If you’re a fan of spoof documentaries and genuinely terrifying prosthetics, then – boy oh boy – are you in for a treat. ‘John’s Operation’ is a short film co-written by myself and one Mr Tom Barbor-Might (who also took on producing and directing duties). Killer performances from the cast all-round. Take a look:
Fundamentalist Environmentalists, then. And, no, I’m not referring to people who advocate recycling or clean energy technology or curbing unnecessary pollution – y’know, rational stuff – but more to lunatics like George Monbiot, who regularly dispatches his over-the-top invective via The Guardian.
(Incidentally, I still can’t decide on my favourite Georgie-boy moment. It’s either his carbon-footprint warning that “flying across the Atlantic is as unacceptable as child abuse” or that one feature in which he claims that the UK population can “save the planet” by climbing into canoes and fishing for our own food. Seriously. All sixty fucking million of us.)
The thing is: there’s something about these hyperbolic nutters that really annoys me. Not just their sneering anti-human contempt. Nor their hatred of the working classes and lower orders (gosh, how dare those oiks demand widespread mass transport and cheap flights). Nor their disgusting rank hypocrisy (I’m guessing, for example, that Monbiot doesn’t row himself across the ocean whenever he’s off on a promotional book jaunt).
No: the major bugbear I have is with their oddly-held belief in a Mother Gaia figure. You know what I mean – the notion of ‘nature’ being some sort of innate consciousness, a peculiar God-like entity which both weeps with horror and wags its fingers whenever us dirty, dirty humans are up to our usual dirty, dirty tricks.
Why do I find this notion so silly? Click on ‘Read More‘ to find out …
Anyone out there of the XY Chromosome persuasion may want to brace themselves. Why? Because some devastating scientific news is heading your way, straight from the pages of the Daily Mail: “Are We On The Brink Of A Society Without Any Need For Men?”
Yep – not content with their usual verbal carpet-bombing of blacks and gypsies, the Mail has now turned its critical eye to an entire gender. They’re not alone, however: The Mirror is wondering if we’re facing the “End Of Men”, while the New Zealand Herald is ushering in “A World Without Need For Men”.
So: what are they all babbling about? Apparently there’s been a new advance in medical technology which means it is possible to create human sperm in the lab. The scientists behind this have taken great pains to explain, however, that the process is simply a fertility aid and will not be used to directly create babies. Ergo: no ‘end of men’. Sorry, girls (or should that be: sorry, bitter spiteful fat girls with deep-seated daddy issues who, like, totally relate to the ginger one from Sex And The City).
I shouldn’t be surprised at the reaction. A story like this – generic ‘men are obsolete’ bilge – tends to turn up every few months. What fascinates and infuriates me in almost equal measure (I’m usually always more infuriated than fascinated) is the underlying philosophy behind it.
It’s one that runs something like this: men are no longer needed in order for women to reproduce. Therefore men are unneccessary. Boil that down and what have you got? This: the notion that having children is the most important thing that any human being can do. A notion which is, quite frankly, a crock of undiluted shit.
Want to find out why? Course you do. Just hit up that ‘read more’ button.
Remember when the internet first started in about 1846 and people were enthralled by the fact you could ‘chat to strangers’ online? Remember how everyone soon came to realise that ‘chatting to strangers online’ was frankly a bit tedious, so started using the web to do productive and interesting stuff instead?
Here, then, is something that might make you feel old. Leif K-Brooks probably won’t remember the early days of the internet. Why? Because he’s only 18 years old. And – like a teenager pretending that vinyl is edgy and cool while their parents look on, shake their heads and go back to using Spotify – he has also just launched Omegle, a strange new site which takes an old-school net notion and adds … well, nothing much really.
Here’s the site blurb:
“Omegle is a brand-new service for meeting new friends. When you use Omegle, we pick another user at random and let you have a one-on-one chat with each other. Chats are completely anonymous, although there is nothing to stop you from revealing personal details if you would like.”
