibitively, unfairly expensive. Even with Amazon knocking the price down, it's £40 for the game, and £100 for the peripherals (without Amazon's reductions, that's an RRP of £180!). That was the game I've been looking forward to most. Even more so than Lego Indiana Jones, Gears of War 2, Ninja Gaiden 2, Okami for Wii, and Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution put together. Even more so than the summer cinema releases that make me so crazy with anticipation. However, I think I'll pass. In the US the same game costs $148 (Amazon price). Convert the bucks to quids, and you're looking at £75.14 (£86.31 if you go by the RRP). Here is an accurate visual representation of the actual relationship between MTV Games and my soul's finger.


Thanks for the assist, Johnny! I will say this, though. Harmonix, thank you a million times over for inventing these magnificent games that have given me and Canyon and many guests to our home so much joy (and yeah, your interpretations of the game are more fluid and intuitive than Neversoft's commendable but slightly inferior adaptation), but why, how, why, why, why, how, why?!??!!!?! Is it just VAT? Is that responsible for a £100 mark-up? How can that be possible? I tell you, if there was a computer game made where the player has to throw rattles out of prams, I would buy that instead as a protest. Instead, Activision get a few more of my pounds. Guitar Hero On Tour FTW!

(P.S. Sorry about linking to that appalling book earlier. If you followed that link and were tempted to buy that inept pamphlet, ignore that, go here and do your brain a favour by buying Thomas Frank's One Market Under God.


It'll change your perception of the world for the better.)

Things That Have Occurred To Us While Watching Season Five Of 24 (2 - 4)

Our headlong rush through the fifth season of 24 has been partially curtailed now shows are returning to air (CSI, The Office, 30 Rock, and Battlestar Galactica are all back), but we're still watching it and still loving it. More observations follow thusly...

2. Curtis is the black David Puddy.

With Tony out of action and Jack having to deal with the usual bureaucratic nonsense, the role of second-stringer grunt goes to Curtis Manning, played by Roger R. Cross. As far as we've seen in season five he hasn't had much to do other than run around with a nerve gas canister and arrest jerkoff hobbit/bureaucrat Lynn McGill. However, it was at the moment that he was asked to do that by Audrey Raines that we realised that his peculiar stilted line readings and intense facial expressions reminded us of David Puddy from Seinfeld. He has the same build, the same monolithic presence; he even talks in monosyllables!



You got a question...you ask the 8-ball!

3. I dread the non-existent tolling of the silent clock.

I couldn't care less about Edgar. We already have Chloe, who is one of the ten best characters on TV right now, so why have someone else as socially inept as Chloe, except not as good at his job as she is, not to mention far less entertaining? It was a total waste of a spot on the regular cast, and I couldn't understand why he was such a popular character.

In season five Edgar is killed in the middle of a nerve gas attack on CTU headquarters (which is possibly the most vulnerable place on earth, having been breached numerous times by now, not to mention employing more moles and terrorists than the International College of Terroristics and Molery at the height of its popularity). This plot development was no surprise. I knew about Edgar's death on the day after it originally aired in the US as Yahoo! News had a big feature on their front page about it. I couldn't believe there was such an outcry over a character that had never seemed that important or popular, but apparently people were really shocked by it.

Of course, when I saw it, my cynicism evaporated. His death was horrible, and I was a bit peeved about it, but the silent clock at the end got to me anyway. It did when Teri Bauer died, and when Ryan Chappelle died, and it happened again here. I totally didn't cry, though! I just got all choked up and sad, that's all. It's totally different!

That said, if Miles Papazian, backboneless hyper-bureaucrat, weaselly tattle-tale, and pencil-pushing world champion were to die heroically and get the silent clock treatment (doubtful, as he is to heroism what Jack Bauer is to risk-averse middle-management), I would use those few seconds to dance a jig in honour of his long-delayed demise. Die, you feeble unpopular geek, die!!!

4. Was the existence of Tony's soul patch a directive from former producer Joel Surnow?

One of the many many reasons for Canyon's apathy toward the magnificent he-man known as the Tonytron 5000 Heroismbot is the existence of the soul patch, which appeared on and off over the past few seasons. But why is it there at all? What was the inspiration? Maybe show creator Joel Surnow knows.

Surnow is, of course, the man responsible for creating the polar opposite of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in that it was right-wing, unfunny, mean-spirited, lifeless, desperate, and a blatant propaganda tool borne of the paranoid, ossified, humanity-hating, addled mindset of the extremist conservative anti-democratic media machine that is Fox News, whereas The Daily Show has Rob Riggle, John Hodgman and Samantha Bea and therefore wins booyah! That show, The ½ Hour News Hour, failed. Badly. Any Conservatives or Republicans who stumble across this blog will be incensed by this, and might insult us in comments and then obsessively come back over and over and over to check to see if we've taken the bait, but humour is subjective, and subjectively (in other words, in my humble opinion) this show sucked. Actually, if I'm being honest, it sucked objectively as well. There's an equation that proves it. The ½ Hour News Hour is the Platonic ideal of suckage that casts the shadow onto the wall of the cave that we recognise as the watered-down version of suckage that we use to describe things like Rob Cohen movies or Judd Winick comics.

