Australian X Factor

Is a show where former nobodies who became manufactured pop stars try to make….more manufactured pop stars.

Only without the intercourse which, quite frankly, is a blessing because as much as I want to see Ronan Keating’s bum I’d rather not see Mel ‘Scary Spice’ Brown in any such action, fuck you very much. Bitch be scary alright.

So how does that work exactly? The four judges built their ‘careers’ based on what someone else told them to think, wear and sing. They had images moulded for them by somebody else who then made a lot of money from that very cultivation. How then does that put them in a position to mentor anyone?

At least Keating has had some experience in this type of thing; he went from boy band massive to finding hot new boy bands. He would be the judge everyone would want I would think because he has some semblance of knowing what he’s doing and just to prove the point, it was his guy who won last years show. Where is that guy now? That’s irrelevant.

I don’t even know who the blonde judge is, that’s how big she made it.

And being Australian no one has a bad thing to say about no bugger, ever. Even when the judges try to be the teeniest bit critical it turns into a boo fest from those hundreds in the studio audience that know better, that’s why they’re all rock stars and not rent a crowd.

Worst of all? It’s on four nights a week and the winner's video is already all over the music channels. The show has no point. This theory can be safely applied to any show with 'X Factor' in its title.

Oh and don't Google image Ronan Keating because nobody deserves to see this:

Hey at least it wasn't a pic of Scary Spice with a milkshake *shiver*

This Is A Black Out

Wankipedia blacked out its pages this week in protest against some proposed bill that had something to do with film and music piracy.

Quite why the six poindexters who write the stuff on Wankipedia thought that their actions would save the world of free and illegal downloads I don’t know, their site offers neither, but hey, each to their own I guess.

The bill probably proposes the same thing that all the other ones that get put forward by governments around the world do; let’s shut down the means of getting copyrighted shit for free. Naturally, all those that do pinch the stuff suddenly get up in arms about potentially not being able to. What a fucken surprise.

‘Imagine a world without free knowledge’ is the heading on the black out Wankped page. ‘For over a decade we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopaedia in human history’ it goes on to read. ‘US Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet’. Stirring stuff, I hope someone doesn’t have to use this chair after me…

Only I don’t really see the correlation between say, downloading a movie / song illegally and writing anything on a wiki. Oh sure, if you plan to write the synopsis of the movie you just pinched for free then you’re affected. But hey, if a fat kid falls in the woods and no one is there to see it is it still funny? You know it is.

Ironically the wiki black out page has links to Facebook, Google and Twitter, none of which decided to do the same to theirs.

I’ve gone on record about this stuff before but I shall repeat it because I love the sound of my own voice. I believe you should pay for something that someone with far more creativity than you and I have created. Now I don’t agree with paying an extra two hundred percent on top of what the artist gets, just so that every bastard in the manufacturer-to-consumer chain gets his pound of flesh, but you should pay something.

For instance, I won’t pay $35 for a CD because very little of that goes to the cardigan and scarf wearing writer of the song, but I will buy the song I want off iTunes for $1.50. Nor will I pay $20 to see a movie just to cover the wages of the waster at the candy counter that have their pubes, but not their heart, in filling my box of pop corn.

If you’re one of those geezers that doesn’t even believe that they should pay that then you can fuck off. Black out your page if you want but I’m not buying your argument or your desperate cries for solidarity when you’re faced with the prospect of losing something that was never yours to have for free in the first place.

You can stick that on your blacked out wank page too.

This was a pic of the most beautiful girl you've ever seen, naked. But as I copied it illegally from a porn site I didn't pay for I felt it only appropriate that I black it out...

Shit Music Killed The Radio Star

I’m no Bob Dylan but I know a thing or two about music; I was an assistant manager in a music store for two years after all and if that time served one purpose it was that I now possess an uncanny knack to pick a shit song when I hear one.



The problem is that in this digital age one mans shit song is another mans anthem for his gay life. Gone are the days when somebody learnt to play an instrument for a few years, toured dives playing said instrument for a couple more before finally making it ‘big’.



