Hoorah for Auntie!
The venerable (and free) BBC reports this evening - as Romney slinks back home with his tail between his legs - that he has been "excoriated" by the European press.
The word basically means "flayed alive."
What's not to love about that?
And then there's this … Shin-A-lam's half hour sit down protest in the Olympic fencing arena … in Lego. You gotta love those fencing masks.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
Sunday, July 29, 2012
An NBC "Production Decision"
Looks like folk in the US missed one of the best parts of the Olympic opening ceremony as NBC - who had the exclusive TV rights for the USA - didn't think Americans would be interested in a dance memorial to the victims of the London July 7th bombings.
"Dance? Dead people? Let's skip that and have another brewski."
Believe me (as one who was on the train just ahead of one of the bombs), I can think of other words than those of choreographer Akram Khan, who was "disheartened and disappointed."
And I imagine the families of victims of the 9/11 atrocities in the US would feel the same way were the situation reversed.
Khan's choreography (he also danced brilliantly) was both breathtaking and deeply moving.
There's only a small part of it available on YouTube at the moment (and that's a poor, hand-held iPhone-pointed-at-the-telly version) but look out for it in the weeks to come because it's worth it.
NBC? Fuck you!
"Dance? Dead people? Let's skip that and have another brewski."
Believe me (as one who was on the train just ahead of one of the bombs), I can think of other words than those of choreographer Akram Khan, who was "disheartened and disappointed."
And I imagine the families of victims of the 9/11 atrocities in the US would feel the same way were the situation reversed.
Khan's choreography (he also danced brilliantly) was both breathtaking and deeply moving.
There's only a small part of it available on YouTube at the moment (and that's a poor, hand-held iPhone-pointed-at-the-telly version) but look out for it in the weeks to come because it's worth it.
NBC? Fuck you!
Get Healthy and Do Good at the Same Time
Looks like the usual and the utterly predictable is happening all over again:
Millions of people were unable to buy tickets to "sold out" Olympics venues and yet thousands of seats allocated to corporate sponsors are empty.
Fuck corporate sponsors and their shitty ways.
I don't drink Coke and have never (and will never) eat anything from a Mc.Donalds' shithouse, so I cannot increase my boycott of the two main Olympics sponsors.
I'm appealing here and now for those of you who DO consume this crap to abstain from it and to eat and drink healthy things instead as a protest at the kind of corporate greed and wastefulness that negotiates a deal where they are allotted thousands of seats at Olympic events and then don't bother to turn up.
Go to your fridges and fetch those Coke bottles and pour the filthy stuff down the sink (it's good at clearing drains). Cross the street to avoid the unhealthy vicinity of Mc.Donalds' outlets.
And never buy any more of their stuff.
Just to be clear here:
Corporate sponsors who insult the public by not bothering to use the facilities they have denied to hard working people:
Fuck 'em.
Up the arse.
With a splintered gatepost.
Millions of people were unable to buy tickets to "sold out" Olympics venues and yet thousands of seats allocated to corporate sponsors are empty.
Fuck corporate sponsors and their shitty ways.
I don't drink Coke and have never (and will never) eat anything from a Mc.Donalds' shithouse, so I cannot increase my boycott of the two main Olympics sponsors.
I'm appealing here and now for those of you who DO consume this crap to abstain from it and to eat and drink healthy things instead as a protest at the kind of corporate greed and wastefulness that negotiates a deal where they are allotted thousands of seats at Olympic events and then don't bother to turn up.
Go to your fridges and fetch those Coke bottles and pour the filthy stuff down the sink (it's good at clearing drains). Cross the street to avoid the unhealthy vicinity of Mc.Donalds' outlets.
And never buy any more of their stuff.
Just to be clear here:
Corporate sponsors who insult the public by not bothering to use the facilities they have denied to hard working people:
Fuck 'em.
Up the arse.
With a splintered gatepost.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
… And Another Thing …
Anyhoo … back to the Olympic opening ceremony and hoorah for a thousand
gloriously silly in-jokes that nobody outside these shores will ever
get. Hee hee.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/28/world-media-london-olympic-opening-ceremony
and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/28/richard-williams-olympic-opening-ceremony
As for other reactions, I especially loved the fact that on the news this morning a disgraced Tory MP* (who got sacked from the Cabinet recently for attending a Nazi-themed party - at least he's honest about his Fascist politics, unlike the rest of the Tory party or their Republican chums across the pond) accused the opening ceremony of being "leftie, multicultural rubbish" and "more left wing than that of the Chinese Communists."
Hahahahahahahahaha!
Left wing? A ceremony opening on England's bucolic mediæval landscape, pure and innocent and filled with farm animals and maidens dancing lasciviously around phallic maypoles, blissful and pastoral until Ken Brannagh turns up in a stovepipe hat and unleashes the Industrial Revolution on it?
Mad hordes of strutting, top-hatted Capitalists despoiling the rural idyll and enslaving the working people in a pandæmoniacal vision of a hellish industrial nightmare?
Leftie?
A glorious celebration of our amazing free National Health Service (during which Mary Poppins defeats Lord Voldemort) in the very week in which the insane NHS-hater Mitt Romney chooses to visit these shores on a fundraising tour and is soundly and roundly mocked and vilified by press and people alike?
Leftie?
I thought it was a beautifully balanced and unbiased, politically centrist ceremony.
If you want leftie, put me in charge of the next one.
Now THAT would be fun!