What has this bitchery to do with 24 and the soul patch? Nothing. I just like remembering that Fox News tried to be funny and didn't even understand the concept. Don't believe me? Watch this, if you can get past the opening crawl, which screams, "IMMINENT, CATACLYSMIC ÜBER-FAIL FOR THE AGES!" so powerfully it throbs like an absess under a wisdom tooth.



Anyway, enough of the schadenfreude. I will add that Surnow has left 24 in the hands of Howard Gordon (and probably David Fury), so we don't have to think about him anymore, unless he creates another compelling action show (that features a lot less torture, please). Bye Surnow. Don't let the nerve gas canister hit you in the ass on the way out.

So, we're still making our way through, and there are more things occurring to me as we go along. This will predictably involve Robocop references. Prepare yourselves.

Hipster Douchebag Music Recommendation Of The Week: "Slow Show" by The National

Actually that headline should probably read "Of The Fortnight", considering how I only got three weeks in before missing a week. Oops. Listen, I'm busy reading Zadie Smith and going to lectures by Elizabeth Wurtzel and then hanging out in coffee shops eating tiramisu; I don't always have time to sit here and post while redoing my dreads. (Actually I'm confusing myself with Ellen Page's character in Hard Candy, which we just watched. It was ball-slicingly brilliant!)

This week's selection is "Slow Show" by The National. Any of you Chuck or One Tree Hill watchers out there have probably already heard this song, as apparently it's been on both shows (as well as being used incessantly by the BBC promo department), which pisses me off a bit. Not because I don't like the shows (okay, not just because -- I know Chuck is bad by firsthand knowledge; One Tree Hill is just bad by reputation) but because this always happens to me. I seem to have an uncanny ability to hear of a singer or band just before the producers of TV shows and commercials do, and for maybe a few months I think I'm relatively alone in knowing the music, but my illusions are soon shattered when I hear the songs on CSI: Miami commercials (Antony and the Johnsons' heartbreakingly beautiful song "Hope There's Someone" was played over images of our redheaded hero saving children from terrorist Nazi clowns or whatever the hell was going on that week, and oh god I hope Antony Hegarty feels good about himself).

I don't know whether to be depressed at the way corporations co-opt "cool" bands to get themselves a bit of credibility (not that all TV shows are about corporate interests -- but in the case of the above TV shows, they were certainly trying to appear "down with the kids" and "jiggy wit' it" and "hep to that style, daddio"), or whether it's good that bands that are probably struggling financially get themselves more exposure and more fans. A bit of both, I suppose. I suppose it also means that the music the bands are making is more appealing to the masses than people assume, which can only be a good thing, really. I absolutely love a lot of mindless Top 40 pop music -- I'll confess here that a few years ago I could not stop playing Hilary Duff's "So Yesterday", which probably disqualifies me from douchebaggery entirely -- but it's really good to see when actually properly thoughtful and complex music gets popular. Of course, anything that is critically respected at first usually ends up suffering a massive backlash (see: Coldplay), but them's the breaks, I guess.

At any rate, here's the best video I could find -- set to Jean-Luc Godard's "Masculine-Feminine" because...well, just read the poster's description. The song starts about 30 seconds in.



I really like the rest of the album (Boxer), though I don't love it completely, and I haven't had the opportunity to listen to the rest of The National's output. But I adore this song. There's something addictive about the way it builds -- becoming (slightly) faster and peppier as the initially morose lyrics give way to cautious optimism (or is it?? Yes, it probably is).

Matt Berninger's voice would make the aforementioned "So Yesterday" sound like a funeral dirge, I have to admit, but the song has a self-deprecating quality even as it becomes more hopeful. (I think comparisons to Stuart Staples of the Tindersticks are quite apt -- the bands are even on the same label -- but I think Berninger has a bit less of a muffled subway announcer's drone. Though I may just feel this way because I had to sit through a Tindersticks concert of an album I didn't like one song on. Damn you, Admiral!!) [Again with the Tindersticks hatred? I'm cut to the core of my flamenco-tinged fandom. Excuse me while I depart in sadness, and walk through the rain to the nearest sleazy bar, where I will smoke a cigarette, dolefully drink whiskey, and stare in heartbreak at a picture of Jacques Brel behind the bar - Neck] It starts out with the words that probably go through every introvert's brain at a party:

Standing at the punch table swallowing punch
can’t pay attention to the sound of anyone
a little more stupid, a little more scared
every minute more unprepared

I made a mistake in my life today
everything I love gets lost in drawers
I want to start over, I want to be winning
way out of sync from the beginning

But as soon as we think that the singer's going to become more depressed as the song goes on, berating himself more and more, we get this sudden ray of hope for the chorus:

I wanna hurry home to you
put on a slow, dumb show for you
and crack you up
so you can put a blue ribbon on my brain
god I’m very, very frightening
I’ll overdo it

There's such self-hatred in the lyrics that they're hard to hear -- he thinks he'll even disappoint the person who loves him -- but there's hope and relief in them, too, at the knowledge that this person, at least, will give him some comfort. (Or there's cowardly wish to escape, but I prefer the former.) The second verse is more self-recrimination, and the second chorus more wishing that he were at home with his lover, but this time a little faster and lighter.

