"Just go on your nerve and let all the different bodies fall where they may" - Frank O'Hara.
A satirical blog of music, film, sport, television and other particularly banal shit, with words coming from an all-star, smash-hit thespian collective of one human man.
THREE REASONS WHY THIS PORTAL SPEED RUN IS A METAPHOR FOR HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR TIME ON THIS ROTTEN STINKING EARTH.
1.It is a Portal speed run.
Aside from being a freaking brilliant little game (if you haven’t played it, you’re are doing life wrong) Portal was also a massive metaphor for life in this shitty corporate owned, fat cat led capitalist world we call a society. You’re stuck in this horrific rat race with only inanimate products for reliable company and even they aren’t allowed into lifts with you. Oh yeah, and if you do get to defeat your overlords everything will blow up, and your body will be dragged away so don’t even bother. Great!
2.There’s all those bits that look like ket trips.
I don’t know if you’ve ever taken any excursions off the beaten track of boring old reality, but again if you haven’t then you’re doing life all wrong and you’re wasting your mental capacity. I was once a canoe sailing down the Amazon and that was a mild one. This is probably terrible advice but go find some drugs right now and take them in your bedroom and enjoy. Check Erowid for good advice on how not to die because that isn’t fun (except if it is, I’ve yet to try it. If you find out what it’s like, let me know!). Ps, writing this paragraph has made me feel like some shitty Vice writer, so please accept my apologies.
3.He gets the motherfucking cake!
This is like the most positive, reassuring, hope-inspiring thing I’ve encountered all year. Seriously, after hearing this news I’ve been sleeping like a baby. The Tea Party are going nuts in the US pushing the country towards a point where it’ll crack apart like the streets of San Francisco, but here is a sign that the will of man could maybe, just maybe, win out over the power of the big businesses that lock us in socio-economic cages and enslave the worlds’ children. Colonel Gaddafi is slaughtering Libyans, but here on your computer screen the beautiful agility of the human mind is demonstrated; a power present in all of us; a potential that’s just waiting to be unlocked. Cameron & co. are raping our country for the benefit of bankers and the upper classes – bludgeoning away all the things that make this country worth living in at all – but at least the cake is not a lie.
So I say, let us rise up against those who oppress us and in some tedious clichéd reference to Marie Antoinette; let’s all go get some cake.
TF&TV’s Favourite of all the Conor Oberst Hairstyles
So we were going to upload 31 different Conor Oberst hairstyles to celebrate his 31st birthday. But you know what guys, we do have degrees; we have lectures that we should be going to, essays that we should be starting on and limited and precious time that we shouldn’t really be wasting. So we thought: you know what’s kinda like 31 photos of Conor Oberst? 13 photos of Conor Oberst! Yeah, see what we did there?! We did the old switcheroo. We like to invert things here at TF&TV Towers (not a real place). We like to mix things up a little. Turn things on their head. We’re just wild like that.
So here are our (my) 13 favourite hairstyles of Mr Conor “It’s My Party, I’ll Cry If I Want To” Oberst:
My father always used to tell me “Never trust a girl who pushes her hair behind her ears”. Sorry Conor, but that probably includes you too.
You know that old saying “Dogs start to look like their owners”? Well, Conor looks like Winona Ryder here. Conor and her used to fuck. Winona Ryder’s a dog?! Conor fucks animals?! So many unanswered questions.
Oh hey Bright Eyes! Where’d you get your name from, Bright Eyes?
You look so ROCK, Conor. Playing guitar and shit. With the unkempt hair, t-shirt-over-long sleeve combo and the shark-tooth pendant. SO ROCK. ROCK ON!!!1
This is a promo shot from Conor’s unreleased Kasabian tribute album. Burn it, burn it now.
Brylcream: You can cry into your fringe all you want and your hair will still look AWESOME.
If you are so stoned that you can’t even be bothered to make proper eye contact with the camera then I’m sure as hell not going to try and think of something funny to say…
Hey little boy, does your mother know you’re in a Liverpudlian brothel in the 1960s?
Track and Field 149: Olympic Oberst Edition.
I used to have my hair cut like this, I think I even took this exact picture in to the hairdressers. This joke is on me.
Show this picture to all suicidal teens and MCR fans alike. It gets better, kids! There is hope for you all yet!
WTF Conor! Take that fucking Topman arab scarf off, man. And the faux-gold watch. And cut your Bring Me The Horizon hair while you’re at it. And stop smiling. Jeez, what the fuck happened?!
I CAN’T STOP LOOKING AT THE FUCKING BEARD!!!!!!!!!11
The Strokes, 2001: “Is This It?” The World, 2011: “Yes, yes it was.”
Welcome to Blog #2 of the “Julian Casablancas, Albert Hammond Jr and the ‘Other Three’ Strokes, what are you thinking?” series. Really, what’s going on guys? Midlife crisis?Albert, are you sad that you no longer get to walk Agyness Deyn’s little chihuahua? (No innuendo intended.) Julian, are you disappointed that you don’t get to keep Courtney Love up all night anymore? (Don’t even want to give that image enough thought to make an innuendo.) Are you boys worried about your relevance ten years on since your debut? Well after hearing your latest single, then yes you have good reason to be anxious. But was this album cover (above) really called for? It’s looks like it’s a Hard-Fi cover for crying out loud! What are you going for here, The Strokes? Trying to be ‘wacky’? Psychedelic? Trying to show that you have grown as a band in your long absence? Is this it? Then please don’t take the lead of MGMT’s in their way of showing it (below).