* Is there any other kind?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/28/world-media-london-olympic-opening-ceremony
and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/28/richard-williams-olympic-opening-ceremony
As for other reactions, I especially loved the fact that on the news this morning a disgraced Tory MP* (who got sacked from the Cabinet recently for attending a Nazi-themed party - at least he's honest about his Fascist politics, unlike the rest of the Tory party or their Republican chums across the pond) accused the opening ceremony of being "leftie, multicultural rubbish" and "more left wing than that of the Chinese Communists."
Hahahahahahahahaha!
Left wing? A ceremony opening on England's bucolic mediæval landscape, pure and innocent and filled with farm animals and maidens dancing lasciviously around phallic maypoles, blissful and pastoral until Ken Brannagh turns up in a stovepipe hat and unleashes the Industrial Revolution on it?
Mad hordes of strutting, top-hatted Capitalists despoiling the rural idyll and enslaving the working people in a pandæmoniacal vision of a hellish industrial nightmare?
Leftie?
A glorious celebration of our amazing free National Health Service (during which Mary Poppins defeats Lord Voldemort) in the very week in which the insane NHS-hater Mitt Romney chooses to visit these shores on a fundraising tour and is soundly and roundly mocked and vilified by press and people alike?
Leftie?
I thought it was a beautifully balanced and unbiased, politically centrist ceremony.
If you want leftie, put me in charge of the next one.
Now THAT would be fun!
* Is there any other kind?
What Is It About Girls Who Play The Cello?
Hey, kids!
For those of you who - like me - much prefer to enjoy the sights and sounds of the Olympics with the inane commentary switched off (thank goodness for digital TV where such things are possible), and to accompany it instead with spiffy music, Natalie Clein's new album of Bloch and Bruch cello pieces came out this morning and I've been enjoying it over and over all day.
Go buy it.
Now.
Go on!
You know I'm right; I always am.
No sign of any You Tube versions yet, so if you're too cheapskate to pop out and buy Ms.Clein's new CD you'll have to be content with me posting a bit of her previous one: the first movement of her stunning and definitive reading of Kodály's bravura Cello Sonata.
Boffo.
For those of you who - like me - much prefer to enjoy the sights and sounds of the Olympics with the inane commentary switched off (thank goodness for digital TV where such things are possible), and to accompany it instead with spiffy music, Natalie Clein's new album of Bloch and Bruch cello pieces came out this morning and I've been enjoying it over and over all day.
Go buy it.
Now.
Go on!
You know I'm right; I always am.
No sign of any You Tube versions yet, so if you're too cheapskate to pop out and buy Ms.Clein's new CD you'll have to be content with me posting a bit of her previous one: the first movement of her stunning and definitive reading of Kodály's bravura Cello Sonata.
Boffo.
By Jingo, continued …
Well, I may merrily mock (and mostly rightly) my amateurish country's attempts to get anything right but I must confess: Danny Boyle and everyone else who helped with the opening ceremony: that was fucking awesome!
Nighty night (actually well into the early morning). Let the real sports begin!
Nighty night (actually well into the early morning). Let the real sports begin!
Friday, July 27, 2012
By Jingo
Paid for by Coca Cola and Mc.Donald's (because of the obvious healthy sporting associations of gorging sugar, salt and fat in industrial quantities, and because we've got no money) and with no other food or beverages allowed on site it promises to be a strange spectacle.
Already, our charming English delight in amateurish cock-ups has been well to the fore.
We've been running a satirical TV programme called 2012 alongside the preparations for several years now and it has been remarkably prescient, with life imitating art quite beautifully.
In the first episode the Olympic clock in Trafalgar Square went wrong and the very next week so did the real one.
Their fictional transport manager managed to bring London to a halt and inevitably this week the trains have not been running and traffic is gridlocked.
On the TV show, the coach taking them to the site got hopelessly lost, and this appears to have become the common theme for athletes arriving at Heathrow (all week, they've been driving round and round London, unable to find the Olympic Village - athletes regularly Tweeting that they've been stuck on a coach for four hours with no toilet). The organisers hired hundreds of coach drivers from all across the country, many of whom had never seen London before and could not read a sat-nav device. It's been humiliating yet hilarious.
And capping it all, on Wednesday those same organisers proudly boasted in the press that they had done their research properly and that there'd be no embarrassing faux-pas like at the World Championships where the Khazakstan medal winner was saluted by the spoof Khazak national anthem from Borat …
… and yesterday all of that research paid off when the North Korean women's football team walked off the field in protest at having the South Korean flag displayed next to their players.
Ah, we do bumbling incompetence so well. We're sure to win the gold medal in that event.
Anyhoo … traffic chaos, broken cable cars, no trains, international pickpocket gangs, rip-off hotel prices, only junk food to eat and the choice between swelteringly hot and humid or pissing down with rain notwithstanding, here come the Olympics and there's nothing any of us can do to hold back the deluge of jingoistic tosh spewing forth from press and TV.
I'm quite looking forward to the opening ceremony, though I'll be watching from a safe distance (120 miles away). Those things are a guaranteed gold mine of unintentional mirth.
What I'm really looking forward to, however, is watching the world's top athletes really going for it. I'll turn off the inane commentary and put on some good music and watch amazing athletes do amazing things (once they've crawled off their coaches and queued for the loo).
Let the games begin.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The Official Olympic Tree
The Olympic opening ceremony is tomorrow (hence the complete and utter breakdown of our transport system), so I thought I'd show you what appears to be Norwich's entire Olympic celebration decorations.
Looks like we budgeted for one roll of Olympic wrapping paper and drunkenly forced a plane tree into bondage.
Why? Fuck knows.
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