Then the song shifts, and we hear the mournful yet weirdly hopeful sound of an accordion -- which to me is the hook of the song -- and then a piano riff that will make you instantly recognize the song the next time you hear it, and some even more poignant lyrics:

You know I dreamed about you
for twenty-nine years before I saw you
You know I dreamed about you
I missed you for
for twenty-nine years

Which pretty much breaks your heart. It's a love song about depression, or perhaps even about someone who's loved unrequitedly for years. Either way it's simultaneously depressing and hopeful (have I said that already?), and that's all you can really ask for in a song. I'll be listening to this one for years.

If You Want To Destroy My Sweater

Not that Shades Of Caruso is eating itself or anything, but this post owes its existence to something Admiral Neck posted recently. When he described The Cardigans as “Masticator’s favourite band”, I realised – perhaps for the first time – that they indeed were that very thing. My most favouritest band in the whole world. I had been debating whether or not to buy their new Best Of album and this made my mind up.

There are three types of “best of” albums. The first is a selection of hits for general consumption, aimed perhaps at the casual fan, someone who might not have all the albums, or who might have liked the singles but never got around to the long-players. This is the preserve of the most famous acts, those whose very name sells the album. Then there’s that recent-ish phenomenon, the contractual-obligation best-of album, including all the group’s hits and a sneaky couple of non-hits – new tracks to make the fans who do own the albums fork out for the new product. (Presumably, now that those fans can just download the new tracks, this type is obsolescent at best.)

The third is what you might call the “document” best-of album and this is strictly for the fans. Oh sure, a person might find him or herself humming, say, “Lovefool” one day and think, “Dang, I sure do like that song! I expect that band wrote some other winners in their time. I wonder if there’s any kind of greatest hits collection available!” Well and good. But this type of record is not designed to win new fans: the tracks are not artfully ordered into a pleasing sequence, and the biggest hits are not packed at the front to catch the attention of browsers. It’s simply a chronological history of the band, with a handful of the most popular tracks from each album.

Best Of The Cardigans belongs in this category. I still didn’t need to own it, of course – I could have created my own Best Of The Cardigans CD or playlist, if I wasn’t bothered about artwork and liner notes. But it pleased me that the band had taken time to create what they saw as the definitive record of their career, from the early cheeriness of Emmerdale and Life to the recent introspections of Super Extra Gravity, and omitted sales-grabbing new tracks. This was an album for me. I would have felt bad had I not bought it.

The first, mid-1990s Cardigans recordings are perky. Boy, are they ever perky. It would not be a stretch to say they are all about the perky. When I first fell for the band at university, my girlfriend sniffed that she found them altogether too twee and upbeat (although she later admitted that her antipathy was largely a response to my saying that Pavement sounded like Phil Collins). I certainly understood this point of view, especially as a 19-year-old wallowing in grungey gloom, but I found it impossible to resist the buoyant likes of “Rise and Shine”, “Sick and Tired” and “Carnival”:



The best-of collection includes five tracks from the UK release of Life (1995), with “After All…” and “Daddy’s Car” alongside their three breakout hits. (The British version was a mixture of tracks from the Swedish releases Emmerdale [1994] and Life.) The whirling, flutey “Gordon’s Gardenparty” would have been my pick, but “Daddy’s Car” is an apposite choice for the Best Of – as the liner notes say, the band has now played every place mentioned in the flight-of-fancy chorus, which they wrote while wielding a map of Europe and a pin:

From Luxembourg to Rome
From Berlin to the moon
From Paris to Lausanne
From Athens to the sun
Our car became a spacecraft
Flashing through the world
Crashed down in Amsterdam

Although Life made the Cardigans stars in Europe and Japan, it was First Band On The Moon (1996) that broke out in America and gave the band their only US hit, “Lovefool”. I’ve always thought of FBOTM as the sound of a hesitant band, a band that wants to take a new direction but isn’t sure how to get there. Certainly the likes of “Been It” and “Losers”, the other tracks mined from this period, show a marked decline in perkiness from the likes of “Rise and Shine”:

Look at all these losers
You find them everywhere
They’re fucked up and annoying
But somehow you seem to care
It’s easier to laugh
But something makes you stick around
You can’t watch from above
And keep your ten toes in the sand

You wish that you were special
I’m just like you

Close your eyes
That’ll be the day you’ll find those lies
Fold your ears
That’ll be the day that you will hear

“Lovefool” itself is not the sunshine-charged bundle of fun its reputation might suggest. The aggressively infectious melody may be seductive, but “Dear, I fear we’re facing a problem/You love me no longer, I know” isn’t exactly “I just called to say I love you”. The song partly owed its success to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and its lovers sound as doomed as young Signor Montague and that Capulet lass. Here’s the little-seen – in the US at least – DiSproutface-free version of the video for “Lovefool”:



Melancholy a-go-go, I think you’ll agree, but the song’s undeniably upbeat tune – as well as the appearance of “Carnival” on the soundtrack of another movie around that time, Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery – cemented the band’s status. Although First Band On The Moon went platinum in the US and sold a more than respectable 2.5 million worldwide, its failure to provide a suitably radio-friendly follow-up to “Lovefool” meant the US, in particular, came to see the Cardigans as a one-perky-hit wonder.