The optical illusion doesn’t impress anyone, guys. It’s like when people first got the internet in the 90s and there were loads of pictures circulated of black dots, where you’d stare for thirty seconds before tilting your head back and then you’d go: “WOW! I can see an outline on the ceiling that looks like our lord Jesus Christ, or at least an outline of a figure that we in the Western World regard as what our lord Jesus Christ looked like, because actually Jesus Christ was not ethically white despite how we depict him- that is if our lord Jesus Christ even existed at all!” Yes, we all remember that.
But The Strokes have never been so good at album covers, have they? Remember the first moment you bought their debut (pictured left)? Even if the album didn’t have a Parental Guidance sticker, which in itself made you feel like you were buying cocaine from a copper, the mere artwork of the album was enough to make sweat seep from your shaking palms. It’s a picture of a fucking arse, for Chrissake(so much blasphemy)! It’s an arse being spanked by a leather gloved hand. This shit is terrifying for a teenage boy. “What if they think I’m gay or something weird like that?”, you would think. Buying that album felt akin to the time I bought FHM, the only difference being that I didn’t keep the album stashed under my bed to be re-“read” about a thousand times by grubby hands.
Now let’s end this post by having a look at those kings of truly awful album covers: Hard-Fi.
This was their attempt at an “iconic” album cover. It ticks all the boxes really. It has enough simplicity to be memorable and appeal to the masses. It shows an element of pseudo-Banksy-esque graffiti that everyone was jizzing over a few years ago. Finally, it has a mild political message. Yeah, fuck the system! The only thing is… it’s just shit, isn’t it?
Hard-Fi’s second, and hopefully last album, rallied against their previous self-proclaimed-iconic artwork. It even fought back at the entire concept of album covers. Edgy.
Redemption of The Liquorice Rizla, Or how Generation Three became my least favourite Skins
The entire social spectrum of modern youths in this country, or should that be CUNTry?
Three weeks ago E4 launched Series 5 (or 3.1 if you prefer) of its flagship teen drama, Skins. The show has been extremely popular since it first appeared on our screens over four years ago. However, Skins could be heading for decline, if at least critically. You don’t have to scour the depths of MTV too far for evidence that teenagers will watch any old shit (NB. The exception being the brilliant tits-pecs-and-tats-fest that is Jersey Shore). Therefore, don’t expect the axe to swing any time soon. But where is it going wrong? Why is it so easy to dismiss the new gang as a bunch of exaggerated stereotypes who simultaneously manage to convey about as much depth as the grave I buried my childhood pets in? A set of American Apparelled Monotypes if you like.
This is the first ‘generation’ without even a tenuous link to the original cast, thus making the application of the emotional investment required just that little bit harder for those who have sat through over 35 hours of drugs, sex, death, angst and dodgy parent cameos. It’s like when they changed the mum on My Parents Are Aliens, you just didn’t give a fuck any more. Despite my disinterest, I find myself routinely sitting down at 10pm every week, with the same sense of auto-pilot I associate with catholic mass. As a Bristol resident, my Skins experience is now nothing more than the queer sense of enjoyment I get from recognising a street or a building…”Oh…is that?….yeah that’s Syndicate’s VIP area she just swallow-dived to her death from….how depressing”. Okay, so here goes, a brief run down of Generation 3:
Frankie Fitzgerald- A pocket-sized androgynous angst-box.
S5E1 opens on the lead-character Frankie ‘Franks’ Fitzgerald. The daughter of two gay ex-army buddies, tomboy Frankie is played by Dakota Blue Richards, famous for being the star of The Golden Compass (A.K.A Northern Lights: The Movie) and allegedly falsely accepting praise for her performance in Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds. She dresses in a tux, wears boys-boxers and makes shitty animations that wouldn’t be out of place in a Keane music video. That’s literally it. She’ll probably be bi with Grace and have an angst-filled whisper-a-thon with the mysterious Matty.
Grace Violet - Posh-but-lovely with a love for performance.
Like the actor/dancer she is, Grace is the ensemble’s most adaptable member. One week she is a mephedrone licking (I mean literally licking) doormat who potentially could be gay. The next week she is a ballerina who gladly attends a Napalm Death gig. Now she’s designing clothes for Roundview College’s fashion benefit. I like her, she’s cute.
Alo Creevey & Rich Hardbeck - The world’s only surviving pair of ginger-metalhead twin-fucks.
Rich is metal. He does not compromise. He flips Huey Morgan the bird and deafens himself for fun, the dick. He is the guy from high school who would have benefited from receiving a golden shower from Mr Pantene and Mrs Pro V. That last metaphor leads us onto Alo, a ginger nu-folk leprechaun who apparently is obsessed with Victorian pornography. He drives a B-reg British Leyland van. Where the fuck did he get that!