Back then artists learnt their craft and it showed in their playing and their construction of songs. It’s no coincidence that a lot of these songs still get played on iPods, radio stations and car stereos all over the place. Some will even bring back vivid memories, like ‘We Built This City’ which reminds me of lonely days spent in my bedroom, the wireless on, playing with my G.I.Joes.



And no, that’s not a euphemism for having a wank. Why would I need to even use one? Sadly, making music these days is as easy as having one and don’t we all suffer for it.



Incidentally I had some good times working in the music store. It was a great time to be a part of ‘the scene’ with the Warehouse only just starting down the path of sucking the life out of retail CD sales. This was during the Alanis Morrisette / Spice Girls years which meant girls; always lots of girls in the store.



It was there that my mate and colleague at the time Adi Dick – now a semi successful local artist himself – taught me how to play guitar. That was almost 15 years ago now and I’m sure he’d be disappointed to learn that my playing hasn’t really progressed much further than three chords and the truth. But I only really wanted to learn to play to score chicks at parties so that’s what you get for impure motivations I guess. Either that or a visit from Internal Affairs but lets not go into that.



My mate Caro works there and I know she sees the good stuff even if she doesn’t let on that she does. Passports and Birth Certificates my arse.



One can of course avoid shit music if you cut about 90% of every outside influence, in your life, right now. I manage about 60% by avoiding all music channels except MTV Classic, not listening to the radio ever and resisting the urge, no matter how strong, to walk into Glassons or Supre stores. That last one is a toughie of course; it’s just that their range does wonderful things for my goal in life of only wearing things that fall into the category of ‘tight’, ‘revealing’ or both.



The other 40% is somewhat unavoidable and often the most suicidal times of the day for me. Like the wireless on at work which is only ever at the volume where some of the things I’m about to list can be heard in all their excruciating annoyingness.



Other times include the periods where the missus complains that my iPod play list is so depressing she’s contemplating exiting the car whilst it’s moving and as tempting as that might be, I will usually switch on some station where three muppets spend most of their time talking about how much cooler they are than each other.



So please, allow me to share some of my worldly experience with you so that you too may avoid losing three or four minute blocks of your life that you’ll never get back. Shit songs can be best identified by the following:



1. Constant references about wanting to know the strange girls in clubs. That’s called stalking and besides, if they really are a ‘strange girl’ then chances are they’re easy. No need to write a song about easy girls.



2. Songs by guys that proclaim they ‘want to do everything to you all night long’. The inference being that this is only a ‘in the dark thing’ because you’re ugly. And probably easy. Refer to the above.



3. Songs about clubs in general. You want your song about being in a club to be played in a club. We get it. That doesn’t mean it has to be played anywhere else.



4. Promises to ‘take you higher than ever before’. Um, isn’t that illegal? Maybe the dude meant legal highs like Kronic but hey, even that’s illegal now, so stiff shit there matey.



5. Anything that contains a sample, or lyric, from a classic song that should never have been allowed to be fingered by the Black Eyed Peas or Taio Cruz, no matter how much they were prepared to pay for it.



6. And finally, any song where the actual music sounds like it’s been played by a fella with a trumpet, using his anus. Case in point the song – and I use that term very loosely – ‘Bounce’ by somebody pointless and Kellis, the women who’s milkshake bought all the boys to the yard*.



*Which has always reminded me of the day I asked the amply bosomed girl in the school canteen if I could have a glass of warm milk, shaken not stirred? It went over her head.

Even the Cover Is Depressing

Christ on the cross, almost without warning a new David Gray album has hit the shelves and will soon be blaring out at you from poncey coffee shops everywhere. Why weren't we told this was coming?! You can't just let depressing shit like this hit the streets without alerting the massess.

If you've never heard David Gray then congratulations. If you feel you must then go to the nearest tall tower, hop in the lift and ride it all the way to the top. The music that they'll play in there is only mildly less suicide enducing that Gray's. In fact The Samaritans have his entire back catalogue playing as their hold music in the hope that it will push a percentage of their callers over the edge and free up some phone lines for those that can be saved.