It was the next album, Gran Turismo (1998), that really switched me on to how exciting the Cardigans could be. (Strangely, the progression on Best Of The Cardigans is interrupted here by the inclusion of “War”, their contribution to the soundtrack of A Life Less Ordinary. A fine song, but it belongs with neither the haunted torchsongs of First Band On The Moon nor the sparkly, electrified Gran Turismo. When tracks are commissioned for film soundtracks the desires of the filmmakers naturally supersede those of the band, which means that you inevitably end up with something that sounds a bit like a James Bond theme. The bonus disc – of which more later – includes an earlier, rejected version of “War” to illustrate this, so I guess this appears on the main disc to avoid a clash.)

Almost every Cardigans album has a terrific lead single and Gran Turismo’s is the best of them all. Armed with what the band cheerfully admit is a “slightly annoying” riff, “My Favourite Game” stormed every chart in the world and was No. 1 absolutely everywhere. Unfortunately that was only in my head. To this day I don’t understand why “My Favourite Game” was not the global smash that made the Cardigans gigantenormohuge. Surely it can’t be because the video was – ludicrously – banned by American MTV for encouraging dangerous driving.



This might still be my favourite Cardigans song. Peter Svensson’s irresistible riff, the relentless, chugging rhythm (it’s one of the only Cardigans records you can dance to), the playfulness, Nina Persson’s off-kilter despair in the line “My heart is black and my body is blue”. I especially like the way it inverted (subverted?) virtually every rock song made in the 1990s by having a loud verse and a quiet chorus.

The second single, “Erase/Rewind”, a haughty, knowing slice of pure pop, was a UK top 10 hit (somewhat unbelievably, “My Favourite Game” made it only to No. 14) and the band also include the anthemic live favourite “Hanging Around” and the woozy gospel of “Higher” on Best Of The Cardigans. It’s a shame there’s no room for album opener “Paralyzed”, with its stark warning of the vertiginous emotional turmoil to come on Gran Turismo:

This is where your sanity gives in
And love begins
Never lose your grip, don’t trip, don’t fall
You’ll lose it all
The sweetest way to die...

But I guess it’s too much of an opener to be stuck in the middle of the tracklisting. I also have an enduring crush on the odd and sombre “Junk Of The Hearts”, but these four tracks are a fine sample of the Gran Turismo period.

After a hiatus, during which Persson released a country-tinged, Mark Linkous-assisted solo album as A Camp, came Long Gone Before Daylight (2002). For this record, the Cardigans dispensed with the services of their longtime producer Tore Johansson and co-produced the album themselves alongside Per Sunding. The LGBD tracks here are kicked off by “For What It’s Worth”, which is a perfectly pleasant ballad but without doubt their weakest lead single. This is compensated by the follow-up singles, the soaring “You’re The Storm” and the penetrating “Live And Learn” – the latter, with its frank, insightful lyrics, being the closest the band came to a US hit since “Lovefool” when it cropped up on Grey’s Anatomy.

Also included is “Communication”, which was never a single but was voted best Cardigans song of all time by a Swedish radio poll, it says here. It’s certainly one of their best ballads – the liner notes say it’s the song Svensson is most proud of writing – and I’d like to think that it received such high Scandinavian approval because its lyrics crystallise what so much of the Cardigans’ output is about: what Raymond Carver might call What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Love.

For 27 years I’ve been trying
To believe and confide in
Different people I found
Some of them got closer than others
And some wouldn’t even bother
And then you came around

I didn’t really know what to call you
You didn’t know me at all
But I was happy to explain
I never really knew how to move you
So I tried to intrude through
The little holes in your veins
And I saw you

But that’s not an invitation
That’s all I get
If this is communication
I disconnect
I’ve seen you, I know you
But I don’t know how to connect
So I disconnect

The difficulty of communicating with others, even – or especially – those we know intimately, has always been a theme of Persson’s lyrics. Even in the early, supposedly perky days – “I will never know/’Cause you will never show”; “Love me, love me, say that you love me/Fool me, fool me, go on and fool me” – this ironic inspiration has sparked much of her most memorable writing. Long Gone Before Daylight is also the album on which Persson’s voice truly comes into its own. Perhaps encouraged by her solo project or by the change of producer, she finds an extraordinary timbre on these songs – rich, plaintive, occasionally tremulous, somehow more resonant, with none of the brittleness heard around the time of First Band On The Moon.