Let the record show that I tried. Unfortunately the remaining cast members have ‘personalities’ so enormously obvious that they have been known to effect high-tides in Micronesia causing the extinction of seven species of tropical birds.
I leave you with a rallying-cry: ‘AXE SKINS. SAVE THE TROPICAL BIRDS!’
Five reasons why Death From Above 1979 are better than sex - nay, love even!
The inimitable Death From Above 1979 recently announced reunion shows at various festivals not based in the UK. I cursed my parents for having not been born on a different continent. But then they announced a show at London’s HMV Forum, and my life was suddenly this cornucopia of champagne, gold and other hip hop video necessities. I got tickets this morning, which is fortunate seeing as they sold out in 20 minutes, according to various Twitter users.
For those unacquainted with DFA1979, they are basically Black Flag making out in a dark corner with Rick James, then waking up hungover pretending it never happened. And if you are unacquainted with them, you’re clearly a fool who needs to discover YouTube. Go on, I’ll wait. So, because of my nigh speaking in tongues level of excitement, I have decided to tell you why they are better than both sex and love. Afterwards, you will find it really hard to disagree, and your life will spiral out of control in a string of meaningless one night encounters, because every time your lips touch another’s, the riff from Romantic Rights will play in your head. And you’ll say you’re sorry. You can’t do this. Death From Above exist.
Whilst sex and love release endorphins (the MDMA chemical, in layman’s terms), the amount is incomparable to the surge when first track from You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine, Turn It Out kicks in. You might actually think you’re dead for a moment. But you’re not, friend. You’re living, for the first time.
Would love, or even its shameless brother sex, let you scream slogans like ‘you’re lovely but you’ve got lots of problems’? Or maybe simply ‘PUSH IN, PUSH IN, PUSH IN, ONE TWO THREE PULL OUT’? I did it once. I did. This isn’t a fabrication for a little story on the internet for your entertainment. She was most displeased. Well, it was screaming that or insisting on the buttless chaps.
In love you have that honeymoon period. The length of this differs for everyone – it can be a week, it can be six months, so on. With DFA1979, you will never leave that honeymoon period. Every time you throw them on, you’re having sex in public; you’re getting along with their parents; you’re writing poetry and buying flowers. That is it, forever. There is no downturn.
With sex, there are those awkward moments. ‘Is it in?’, you may hear yourself ask. DFA1979 is ALWAYS in. It never goes out of style. The only awkward moment that comes from them is when a parent or authority figure hears the lyrics. But even then, you’re so pumped up on basslines that you tell them to fuck themselves and pack up all your belongings.
DFA1979 will never break your heart. DFA1979 will never call you a slut/manslut. DFA1979 will never bring up that one thing you did a month ago, you remember, when you said you’d wash up but didn’t. They’d forget that. They’d say ‘fuck it, let’s rock the fuck out.’ And then they’d smash the plates. They’d never tell acquaintances that you have a wide set vagina/tiny penis. They’d never cry to make you feel guilty. Unless it was because you wouldn’t party with them!
What I am trying to put across here is that Death From Above 1979 welcome you in. Everyone loves them. Even girl children love them, probably. They don’t take themselves too seriously, but they’re not a joke either. For those of you who missed them the first time round, I envy you. I really do. And I hope you can understand why we, the initiated, don’t even need to have sex any more. We’re lucky. We can just watch it, in vivid and shameless detail.
New James Blake music video for ‘The Wilhelm Scream’.
A few days/weeks/months (not years, our little Jamesy is still merely a boy-cub) ago, everyone was sucking James Blake’s nipples like they were covered in cream. Now, as the week of his debut release draws to a close, the tide has turned the other way. All you cruel music critics getting on his back and off his nipples. Get off his back, I say! James Blake is not just an album you know, he is also a human man with a big old human heart that hurts and bleeds just like Leona and the rest of us. He just has so much emotion that it hurts him personally when you give him a bad or mediocre review. I’m pointing my accusing finger at you, Drowned In Sound. 5/10 hurts, man. It’s not just a number to James, it’s more than that. So think before you just go and put him down like that. Good thing Pitchfork went and gave him a 9.0. He ate those decimals up like numeral spaghettios. So, dear reader, sit back, relax, get the tissues out and get ready to experience the most emotional music video extravaganza since Craig David’s ‘Walking Away’.
Opening riff that sounds like ‘Last Nite’. A syllable-extending, vocal-warbling lead singer who sings unintelligibly about nothing really at all. Is this the new, and so long antcipated, Strokes record? No, it’s just some band covering an unreleased Strokes song. Oh, and they just so happen to be called The Strokes too. Coincidence that. This feels like 2002, but sober.
We’re a so-called satirical blog on music, film, television, art, sports and other particularly banal shit.
The Writing Roster so far:
Luke Morgan Britton (LMB) Frank Nield (FN) Leah Pritchard (LP) Jonathan Fisher (JF) Ben Hall (BH) Jon Bauckham (JB) Howard Melnyczuk (HM) Matthew Britton (MB) Ben Tipton (BT) Glenn Bloxham-Mundy (GBM)