Now if you can't find just such a building then fear not. Simply head home and stick your dick in the blender; the pain you feel will be mildly less than if you were listening to a David Gray album.

And hey, lets be careful out there aye?

Top Models Or Christian Rock? Tough Choice.

Moral dilemma. I think I downloaded a Christian track onto the 'ol iPod. Bummer. I had seen the band on TV and liked their sound, looked them up on Wankipedia and after sampling a few thirty second sound bites on iTunes, downloaded their two most popular songs. The suspect song is a catchy little number and sure, it has a lot of 'oh lords' in it and verses about 'showing me the way', but I thought it was a song about breaking up. On closer listening I think it’s about finding Jesus.

So now what do I do? Keep them and just hope anyone listening to my playlist in the car doesn't take me for a paid up member of the God squad, or just continue to rock out with my cock out and enjoy the ride? They wouldn't be the first band to suck me in with their catchy riffs and not too subtle words of worship but then I’ve always thought Phil Collins wrote the book of Genesis, so I’m easy pickings. Maybe I'll download their whole damn album in the hope that it will give me the knowledge I need to pass myself off as a true believer next time I try to gatecrash the Parachute music festival, where all the hot teenage girls all wear promise rings but believe that 'oral is moral'.

Am I only the one who thinks that current Labour Party leader, Phil Goff, looks a lot like the former leader, Helen Clarke? People always thought Aunty Helen was a bit mannish and lets be honest here, we haven't seen the two of them in the same room together for sometime, so there you go. I feel as sure about this as I do that it would be more interesting if He-Man called himself the Master-bator of the Universe. He's clearly got the arms to prove it. He must use both too...

Not nearly as surprising are reality TV programs and the predictable initial elimination and selection episodes. If watching this rubbish has taught me anything, it’s that to guarantee your passage through the early stages you should stand out like a stiffy in bike shorts.

This is particularly true on anything where looks are the focal point of the show, like New Zealand’s Next Top Model, our version of the American show of the same name. Now the makers of shows like this have two options; pick all the pretty girls or pick most of the pretty girls and through in a few fruit cakes for dramatic effect. They will never ever go with the first option because lets face it, a pretty girl is a pretty girl and sure, she looks magic amongst a bunch of munters, but put her amongst a group of other similarly pretty girls and they all look alike. Unfortunately that makes for a very boring hour of TV unless you if you're a teenager who's discovered the wonder that is 'the wank'. Then it’s a rope burn hour of TV.

These 'interesting' girls are almost always not as pretty, but that doesn't matter. The producers of the show hope by mixing in the kooky girls with the attractive girls will lead to fireworks and they're not wrong. The damaged girls resent the pretty girls for being so damn hot and the pretty girls resent the damaged girls for being the mingers in what essentially is a beauty pageant. Eventually the mutual dislike reaches a level where it's not so subtle and shit hits a new level; the scrubbers will get their backs up over the beauty queens questioning their competing in a competition about who’s the prettiest, whilst the Paris Hiltons will feel that the Lindsay Lohans are using their baggage to get ahead.

Compelling stuff alright, but not groundbreaking. This kind of carry on between the differing factions of girls has gone on since ages ago and life as a girly is not all about pyjama parties, pillow fights and shaving each others legs. Its not, but oh how we fellas wish it was.

So sure enough, when faced with the need to cull 30 wannabes down to 12 probable’s you just knew the African refugee girl was going to make the final cut, as was the girl with the career threatening physical illness and the girl whose parents murdered each other over just where to hang the tea towel. Or something like that. Hardly a short listing that is indicative of anything that would happen in real life, but then this kind of product placement is not just restricted to model searches. On Dancing with the Stars there is always an overweight celebrity, not that there is anything wrong with being an overweight celebrity, especially as the population is getting fatter with every passing minute, but why not have ten fatties and two lookers?