Frankly the band could have picked any quartet of tracks from Long Gone Before Daylight and the choice would have delighted me. Really, though, “For What It’s Worth” should have been replaced by “Please Sister” with its heartbreaking chorus, the shimmering “Lead Me Into The Night” or, above all, “And Then You Kissed Me”, surely the centrepiece of the whole record. Long Gone Before Daylight is the quintessential Cardigans album. It sold fewer than one-sixth the number of copies that Gran Turismo had.

It was lucky, then, that the band were given the opportunity to make Super Extra Gravity (2005), which reunited them with Johansson. In case you hadn’t realised how much the Cardigans had changed in 10 years, the cover of Super Extra Gravity – while echoing that of Life – made it clear.


In many ways a twin to LGBD, not least because it too showed disappointing sales, Super Extra Gravity easily bettered it for a lead single with “I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer”, which has another one of those wonderfully irritating riffs, mordantly witty lyrics, and a terrifically stylish video.



It was, emphatically, a massive flop. Why? I rather suspect that the band have been handicapped by finally finding their groove. The last two albums might have been their best, but unlike “Carnival” and “Lovefool” their stirring, polished pop and sweetly unsettling ballads are just not considered radio-friendly enough. I think I heard “…Fine Wine” on the radio once, and never saw the video on TV – and surely, even if they’re not ideal for radio, the classic line-up of one hot chick and four Sleeperblokes has always been telly gold. Gold! But no. The planned second single “Diamonds (Don’t Blame Your Daughter)”, a lovely song with spiky lyrics about taking responsibility for your own life, was semi-cancelled in the UK (released only as a download); “Godspell”, with excoriating Persson lyrics that Richard Dawkins would fully endorse, could have been one of the band’s best singles but never even made it out of the blocks.

Disc one ends with a cover of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down The House”, a collaboration with Tom Jones that was the best thing on his mainly godawful duets album Reload. I’m fond of it, but like “War” it doesn’t fit with the rest of the disc and would have been better on disc two. The bonus disc is full of B-sides, outtakes and oddities, and for the non-musician it gives a real insight into how albums are made. I’m not naïve enough to think that a band write 12 songs, go into a studio, record them and – hey presto! – here’s your new album, but I did tend to assume that a band would know roughly how a given song would sound while they were writing it.

The various disorienting but weirdly familiar demo versions and “first tries” here put me straight: “After All…”, “Losers”, “War”, “(If You Were) Less Like Me” which became Super Extra Gravity’s “Good Morning Joan”. An early, noodling instrumental called “Laika” eventually evolved into “Junk Of The Hearts” and there are two iterations of “Hold Me”, one of which appeared on Long Gone Before Daylight as a UK/US bonus track. There’s also a sweetly revealing anecdote in the liner notes about how drummer Bengt Lagerberg insisted that “Give Me Your Eyes” should not only be included on Super Extra Gravity but should be the first single, contrary to the votes of all his evidently amused bandmates.

Persson said in a recent interview that the Cardigans have been offered the opportunity to release a best-of album previously, but always had enough material to refuse in favour of making a new album. This time they didn’t. With the band “taking time off” and Persson working on a new A Camp record, there’s an obvious conclusion to draw. I’ve tried to fool myself into thinking that they’ve peaked, and that if they didn’t release any more material I wouldn’t mind too much, but without success. Not only do I hope they’re around for years to come, I hope they come up with the new “Lovefool”, another huge global hit that belatedly elevates them to superstar status. Don’t tell me they don’t deserve it.

A Stone Crashes Through The Oval Office Window

Baffling though it is, rumours that Oliver Stone's next movie would be about a drunk, obnoxious George W. Bush acting like a jerk in the Oval Office appears to be true. I'm really staggered by this. Not because the widespread dislike of the man has passed me by, but because this has been announced while he is still President. A couple of years ago left-wing pundits bemoaned the fact that Bush was getting a free ride from a pliant and craven media who were too chummy with the White House staff to effectively report their malfeasance, moral turpitude, cowardice, incompetence, and other crimes which are seemingly infinite in number.

Since then, Stephen Colbert roasted the President with a speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner that qualifies as one of the most astonishing displays of chutzpah of modern times, a watershed moment in the War on Unreason and Wilful Insanity that attracted opprobrium from the chastened media, but several awards, most notably a Spike TV Guy's Choice Award for Gutsiest Move, a Shades Of Caruso Award for Best Thing To Have Ever Happened Ever, and best of all, the endorsement of none other than Morpheus! (It's at 4:48 on the video linked to above.)


Not only did he get PWNed by the derision of a man who once held his own against Agent Johnson on top of a moving truck for a good few minutes (not easy), but Bush's approval ratings sank to -1 googleplex% or something, which has freed many people from their inhibitions about roasting the man who once thought a mandate meant winning fifteen votes more than the other guy. It might have been more than fifteen. I'll check later, though it sounds about right.