As baffling as this may seem at first – you could literally get the same effect from dialling a random telephone number, surely? – I have to say that I can honestly see this catching on, or at least becoming a successful fad.
The reason? Simply because the internet is now old enough to foster ironic nostalgia. Thousands of twenty-to-thirty-somethings are going to stumble across this and smirk at how revolutionary chatrooms used to seem (despite the fact that most of the discussion always revolved around the fact that you almost saw Scully’s cleavage in The X-Files, although that creepy dude who could stretch his limbs got in the way). Mark my words – it isn’t going to be too long before hipster revivalists bring back the Hamsterdance or Mr T Ate My Balls. God, it is rumoured, may well weep.
You should have a go on Omegle, though, if just for the sake of curiosity. Who knows? You might end up having a conversation as scintillating as the following:
And so to ‘Skeletons’ from ‘It’s Blitz!’, which I found myself buying more out of bored curiosity than anything else – ‘Fever To Tell’ and ‘Show Your Bones’ were okay, fun, poppy albums with a couple of standout numbers, so I was kind of expecting more of the same. (Excuses for not buying it three weeks ago covered, then. Ahem.)
Imagine my surprise when I found myself listening to ten tracks of Dave-Sitek-produced, Bunnymen-meets-Pogues-meets-Tori-Amos-meets-Kate-Bush wonderfulness, then.
Seriously, though … when did these guys suddenly get so good?
As some of you may know, I’m an atheist. That’s just the way I work – need tangible scientific proof, otherwise can’t believe (or, as you crazy kids would have it these days, ‘pics or it didn’t happen’). Would I like to see wider promotion of humanist secular values and increased scepticism towards established faiths? Of course. Do I feel the need to spend every single second of my waking life yakking on about this? No.
Enter, then, Pat Condell. Those of you who spent a lot of time round YouTube alley might already be familiar with our Pat. For the uninitiated, Pat is a stand-up comic who has swapped the stage for the webcam, and regularly uploads his anti-religious musings to YouTube and LiveLeak. That’s ‘regularly’ as in ‘he literally never stops.’ Seriously – Pat’s account has got more videos than your local Blockbuster, and he’s the 7th most subscribed to person on the ‘Tube ever.
It’s just that … well … isn’t he a little bit annoying?
Actually … isn’t he really, really, really annoying?
Don’t get me wrong - I like poking fun at religion as much as anyone (a sketch I wrote for an upcoming Channel 4 show has recently been filmed, and if it makes the broadcast edit, expect certain demoninations to be very offended indeed). I’m not, however, under the impression that this makes me a groundbreaking philosophical genius or anything. I never feel smug when making religi-jokes because, frankly, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. It’s easy. So, so easy.
Listen to Pat, however – and look at the smuggest expression this side of Martin Amis – and you’d think he’d single-handedly convinced the Vatican to endorse condoms:
Jesus, Pat, okay, okay – we get it. You’re not a fan. Seriously, though, do you honestly reckon that voicing the notion that the Bible is a little bit silly (something I was doing roundabout the age of, ooohhhh, eight?) merits such utter, utter self-satisfaction? Honestly? It’s like giving yourself a pat on the back (no pun intended) because you picked out a few logical flaws in the Santa Claus story.
And this is when I put my finger on it: what really annoys me about Pat Condell (apart from his grating Radio 4 ‘comedy panellist’ diction). It’s not so much him as a person, but more what he represents – the complete lack of any progressive momentum within the secular movement. Look: it’s not enough to simply say “fuck me, you god-fanatics are a bit stupid, aren’t you?” There has to be … y’know … more. Ideas. Forward-thinking. Action. If you’re just going to throw around handfuls of shit and start shouting ‘nah-nah-nah, you started it’, then might I suggest joining the Respect Party?
On Pat’s site there are a couple of links to very worthy causes, including One Law For All – the campaign against Sharia Law in Britain. I just wonder how much progress such campaigns can make when atheists remain as childish and trivial as the lunatic fundamentalists they seek to condemn.
