|
Ooooooof! Once again I am punched to the floor. Out of my broken nose drips the last tiny particles of my soul. These particles are the Whimsy. Welcome once again to our regular Whimsy. It’s a bit of an odd one because, as you may or may not know, I have been made redundant. Aye, that’s right. And it’s not just me. In fact everyone I work with is also destitute. My esteemed place of employment (The Centre for Visual Arts in Cardiff) has gone tits-up and will close on November the 5th which also happens to be Bonfire Night. This means that despite the fact that we will all be out on our arses, we can still go along to some display somewhere and go "Ooooooh!", "Aaaaaaah!" whilst our jobs burn like Guy Fawkes on the stake. So if any of you have any jobs that need performing (jungle exploration, poodle washing, contract killing) you can e-mail me... Righto, on with the nonsense. No special guest today ‘cos I can’t be bothered. Redundancy, eh? I tell you, it makes you so apathetic.....
Shop of the Day - Marks and Spencers. The byword for middle-class tat. "Marks and Sparks" (as the British tend to call it) is one of those shops that mums swear by. My mum saw nothing better than to drag myself and my brother around Marks and Spencers until we started to cry when we were young. I am quick to add that she did not stop doing this until we were at least 14 years old. Marks and Spencers must be one the most soulless places I have ever been in. It’s so bland that passers by turn into wallpaper in front of your very eyes. The assistants have no expression and the clothes are safe and comfortable but have no character. However, Marks & Sparks do have the advantage in that if you don’t like something after you’ve bought it, you can always take it back and get a replacement/refund with no questions asked. Marks also pioneered having ready-made gourmet meals in their food section. You know the sort, the type of complete meal you can buy in a packet, bring home and nuke it in the microwave. Then, unless you puncture the plastic covering, the plastic melts all over the food and from that moment on you might as well eat toxic napalm. If you do punture the plastic film that is allegedly supposed to keep the food "fresh", your food will then be non-toxic but still hotter than the surface of Venus. Many-a-time has it been where my mother has bought a Marks & Sparks meal home and she has bunged it in the Micro, served up on a plate and watch as I make strange gasping noises then reach into my mouth and remove a dangling flap of burnt skin from the roof omy mouth. Mind you, it isn’t all bad news at Marks and Spencers. Only last week I bought a pair of awesome Star Wars underpants with Darth Maul’s face on the crotch! Fabulous! And what a bloody bargain too: £2.50!!!!! Hurry while stocks last. If it doesn’t fit, they’ll always change it for you.....
Crime of the Day - Are you a bastard who parks so badly they take up two spaces? Do you mind if I shit on your wife’s face if you ever do it again? I have just been to Tesco’s to get some food shopping done (well I would have if the bastard cash machine would give me any money) and one fucking dickless shithead parked so badly he took up two spaces right close to the front door of the store. How shitty is that?! I say to you all, if I ever become ruler of the world (which I shall, I promise you. It is written in the prophecy) I shall make crappy parking a capital offence and I will hold show-trials to make examples of anyone who dares oppose my law. Believe me, I will be the judge, jury and executioner.
Breakfast Cereal of the Day - Porridge. Right, that does it. I never want to hear anymore old people telling me about the benefits of porridge. If you ask me, porridge looks like grey sick. Only old people eat it because it’s all mushy and they have no teeth. I personally am a big fan of Shreddies and similar products of the cereal boom of the late 20th century. At least Shreddies have form, structure and consistency. Porridge, on the other hand, must have been invented by either social workers or the Scottish. Mind you, it has to be said that kids are cunningly fed porridge every morning in the form of Ready Brek, which was also vomit inducing. Do you remember those adverts where a child would eat a bowl of Ready Brek and walk to scholl glowing orange. Supposedly this would mean that the child was feeling all warm and cosy inside. To me, that child looked as though he had eaten a contaminated batch of Uranium 235 and that the child now had a radioactive half-life of 3000 years. Do you eat porridge? Let me know. And above all, let me know WHY.
Film Director of the Day - John Woo. I saw Mission: Impossible 2 last night and what a load of enjoyable twaddle it was too. It’s pretty good, although it is not so much a film as more of a wonderful poster for Tom Cruise. He looks fabbo in every shot and he wears the smug grin of a man who knows it. It baffles me as to why John Woo would do such a film. Mr. Woo rose out of Hong Kong cinema and had a reputation for dazzling action movies. Films such as "A Better Tomorrow", "Hard Boiled", "The Killer" and so on showcase his dazzling talents. He almost singlehandedly invented the slow-motion gun battle and choreographed his action sequences to look almost balletic. He came over to the US and initially made shit action movies for talentless wankers like Jean-Claude Van Damme. Luckily though he made Face-Off. Face-Off was wicked and had an utterly bonkers Hong Kong-style plot (villian and vengeful super-cop literally swap faces! How fucking great is that?!) and some fab action sequences. He’s now made MI2 which is a complete distillation of his style. If you are watching an action movie and you suspect you may be watching a John Woo film, follow these easy instructions and you will soon know if you are watching the real thing or a cheap imitation: 1) The camera is always on the move. In Woo films, the camera never stays still. Why should it? The audience has a need to feel dizzy like it’s a roller-coaster ride or something. 2) Guns. Shitloads of them. John Woo cannot make a film without an arsenal of guns of all shapes and sizes. In some of the more intense action sequences in a Woo film, because there is so much debris, ricochets, dust, blood and pyrotecnics, you should not really be able to see any of the main characters. They should be obscured by all of the above. 3) Slow Motion. Most Woo films would be only an hour long if they weren’t padded out by acres of slow motion whenever people do anything - walk down the street, open a door, sit on the loo, read a book - it’s all filmed in slow motion. Why? Is it to do with the fact that every single emotion is then obvious on the faces of the protaganists? Is it because it emphasizes the emotional content of the story? Is it because it heightens tension and allows the torment of the inner soul to be revealed? No. It’s because it looks cool, so shut up and enjoy the film. There are variants on this theme: 3a) Slow motion gun battles. If a Woo battle takes place, it is always filmed in slow motion showing the graceful movement of the combatants and the beautiful motions of the bullets and the sweet caress of the explosions. 3b) Slow motion birds. These always crop up in every fucking John Woo film. There is always a point when white doves appear and someone walks through them in slow motion, causing them to take wing and fly. This always happens. Always, always, always. 3c) Slow motion sound effects. Whenever somebody does something in a John Woo movie in slow motion, it is always accompanied by a kind of reverberating whooooshing noise as though wave of a hand or a turn of a head would be a movement akin to the motions of planets. 3d) Somebody always, without fail, in every single one of his films, jumps sideways in the middle of a gun battle and fires two handguns at the same time. All in slow motion of course..... 4) Bonkers Plot with millions of twists, turns, double-crossings and all sorts of amusing shenanigans. I’m not even going to begin to go into analysing any John Woo plots. Watch Face-Off and that one is tame by comparison to some of his early Chinese stuff. 5) Ridiculous Standoffs. Two guys end up pointing guns at each other at point-blank range and spouting philisophical taunts. 6) Choreographed motion. Watching a John Woo movie is sometimes like watching a capoeira contest. The actors move like silk - in slow motion of course and accompanied by whooshing sound effects while white doves fly around them as they jump sideways firing two guns at the same time.
Flower of the Day - Rose. Ah yes, that most romantic of blooms. It is favoured by gardeners, soppy romantics, filmmakers, poets and songwriters. It epitomizes the beauty of nature and is always used as a weapon in the war of the sexes. It is common in our English Country gardens and is often accompanied by all manner of people who tell you its Latin name and the fact that they have developed it themselves (looks like any other bloody red rose to me, mate. No point calling it "Beefheartium" when it looks just like "Waitsia". Get a grip.) The rose is a good all-rounder. It can be red for soppy romantic moments, it can be yellow for Easter, it can be brown with white spots for when you are ill and it can be white for funerals or virgins. Be careful when handling Roses. Not only are you likely to be hoe’d to death by an irate gardener if you nick one for your beloved, but also Roses have long ago realised they look good and have devised a defence mechanism. On the stem of the plant, there are vicious spikes like nature’s own Stanley knife blades. An American soft metal band, Poison, realised this was a dangerous nuisance and so in a spirit of awareness-raising, they wrote a public information song about the dangers of picking Roses and called it "Every Rose Has it’s Thorn". This song has saved millions from nasty pricks.
Girl’s Name of the Day - Jemima. I have travelled the world but I have never met a girl called Jemima. It is the kind of name you would give to a doll (as memorably portrayed on PlaySchool). Lovely name though.
Animal of the Day - Cat. I have a love/hate relationship with cats. I don’t mind them individually but as a creature I find them unsufferably smug and arrogant. Cats only want two things: Attention and Food. Please note, Attention is not the same as Affection. Cats only want strokes because it will show to the rest of the world that they are popular. Cats are also bloody rude. When they don’t want attention (i.e. when their oversized ego is sated) they will nonchalently show you their arse and stalk off. Cats are only subserviant to us because they need someone to operate a tin-opener for them - not that they need tinned food, most cats are quite capable of going out and killing their own food for themselves, they are just too damn lazy. My aunty had a pure-bred Burmese called Perkins who was a little shit. He would regularly leap out at people and my mother keeps telling me how she once had to pull him off me when he leapt on my back in order to rip my spinal cord out. He would lie on the stairs and reach through the bannisters and scratch at your head. Nice cats do exist and they are lovely and fluffy and pleasant and polite and considerate. Bu they are rare. Most cats are nasty little murderers who keep their prey alive just for fun. This is awful really, even some of the worst serial killers don’t do anything as sick as that. If cats were human beings you would at best think they are unpleasant and arrogant wankers who pride on being aloof and superior, or at worst vicious sadistic murderers who have violent sex, keep you awake at night and casually kill things and then play with the bits afterwards.
Top TV Totty of the Day - Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I usually need little encouragement for this but after last weeks awesome episode (where an evil bisexual Willow pops up with a cleavage and wearing bondage gear and does battle with our regular, good, righteous Willow) I cannot resist nominating Willow yet again for this coveted title - admittedly not that anyone else has had a shot. Incidentally, my good chum Claire asked me yesterday "So Dan, two Willows eh? Which one would you choose?" There was a pause. This was a question of the "Daddy/Chips?" variety. My response to her was the same as the one I give you now: I’ll take both. I want a Willow sandwich.
Thought for the Day - What’s it all about? Dan Greensmith Whimsy Archive |