From the monthly archives:

November 2006

CD Review: The Long Blondes, Someone To Drive You Home

by Stuart Heritage

Hype’s a bastards sometimes – you can never live up to it. Pretty much everything we’ve ever looked forward to has disappointed us; Be Here Now, The Phantom Menace, any international football competition that England takes part in.

A year ago we were sent a painfully hip compilation album that sounded as if it was entirely created by a squad of self-regarding Nathan Barleys who somehow managed to turn on the ‘electroclash’ preset button on their Bontempi synthesisers despite their heads being firmly lodged up their arseholes – except one song; Giddy Stratospheres by The Long Blondes. Since then we’ve been anticipating the debut album by The Long Blondes with a sort of terrified excitement; obviously we wanted to hear more but surely – surely – they wouldn’t be able to live up to the hype or be able to reach the same heights as Giddy Stratospheres. Well, Someone To Drive You Home – the long-awaited album by The Long Blondes is out on Monday and it’s full of songs that blow Giddy Stratospheres clean out of the water. Excited yet?

Hype's a bastards sometimes - you can never live up to it. Pretty much everything we've ever looked forward to has disappointed us; Be Here Now, The Phantom Menace, any international football competition that England takes part in. A year ago we were sent a painfully hip compilation album that sounded as if it was entirely created by a squad of self-regarding Nathan Barleys who somehow managed to turn on the 'electroclash' preset button on their Bontempi synthesisers despite their heads being firmly lodged up their arseholes - except one song; Giddy Stratospheres by The Long Blondes. Since then we've been anticipating the debut album by The Long Blondes with a sort of terrified excitement; obviously we wanted to hear more but surely - surely - they wouldn't be able to live up to the hype or be able to reach the same heights as Giddy Stratospheres. Well, Someone To Drive You Home - the long-awaited album by The Long Blondes is out on Monday and it's full of songs that blow Giddy Stratospheres clean out of the water. Excited yet?
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Justin Timberlake Wins A Couple Of MTV Europe Awards

by Stuart Heritage

MTV isn’t just an American institution, as it shows by regularly hosting global awards shows like last night’s MTV Europe awards so that American stars can experience what winning awards in colder countries where people speak funny feels like.

Needless to say, last night’s MTV Europe awards held in Copenhagen didn’t deviate from this blueprint one jot. Most American acts who turned up were rewarded with some kind of prize, like Justin Timberlake who scooped the Best Male and Best Pop Act awards and The Red Hot Chili Peppers who won the Best Album That Most People Have Only Really Listened To Once If That award. In fact, at one point when a non-American won an MTV Europe award instead of an American, said American actually clambered up on stage and got his knickers in a twist about it in front of everyone.

MTV isn't just an American institution, as it shows by regularly hosting global awards shows like last night's MTV Europe awards so that American stars can experience what winning awards in colder countries where people speak funny feels like. Needless to say, last night's MTV Europe awards held in Copenhagen didn't deviate from this blueprint one jot. Most American acts who turned up were rewarded with some kind of prize, like Justin Timberlake who scooped the Best Male and Best Pop Act awards and The Red Hot Chili Peppers who won the Best Album That Most People Have Only Really Listened To Once If That award. In fact, at one point when a non-American won an MTV Europe award instead of an American, said American actually clambered up on stage and got his knickers in a twist about it in front of everyone.
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Prince To Play Las Vegas Until Time Itself Ends

by Stuart Heritage

Prince is going through something of a creative renaissance at the moment, which means gets to play a bit of a new song at every awards ceremony that’ll have him so long as he plays Purple Rain too, preferably as part of an ill-thought out duet.

But being thought of as a frontier-pushing genius all the time is a lot of hard work. As well as recording songs, you have to travel around the world playing songs to people in venues you don’t know. This eventually wears a man like Prince down, so Prince has done the only thing he can do – he’s bought a Las Vegas nightclub so that he can play his songs there to paying customers every weekend until the end of time, which is roughly how long the outro to Purple Rain lasts anyway.

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Shakira & Nobody Else You Know Win Latin Grammys

by Stuart Heritage

The Latin Grammy award ceremony is the annual crowning glory for every Latin recording artist from around the world including wiggly-hipped pop midget Shakira and, um, you know, all the other ones that aren’t Shakira.

And last night the Latin Grammy Awards took place in New York, and Shakira easily managed to be the biggest Latin Grammy winner – taking home four separate Latin Grammys for Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Album Of The Year and Female Pop Album Of The Year, or Melhor Álbum Vocal Pop Feminino, as we might start calling it from now on. And don’t pretend that you’re surprised that Shakira won all the Latin Grammy awards, since you know full well that you couldn’t name another Latin recording artist if you had a gun to your head. And, no, the polka band from Planes, Trains and Automobiles doesn’t count.