The veeeerrrryyy last thing I want to do is turn this site into your typical blog (which is to say: reams of entries like “hey, guys, guess how late my train was today” or “boy oh boy, I was really disappointed by the new Red Dwarf” or, god, I dunno, some piffle about how “moved to tears” I am by that monobrowed church-lady on Britain’s Got Talent).
Do allow me, though, a brief nugget of personal exposition: the reason I’ve not updated this here site in ages is because I’ve been busy both with a) work and b) the task of looking for a new place to live. Intent as I am on sticking within the Stoke Newington massive, I’ve been scouring Gumtree for nearby available properties.
But … I’ve been getting distracted.
Having not spent much time on the site beforehand, I’ve only just noticed that Gumtree has a remarkable section called ‘Thank You’ in which people from London come online and … erm … write little thank you notes. To recepients who may or may not be reading (but more than likely aren’t). Sometimes they’re trivial and silly. Sometimes, however, they offer a glimpse into the most fervently mentalist sectors of this glorious capital city.
Want to join me as I check out some of the weirdest entries? Just hit up that ‘read more’ link and let’s go …
The countless millions of people who regularly stop by this site (oh, just play along) will be aware of two things by now. Number One: I haven’t slapped anything resembling an update on here for a few weeks now, as – unsurprisingly – written work for major UK broadcasters tends to take precedence over late-night ramblings for a site that isn’t exactly hotfooting up the Alexa rankings.
Number two: give a man enough cyberspace, and he’ll just start repeating himself. If you’ve ever happened across these pages before, you’ll know that – as much of a tech-head as I am – I’m becoming consumed by the niggling worry that the online ‘user-generated content’ revolution has had an unfortunate side-effect.
Here’s the thing: notions of quality control don’t exist anymore. Self-awareness has gone right out the window. Let’s say that you wanted to become a film reviewer twenty years ago. What would you do? Go to university to get a grounding in your craft? Work your way up from the local press to the nationals, honing your trade as you went? Put in around a decade of hard work in order to validate the notion that anyone wanted to listen to your thoughts in the first place?
Times, how they have changed. Now any dunderhead with a webcam seems to have convinced themselves that they’re Pauline Kael – as can be witnessed by the staggering amount of amateur ‘reviews’ being flung at YouTube like cack-stained confetti.
Let us, then, take a recent movie: Zac Snyder’s Watchmen. And, rather than indulge the whims of those nasty ‘professional writers and critics’ (yeah, granddad, stop being such an elitist, with your ’standards’ and ‘expectations’ ), let’s have us a gander at the Top 5 Most Embarrassing Amateur Watchmen Reviews.
Just click on ‘read more’, and we’ll continue.
Surveillance is a new thriller due for release on March 6th. It is directed by Jennifer Lynch. Jennifer’s father David Lynch - a three-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker – is the executive producer.
I caught up with Jennifer to discuss the various trials and tribulations of the movie-making process.
A CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER LYNCH
Hi, Jennifer.
Hi, Chris.
I was wondering – how did you manage to obtain both substantive funding and widespread distribution for your movie?
I just asked my dad.
Great! Well, thanks so much for the interview.
No problem.
Join me next time when I ask Nick Harkaway – son of the world-famous, multi-millionaire author John Le Carre – just how he managed to overcome such titanic hurdles in order to get his debut novel published. This will then be followed by a retrospective season, starting with ‘Stella McCartney: One Woman’s Struggle.’
Why is Lykke Li so awesome? Is it the fact that she combines petulant teenager lyrics like “If you wanna complain / I’m not the complaint department” with the sort of dance moves that resemble a drunken Aunt at a wedding trying to groove to Joy Division? Yes. Yes, it is. Last year’s Youth Novels album is about as nourishing a slice of pop pie as you could hope for, and this little Leftfield-meets-Sugababes ditty is still my favourite ingredient:
