I rather like this ad to encourage kids to cycle to school. It made me laugh out loud when I saw it.
The target audience, of course, will hate it because they won’t empathise with the geek in the shot.
I think the research was a bit misplaced too because we all know that green and yellow are Catholic School colours (indeed this was my school uniform at Holy Cross) and the ginger hair of the wee lad also has massive catholic symbolism.
So, The Apprentice would-bes get sent on a shopping trip to a Souk.
The perfect recipe for lies and ‘espionage’.
For me the episode revolved around Jen and Michael’s total disregard for honesty and decency - a pair of lying twats quite frankly. We’ve oft discussed Jen’s bootishness in the past on this site, but her decision to engulf herself in a pink headscarve only made her look like Miss Piggy on her dabs.
Now she looks like an ex-Apprentice.
Quite right.
(We can put the mirrors back up in the living room again.)
Her decision to try to boycott Team Alpha’s progress by stage whispering a pathetic bribe to a local tennis stringing ace was pathetic and for that reason alone she had to go.
Michael Sophocles survived somehow, despite being a wee wank. He makes Raef (amazingly no twit ups AT ALL this week) look like a normal member of society - in fact I’m beginning to think Raef might even be a contender!
The teams were great. It really was the battle of the boots and assholes versus the normals (and Raef).
Increasingly my money is piling onto Lucinda who put in another good performance. She even let slip a wee “Och” when she slipped running across a shopping centre forecourt in a subconscious attempt to prove that she is indeed a true blue Scot.
Lee’s leadership was mainly based on different ways of exclaiming ‘Fuck!” very loudly and encouraging his team mates to join in. They did. With gusto.
The highlight of the week followed the unravelling of Michael’s pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself with Sir Alan by describing himself in his CV as a “good Jewish boy” when in reality he was only “Half Jewish” - which explained why he didn’t know what Kosher was. On hearing this Sir Alan suggesting Michael drop his pants to show if he’d circumcised his plonker.
I think he was just pulling it myself.
Oh and Jennifer got fired too. Fair enough. She was shite.
Based on Rudyard Kipling’s iconic poem the new Irn Bru commercial has landed. Set in various locations across Scotland and somewhere abroad it features some lovely vignettes. Some work brilliantly, like the Loony Dooking pensioners (at 33 seconds) which struck a real chord with me, also the kissing Celtic and Rangers fans, the despondent Scotland fan with his wee lassie and the way folk choose the wrong descriptor for their meal times are all great.
Others are less succesful and I’d question Martin Compston’s voiceover.
But three cheers for the choice of South Queensferry for two of the settings!
I feel the whole campaign suffers from being shackled by a weak strapline. Phenomenal does nothing for me. It’s unphenomenal frankly.
Overall it’s a nice, rather touching return to form.
10,000 folk turn up at Hampden Park to audition for the X Factor yesterday, despite the fact that the programme producers knew, full well, that unlike Engerland the Scottish exam season is in full swing.
A friend of mine’s daughter got through to the judging stages - at the expense of her English Standard Grade exam. Same day, different place. (That’s the equivelant of an O grade if you happen to be an English X Factor producer).
It’s a fucking disgrace.
Enjoy watching the auditions when they come along and maybe you might think about how a slightly more sympathetic timing might have got someone’s son or daughter an extra qualification.
Then again…
(Actually, you know what? That photo says it all.)
Kenneth Fowler pointed me in this direction via his blog. It’s a really funny set of Flickr ‘artworks’ on boyshapedbox’s Flickr sirte and turns well known songs, like this one, into graphs, Pie charts and the likes. Hugely clever and rather amusing. Well done Boyshapedbox. Check it out by clicking on the image. It’ll take you straight through to his Flickr site.
Whoa. Stop right there. What the fuck is this? I’ll tell you what it is - it’s a beast. The most finely concieved, played and produced African album I have ever heard.
It is an absolutely stunning mashup of tribal rythm from Mali an extended family of Saharan nomads who are quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen or heard in your life.
Count yoursef blessed that you have stumbled upon this post because the track I have for you, the first from their third album, is an absolute stonewall classic. This stuff takes your breath away and played back to back with The Very Best of Ethiopiques it shows the quality of music coming out of Northern Africa is nothing short of sublime
Please do yourself a favour. Buy this record. And Pick up The Very Best of Ethiopiques while you’re at it.
The new Portishead album has been ten years in the making. I read a review that said it was “nice background listening”. It may have been written by a monkey stabbing randomly at keys until this particular sentence appeared because nothing could be further from the truth; as this track demonstrates.
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This, the fourth on the album, is the best song they have ever written. It is a thing of intense beauty.
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Throughout the record Beth Gibbons’ vocals are used sparingly above an electronic symphony. Cool, funky, orchestral but all synth driven with utterly astounding drumming. This is so good that I thought I was going to cry just listening to it on the train home from Glasgow on Thursday night.
I told you this was a great event. Particularly because Alfredo Marcantonio showed us a reel of commercials that were all low budget but brilliant. Here are a few of them.
I’d never seen this VW Karmann Ghia ad before but it really is a classic.
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He showed this too. Which made us all laugh.
And this cracker for Carling Black label.
He showed a different ad from this one for the x show. But this is a pretty good alternative…
I met Jim Sutherland last week at a Guardian event in Edinburgh. A really interesting and modest guy with a great vision for this orchestra.
I particularly liked the ideas of the four Hurdy Gurdies that feature in his orchestra.
He brought along a Japanese Saw player (Su-a Lee) who performed ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow on the saw’. Cracking and really beautiful.
You can hear some of the music on their myspace site here. I urge you to do so because it is stunning. Beautiful. Magical.
And this is what his myspace site says about the orchestra.
La Banda Europa is an extraordinary 35 piece band of virtuoso musicians assembled from some of the finest musicians across Europe
“The Hurdy Gurdies are amazing to look at, like Elizabethan ships, with a sound somewhere between the violin and the bagpipes. The nykelharpas are similar, having a strange, other-worldly sound to them.”
In 2006, composer, Jim Sutherland was awarded the Creative Scotland Prize for artists of distinction It is one of the richest arts awards to an individual in Europe….. The Award allowed him time to develop his ideas for an orchestra that could make a unique ’sound of Europe.
“All in all we’ve got some incredible musicians, some of the very best in the world on their particular instruments.”…… …..“The Armenians play an ancient instrument called the duduk made from the wood of the apricot tree and which sounds like a woman singing alto.”
The whole thing was initially Inspired by Jim’s score for the BAFTA and Brittish Comedy Award winning film Festival when they famously flew the Drambuie Pipe band over to Seville to record Jim’s score with La Banda Tres Caidas, an Eighty piece Semana Santa band.
“Instruments like the ancient Celtic carnyx will grab the eye – it’s the only one of its kind in the world and was reconstructed from one found in bogland in Scotland. It’s a bronze war horn which was 6ft long and held vertically above the player’s head.”
Jim initially put the orchestra together to perform his score for ‘Before the Wolf’, a theatrically presented outdoor production. Niel Butler of UZ events raised the funds and facilitated the shows. These first performances were very successful and have lead to enquiries from event organisers and festivals throughout Europe.
“Bagpipes of 5 countries, Swedish nyckelharpas, , Armenian duduks, Turkish drums, trumpeters from Scotland and Serbia……..Many of the players in the Banda Europa are exciting composers in their own right.”.
We watched the last episode of series two through tears of mirth and melancholy in almost equal part last night, only seconds after watching the show win two BAFTAs.
Like James Corden I was puzzled by the fact that it was nominated for most things that had a suggestion of funnines about the category, but not best sitcom, but, hey, that’s the BAFTAs for you.
After all, Coronation Street didn’t get a nomination for best Soap. That’s a joke is it not.
Anyway back to the Gavster. This is a magnificent TV series and it all stems from the writing - in this case of James Corden and Ruth Jones. I don’t think the series has reached the critical mass it should have , But it will. Oh yes it will. British comedy at its very, very best.
One further observation on the awards…C4 stuck it right up them. Good on ya C4. We luv ya!
Tittyboy Raef kept his profile well below the radar (Yah) until the final seconds this week, when he blew it by being spotted wearing a preposterous pink skinny rib v-neck that only posh folk would be seen dead in as the house awaited the survivors of the eviction coming back.
Clearly Simon (nice but nasty) found himself well out of his depth - surrounded on one side by the barking Doberman that is Claire (by the way what is the difference between a Doberman and a woman with PMT? You can reason with a Doberman) and on the other by ‘butter wouldn’t melt in my handsome blue eyed mouth’ Alex who totally shafted him from the start.
Claire annoyed Sir Alan so much that I sympathised with him. She is a gobby boot. See you as you get fired next week Claire.
This creepy house has been unvieled from a covering of trees in the last week. It’s been empty for years and was put up for sale last summer. I was tempted to buy it and do it up. The day I went to view it, it was surrounded by an urban forest, but over a 24 hour period the forest has been removed. I suspect the house may not be far behind and, if so, I will try to chronicle its departure. Yuk.