The Latin Grammy award ceremony is the annual crowning glory for every Latin recording artist from around the world including wiggly-hipped pop midget Shakira and, um, you know, all the other ones that aren't Shakira. And last night the Latin Grammy Awards took place in New York, and Shakira easily managed to be the biggest Latin Grammy winner - taking home four separate Latin Grammys for Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Album Of The Year and Female Pop Album Of The Year, or Melhor Álbum Vocal Pop Feminino, as we might start calling it from now on. And don't pretend that you're surprised that Shakira won all the Latin Grammy awards, since you know full well that you couldn't name another Latin recording artist if you had a gun to your head. And, no, the polka band from Planes, Trains and Automobiles doesn't count.
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Tom Cruise Gets Given His Very Own Movie Studio

by Stuart Heritage

Remember earlier on in the week when Sumner Redstone was all like “Everyone hates Tom Cruise, mwa-ha-ha”? Well, now Tom Cruise is all like “Screw you old man, I got my own Hollywood studio now, so eat my knickers!”

Mere months after Paramount decided to fire Tom Cruise for being a bibble-headed loon who all women hated, Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner have bounced back to extraordinary effect – they’ve buddied up with MGM to revive United Artists, the long-shonky Hollywood studio formed 85 years ago by Charlie Chaplin and some other people. Literally everyone’s a winner here – now that Tom Cruise is in control of United Artists he can orchestrate his comeback on his own terms, plus he gets to lord it over frail octogenarians like Sumner Redstone; the Hollywood community can rest assured that United Artists is being managed by one of their own who understands the creative process more than anyone else and – most importantly – now that Tom Cruise isn’t an underdog any more, we can officially stop feeling a bit sorry for him and dust off our Big Book Of Disparaging Remarks About That Tiny Moron Tom Cruise.

Remember earlier on in the week when Sumner Redstone was all like "Everyone hates Tom Cruise, mwa-ha-ha"? Well, now Tom Cruise is all like "Screw you old man, I got my own Hollywood studio now, so eat my knickers!" Mere months after Paramount decided to fire Tom Cruise for being a bibble-headed loon who all women hated, Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner have bounced back to extraordinary effect - they've buddied up with MGM to revive United Artists, the long-shonky Hollywood studio formed 85 years ago by Charlie Chaplin and some other people. Literally everyone's a winner here - now that Tom Cruise is in control of United Artists he can orchestrate his comeback on his own terms, plus he gets to lord it over frail octogenarians like Sumner Redstone; the Hollywood community can rest assured that United Artists is being managed by one of their own who understands the creative process more than anyone else and - most importantly - now that Tom Cruise isn't an underdog any more, we can officially stop feeling a bit sorry for him and dust off our Big Book Of Disparaging Remarks About That Tiny Moron Tom Cruise.
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SLACKERJACK – Double Wires

by Stuart Heritage

There’s been a time in your life when you’ve secretly wished you were Spider Man, right? Well stop it – being Spider Man is crap. How do we know? Because we’ve just spent the last six hours playing Double Wires, that’s why.

Double Wires is a hell of a game. All you have to do is try to see how far you can traverse across a course by flinging out your Spidey-web (or ‘double wires’) to latch onto various hanging objects without falling. But where you think you’ll be shooting wires and zooming round with all the grace of a ballet grandmaster, chances are that when you first play Double Wires you’ll stagger and tumble like a baby deer on an ice rink. You’ll get the hang of Double Wires before long, but it won’t stop you from playing it for hours, trying to beat your old best score. Kiss goodbye to your weekends, kids.

Play Double Wires now

There's been a time in your life when you've secretly wished you were Spider Man, right? Well stop it - being Spider Man is crap. How do we know? Because we've just spent the last six hours playing Double Wires, that's why. Double Wires is a hell of a game. All you have to do is try to see how far you can traverse across a course by flinging out your Spidey-web (or 'double wires') to latch onto various hanging objects without falling. But where you think you'll be shooting wires and zooming round with all the grace of a ballet grandmaster, chances are that when you first play Double Wires you'll stagger and tumble like a baby deer on an ice rink. You'll get the hang of Double Wires before long, but it won't stop you from playing it for hours, trying to beat your old best score. Kiss goodbye to your weekends, kids. Play Double Wires now
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Watch A Monkey Attack An Idiot

by Stuart Heritage

Sometimes when animals attack humans the result is tragic, like Steve Irwin with the stingray and that magician with his massive angry tiger. But that’s because the animal doing the attacking isn’t a monkey.

Seriously, monkey attacks are brilliant. When we were younger a monkey in a zoo actually pulled a boy’s arm off and nobody seemed to mind because it was a funny monkey. And that was a monkey attacking a little boy – so imagine the pleasure you’ll get from watching a chimp clawing away at the face of a nobsack doing keepy-uppies. OK, so it’s a viral for MonkeyMag, which seems to be some kind of new free internet Nuts-y magazine that’s giving a car away to someone – but that’s not important. What’s important is that a monkey attacks a man and some girls scream.