Even with this wave of unpopularity and increase in prez-razzing, Oliver Stone (his post-Alexander bankability partially restored thanks to the modest success of World Trade Center) has gone beyond any satire yet announced, and has seemingly been given permission by the cosmos to go all out on Dubya's ass even though he's still "in charge of the Free World". A preview of what appears to be the first draft of W makes me wonder if it is meant to be serious or not. Could this be Stone's attempt at a potentially successful political version of Meet The Spartans, complete with references to flight suit harnesses pulled too tight and pretzel-induced comas? Amazing.


Stone attracts a lot of flack, and I understand why, but I've remained fond of his work, even when it looks like the temper tantrum of a sentient Avid editing machine whose CPU has been filled with presidential biographies, tracks from The Soft Parade, and gallons of radioactive testosterone. JFK can be attacked for its theorising, but the way those theories were presented, in that incredible, enormous final speech by Kevin Costner, is a masterclass of editing. Nixon has a cluttered narrative and ugly visual style, but it's fascinating and underrated despite that (and Anthony Hopkins gives what might be his best performance). I even enjoyed Any Given Sunday and Alexander, though that's probably only because I'm bonkers-berserker-crazy about Al Pacino and historical epics, even when they're a bit/a lot crap [Delete where applicable].


With a few reports of reviews blasting the script for a total absence of subtlety and featuring what sounds like slapstick scenes of Bush Behaving Badly that are so bizarre I have a really hard time believing they are really going to be filmed, the casting decisions announced so far are the only reliable barometer of what the movie will be like, and the choices are a mixture of inspired and baffling. Mom and Dad Bush are perfect (James Cromwell being the go-to old guy du jour), but Josh Brolin, though "hot" right now, doesn't seem like a Bush type to me, unless the film really is going to tip over into spoofery. I like Elizabeth Banks, and look forward to her realising her potential, but even then I'm unsure.

As for the rest of the casting, Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair seems about right, though surely Michael Sheen has been contracted to play Blair into the foreseeable future. I doubt Gruffudd would be given a chance to create a performance as terrific as Sheen in The Queen (who was totally robbed at the Oscars that year). I don't even know where to begin with Thandie Newton's casting as Condoleezza Rice, though. Her patented bottomless African sadness seems worlds away from Rice's steely demeanour and clinical, emotionless intellectualism. Plus, appearing in this will further delay the inevitable filming of Chronicles of Riddick II: Space Conan In Space.

But what about the other players in this comedy of bad manners? There's been some speculation already, so here are my suggestions. First, Mr. Known/Unknown Knowns/Unknowns himself, Donald Rumsfeld, who could be played by Canyon's all-time favourite actor, Jude "Mike Novick from 24" Ciccolella, though playing someone as cock-sure as Rummy means we won't get to hear Jude's catchphrase from 24, "My! God!", used whenever anything happens. Seriously, anything. War, gas attacks, beer frothing out of a can, Sky+ box runs out of memory, etc.


If there was a flashback, young Rummy could be played by Chris Evans (not that I'd wish that on our hero Evans, but the likeness is remarkable). Note that Evans has his top off and is showing some flesh. You're welcome, ladies (and some gents).


Vice-President Dick Cheney was a tough one, and after much consideration, I realised it had to be Andrew Stehlin in full 30 Days of Night vampire get-up.


I know that a choice like that seems kinda lazy on my part, and many people will be horribly offended that I compared Cheney to a heinous bloodsucking maniac who thinks humans are cattle to be exploited, but you have to understand I haven't yet seen 30 Days of Night (my Hartnett allergy kicking in), and I'm only guessing that that vampire is anywhere near as evil as Cheney actually is. If I've sold Cheney short with the comparison, I apologise.

Compared with Dick, finding an actor to play former Secretary of State Colin Powell was easy. It could only be Terry Crews, especially if played in the style of his bravura performance as President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho from Mike Judge's magnificent Idiocracy.


Often credited as being the person who took George to one side and told him, "That smug thing you're doing? Faster! More intense!", Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove can only be truly captured using animation. A perfect design was featured in Miyazaki's masterpiece Spirited Away: Boh the demanding baby, seen here about to have a terrible temper tantrum.


That said, there will be no transformation into an adorable mouse like at the end of the movie. Perhaps instead he can be turned into a Golgothan, like in Kevin Smith's Dogma. It would at least match his nickname. I wish I knew George Bush well enough to get a nickname. I wonder what it would be. Twinkle-Tits? Dirt-Legs? Jam-Head? I have to admit, the guy has mad (as in eccentric) nickname skillz.

Chief of Staff Andrew Card, once voted Least Likely To Be Mistaken For Leo McGarry From The West Wing, exists, at least in my mind, to tell the President that everything is going just fine and the people love him and no, the mob outside the White House with burning torches and pitchforks are there to attack Bill Clinton and they haven't yet realised he's not around anymore. Who better to capture that optimism than the happy half of the Mayor from The Nightmare Before Christmas.


With the roles of his parents so well cast, it's only fair I spend more time trying to cast Jenna and Barbara Bush than I have everyone else here. And, three minutes later, here's my choice! Jessica and Ashlee Simpson!


I chose them because they are real sisters who are blonde and brunette, and not because there have been lascivious claims made about their private lives. That would be rude of me, and really, the Bush daughters deserve no heavy criticism. It's not like they invaded Iraq to ensure worldwide oil production remained at a steady pace allowing oil producers to ramp up the price of petrol leading to many billionaires becoming super-mega-trillionaires or anything like that. They just like beer. Me too! Yay Bush daughters! (Please read the Greg Palast interview I just linked to. It will change the way you see everything.)

As I said above, the Ioan Gruffudd casting is potentially quite interesting, but Tony needs a perfect Cherie if we're ever going to take him seriously. Who better than ubiquitous cover girl and smiling fan Jessica Alba, so that we can duplicate some of that supernova-hott sizzling chemistry from the universally adored and acclaimed Fantastic Four films.


Their smoking sexxy scenes together (such as the one from the first film where Reed gets distracted by an equation, and Sue nags at him about it, or the one from the second one, where Reed gets distracted by an equation, and Sue nags at him about it) was obviously the number one reason those films just about made a profit set fire to the international box office as if it had been blasted by a fireball from Johnny Rumsfeld-Storm's hands!

Continuing the Marvel adaptation theme, former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton reminds me of Nick Nolte, whose gruff, unpredictable, and scenery-chewing performances are a perfect fit for someone who walked into UN HQ on his first day and started to eat the building from the inside out.


Let the Evil Soar! Using special technology like what they used with Oliver Reed in Gladiator, former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be played by Julian Beck from Poltergeist II: The Other Side, though again, there may be an evilness deficit at work. The magic of CGI effects can fill in the blanks there.


Some of these selections have stumped me terribly, but this one might have been the easiest casting choice since choosing Morgan Freeman to play God in the Almighty movies. Former press secretary Scott McLellan could only be played by a similarly reanimated Oliver Hardy.


Convicted/pardoned lawyer and assistant to the President I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby brings to mind clueless cultural pundit, mediocre novelist and dire kneejerk newspaper columnist Tony "former Mr. Julie Burchill" Parsons.


Of course, Libby could only go about doing his master's bidding with the help of a member of that pliant, supine, mesmerised press corps, most notably Robert Novak, whose ghoulish ruthlessness, unearthly aura and total moral decay would be perfectly captured by Angus Scrimm, AKA The Tall Man from the Phantasm movies.


Speaking of malleable puppet-men and craven, misguided Bush-enablers, what about two Brits who reiterated the White House line about WMDs so enthusiastically that I'm surprised their mouths didn't fly off their faces with the effort. Former Home and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw resembles food critic Anton Ego so strongly that I think Brad Bird had already made the connection...


...and former Defense Secretary Geoff "Buff" Hoon's air of hyper-confident machismo and brawny ambition are a perfect fit for a reanimated Benny Hill:


The reports on Stanley Weiser's script don't reveal much, other than some peculiarly broad dialogue ("I'd like to stuff a plate of freedom fries down that slick piece of shit's throat"? Really?), but there's a good chance we will at least get to see Bush winning the nomination as the Republican presidential candidate in 1999, so they will have to cast someone as rival John McCain, and who better than lovable old man Mickey Rooney. Everyone loves cuddly old Mickey Rooney! Perfect to play lovable cuddly funbucket McCain!


Of course, McCain was exposed to lethal doses of Gamma radiation several years ago (it was covered up), and his renowned McCain Smash! episodes mean there might have to be a CGI option kept back for any scenes featuring his response to his defeat.


Once those scenes are finished with, Weiser and Stone will inevitably move onto Bush's next victim, Saviour of the World Al Gore, who is the living embodiment of Professor Frink.


But will the script show his re-election in 2004? If so, John Kerry is going to turn up, and after throwing out several lookalike candidates for the role, I realised that the half of the world that reacted so negatively to the peculiarly anti-narrative finale of No Country For Old Men desperately wants to see a rematch between Llewellyn Moss and Anton Chigurh, and so the coveted role of John Kerry can only go to Academy Award winner and Stone Fox Javier Bardem.


Now all we need is for the film to feature scenes of Bush gnawing on ribs and wiping his hands on various world flags, yelling "Fuck youse all! I'm presidentin' up in this bitch" every five minutes, riding around the White House on a plastic car shaped like an enormous eagle, and offering to arm-rassle everyone he meets (and ordering Secret Service guys to shoot anyone who beats him), and I would pay lots and lots and lots of money to see it.

Adventures In Awesome: More Thick Of It!

In the interests of having somewhere online to go, "Blearghyay!" every time I find out about something that approximately 89% of the world already knows about, I invented Adventures in Awesome as an Enthusiasm Delivery System. And I already need to use it again! I've only just found out from this article (printed months ago) that Armando Iannucci has been working on a movie of The Thick Of It. Actually, that article words it thusly:

Producer Adam Tandy said the film would be "set in the same world" as In The Thick Of It, but declined to say whether any characters from the TV series would make an appearance. The writing team are in the early stages of scripting the project, he added.