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Police Sue Rapper ‘The Game’ Over Hurt Feelings

by Shawn Lindseth

Hip-hop is one tough racket. Not only do you have to be exceptionally good at delivering rhymes with a classical sensibility, but you have a constant lingering worry that bullets might somehow get inside you.

And then there’s the po-po. Yes, the police present quite a problem to the everyday rapper, as they’re always sticking their nose in trying to solve the murder of hip hop bodyguards, or not letting performers carry various sorts of weaponry onto public air-transports.

The smart rapper, however, knows how to take negative police attention and turn it into a nice golden necklace. It’s a simple process really, a process that includes selling filmed copies of your arrest in a video format, and not cutting in the arresting officers for a nice thick slice of the earnings.

That’s ‘The Game’ method, so named after its rapping master and creator. And it almost worked for The Game too, but now the police involved in the scuffle are suing him for defamation of character.

Hip-hop is one tough racket. Not only do you have to be exceptionally good at delivering rhymes with a classical sensibility, but you have a constant lingering worry that bullets might somehow get inside you. And then there's the po-po. Yes, the police present quite a problem to the everyday rapper, as they're always sticking their nose in trying to solve the murder of hip hop bodyguards, or not letting performers carry various sorts of weaponry onto public air-transports. The smart rapper, however, knows how to take negative police attention and turn it into a nice golden necklace. It's a simple process really, a process that includes selling filmed copies of your arrest in a video format, and not cutting in the arresting officers for a nice thick slice of the earnings. That's 'The Game' method, so named after its rapping master and creator. And it almost worked for The Game too, but now the police involved in the scuffle are suing him for defamation of character.
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Strictly Come Dancing Betting Odds: Bunton Still To Win?

by Stuart Heritage

We know you’ve been waiting for 24 long hours for part two of this week’s Strictly Come Dancing betting odds, and here they are – we’re as excited as you are because we don’t get too many chances to make jokes about Emma Bunton’s large head these days.

Tomorrow on Strictly Come Dancing the contestants will be either trying their hand at the Viennese Waltz – for which dancers have to be graceful, stately and perfectly in time with one another; or the Salsa – for which dancers have to be recently divorced, slightly overweight and cripplingly insecure if the salsa classes at out local leisure centre are anything to go by. But how will the Strictly Come Dancing contestants do? More specifically, how will the Strictly Come Dancing contestants that we didn’t talk about yesterday do?

Here are the Strictly Come Dancing betting odds for Ray Fearon, Mark Ramprakash, Louisa Lytton and Emma Bunton…

We know you've been waiting for 24 long hours for part two of this week's Strictly Come Dancing betting odds, and here they are - we're as excited as you are because we don't get too many chances to make jokes about Emma Bunton's large head these days. Tomorrow on Strictly Come Dancing the contestants will be either trying their hand at the Viennese Waltz - for which dancers have to be graceful, stately and perfectly in time with one another; or the Salsa - for which dancers have to be recently divorced, slightly overweight and cripplingly insecure if the salsa classes at out local leisure centre are anything to go by. But how will the Strictly Come Dancing contestants do? More specifically, how will the Strictly Come Dancing contestants that we didn't talk about yesterday do? Here are the Strictly Come Dancing betting odds for Ray Fearon, Mark Ramprakash, Louisa Lytton and Emma Bunton...
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Alec Baldwin Cheesed Off About Nazi Arnold Schwarzenegger

by Stuart Heritage

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a Nazi. If Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Nazi things might have ended differently, like Churchill getting a giant steaming pipe chucked through his chest and Roosevelt being frozen in an elaborate cold-suit.

But, as we’ve stressed, Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t a Nazi, so none of that happened. Despite all this, the whole Arnold Schwarzenegger Nazi thing has caused Alec Baldwin to throw a giant hissy fit because he did a voiceover for an Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary which turned out to be full of scenes of Nazi rallies. Now Alec Baldwin wants his voice removed from the documentary. Yes, we know what you’re thinking – maybe we can drop some Nazi rally footage into Elizabethtown so that Alec Baldwin can ask for his horrible performance to be removed from that too.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a Nazi. If Arnold Schwarzenegger was a Nazi things might have ended differently, like Churchill getting a giant steaming pipe chucked through his chest and Roosevelt being frozen in an elaborate cold-suit. But, as we've stressed, Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't a Nazi, so none of that happened. Despite all this, the whole Arnold Schwarzenegger Nazi thing has caused Alec Baldwin to throw a giant hissy fit because he did a voiceover for an Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary which turned out to be full of scenes of Nazi rallies. Now Alec Baldwin wants his voice removed from the documentary. Yes, we know what you're thinking - maybe we can drop some Nazi rally footage into Elizabethtown so that Alec Baldwin can ask for his horrible performance to be removed from that too.
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