So, that seems to qualify as good news (more of that excoriating satire) and bad news (no Malcolm Tucker? No Ollie Reeder?), but right now we can rest easy. Peter Capaldi, the only person in the United Kingdom who could wrestle the "Intensity" title from Lance "Intensity" Reddick, was interviewed in the Sunday Herald this weekend, and it's good news for profanity fans everywhere.

He has a habit of slipping unannounced into the body of Malcolm Tucker, the foul-mouthed spin doctor he has made his own in the cult political satire The Thick Of It. It's a little scary to be on the receiving end, even though he's just pretending, but he says he needs lots of practice. A full-length movie of the series is about to start filming. It will be set largely in Washington and placed loosely, but recognisably, in the context of the Iraq war... After The Thick Of It movie - provisionally called In The Loop - he will start filming another series of the show for BBC Two.

More Thick Of It! Rejoice, rejoice, re-fucking-joice!!!



Now all the Beeb has to do it release the Spinners and Losers specials on DVD to join this barebones season one release and my day will be completely made.

Things That Have Occurred To Us While Watching Season Five of 24 (1)

We're currently going through season five of 24, a show that simultaneously horrifies and thrills us. The pro-torture nonsense, dodgy politics, absurd plotting, flat dialogue, rarely adhered to real-time ground rules, etc. etc. etc. It's all hard to defend on both political and quality grounds (especially when we rail against CSI: Miami), but when it's on, it is totally on, justifying any amount of crap with total thrill delivery. Just as we have been told over and over again, season five is the best season yet, featuring some of the most entertaining action I've seen in a TV show, and though season six is supposed to be terrible, this has so far been good enough to carry us through another four seasons. The momentum, the berserk action, the sheer devil-may-care craziness of the whole thing, has been thrilling enough to forgive a multitude of sins. That said, I've been noticing a few things as it has been progressing, and I'll be coming back here to reveal them over the next couple of weeks as we barrel through the season. First things first, though. I have to get the most important thing out of the way right now. Forgive me for being blunt, but...

1. I will tolerate any amount of narrative contrivance if it brings back Tony Almeida.


I am incandescent with rage over the death of 24's secret weapon, Tony Almeida, who is basically what Jack Bauer would be like if he wasn't a psychopath. Consumed with anguish over the death of his wife Michelle in an explosion that actually had no purpose within the plot and never got adequately explained (like so much in this show), Tony is taken to CTU HQ instead of hospital (because of Reason X), regains consciousness very quickly (considering he has been blown up and heavily singed), and tries to kill Christopher Henderson, assassin, scumbag, and former cyborg law enforcer.

Of course, at the last second his conscience gets in the way (because it's Tony), which is something that would never happen to Jack; the only reason he ever stops himself from killing someone is because they have information that will save hundreds ::pant:: of thousands ::pant:: of lives, dammit! Hell, he even got his daughter and the President's brother to kill people while he wasn't around. His psychotic nature is too big for his formidable macho shell to hold, and it has to spill out onto other people from time to time.


Of course, Tony deciding against killing Henderson backfires, and he is stabbed in the chest with a syringe full of fictional drugs. He dies in Jack's arms, his friend sobbing over him even as I tried to hold back the tears and the horror myself. Of course, I knew all about it, having been spoiled well in advance, but still, I thought we'd get a bit more Tony action before that happened. It sucked, and I know that I wasn't the only one to be affected by Tony's tragic, senseless death, and definitely not the only person to think Tony is the shit. (Check out Brian Hall's impersonation in those two 24 spoofs. It's an uncanny approximation of the great man.) That said, there are some who contribute to this blog who are not fans of Tony. I'll let them announce themselves at some point.

Of course, 24 barely plays by the rules of reality, and so last year producer Howard Gordon, knowing full well that fans loved him, announced that everyone's favourite soppy hardass was coming back. However, it's no time to rejoice. I'm as worried as I can be about a fictional character who gets seriously injured whenever there is a terrorist strike in the US (broken ankle, shot in the neck, shot in the back, blown up, injected with deadly fictional drugs, run over by a garbage truck, fired out of a cannon into a wall, cut in half with a laser, etc.). This time, the writers have gone after his soul. This time, he's the bad guy.

How can this be? Until now Tony has been so damn heroic he practically poops Excaliburs out of his toned butt, though I guess seeing his wife die a few hours before getting jabbed in the chest with a syringe by the guy who killed her would make anyone a bit miffed, but going all the way around to being evil? It's David Mamet all over again. And yet, it'll be good to have the guy back even if he has bombs or gas or diseases at his beck and call. I don't care what they do to get him back. Jack's tears could be pure magic juice for all I care. He could have been injected with Mutant Growth Hormone by mistake. Exposure to radiation from the season two nuclear blast could have made him prone to hibernation every so often, coming back stronger than ever. Fuck it, make him bionical, like this.


Just hurry up and get this thing going so we can see the man back in action! Dammit!