I know why and you know why. Nobody wants to watch fatties, not even fatties. They might have their place in obstacle course type shows but that’s about it. Think about all the shows on TV right now that star fatties and they're all about one thing; them losing weight. Why are there no shows about skinny bastards like me getting fat? Why are there no shows about she males like Aunty Goff, or cartoons about ambidextrous intergalactic wankers?

No wonder I've started to listen to Christian rock, there’s nothing worth watching on TV.

Coldplay? Not My Cup Of Tea.

There are some teams in your lifetime that you just love to hate. You hate them because they seem to win everything, which in itself sucks, but that kind of success brings with it a horde of fans and supporters that are commonly called 'fair-weather'. A fair-weather fan is someone who only supports a team because they're winning. Once the success goes, so too will the fan. Coldplay is one of those teams.

Of course Coldplay is a band, not a team. Well not a sports team anyway. And as the old saying goes ‘there is no 'I' in team’ just as there is no 'Chris Martin in Coldplay’, only in case there is, because he’s the lead singer, lead writer and lead attention getter.

They may well share everything equally, but it’s Martin who is Coldplay. He's the one who gets to do the duet with Kanye, not the other three jokers. He's the one snapped by the paps whilst out and about with his equally famous missus (and onetime ClubDes trampoline girl) Gwyneth Paltrow, not the other three fellas. Who knows if they even have girlfriends? Who cares - they're not Chris Martin.

Now I like Chris Martin. He's a talented man who uses his immense profile and position as lead singer of Coldplay to get in behind some extremely worthy causes, like Oxfam. He likes to wear lots of beads and wristbands and eclectic shirt and jacket combos. He sends encrypted messages to the legion of fans who would love to have a duvet made from his pubes by wearing strategically placed tape on his fingers. He has piercing blue eyes that you should never look straight into. Ever. And he loves the environment so much he called his daughter Apple for which she will be eternally resentful, especially when she hits college and all the 'I'd like a mouthful of Apple' jokes start. Yet, despite all this goodness I still think that I liked him a whole lot better when he was just the nerdy guy singing 'Yellow' whilst walking on the beach in the rain.

Friends of ours chose that track as their wedding song. I thought it odd at the time and I still can't get my head around. It reminds me of how in the seventies the Procol Harlem song 'Whiter Shade of Pale' was one of the most popular wedding songs of it's generation, despite being completely and utterly about snorting coke. Love might make you blind but it doesn't make you deaf for fucks sake. The same sort of social cock up was recounted by the very sexy Dido at the concert of hers that my wife and I attended a few years ago. Dido found it quite bemusing that her song about helping a needle popping mate go cold turkey was being used in weddings across the UK. I just found Dido incredibly hot. I had an erection the whole night.

But my point is that back when Martin was the silly looking guy in the soaked anorak, Coldplay were cool because they were different - well somewhat, they were admittedly ripping off Radiohead in their glory days - but their fans dug them because of their music, not their politics, not their bracelet wearing, not because of Gwyneth and not because of Chris Martin. Somewhere between the first and second albums they became the Manchester United of music and fittingly, the fair-weather community stopped buying U2 and moved on in.

Comparisons to U2, that other most influential band ever were always inevitable. How the planet copes with two sources of infinite musical inspiration is beyond me. Why when I picked up my guitar the other day I just couldn't decide what to play, so I had a big wank instead. Incidentally, did you know that wanking got it's name from the sound wooden beds made back in the day when boys first started treating their bodies like a fairground ride; 'wankwankwankwankwank'.

Martin is a huge U2 fan actually and when amongst friends sometimes compares himself to Bono, even going as far as calling himself 'Crono'. Why he doesn't compare himself to Bob Geldolf, the man behind both Live Aid concerts I don't know. It was Bob, not Bono who saved the world first. I suspect it’s because Geldolf is quite ugly where as Martin is a very pretty man. Bono is somewhere in between I suppose, depending on which side of poo bay you like to drop your anchor.

For the record I prefer U2. They don't have fair-weather radio stations like ZM peddling them and their upcoming concert as the second coming, or fair-weather friends gushing over just how liberating they are. I've listened to a lot of Coldplay in a desperate attempt to like them and thus feel fulfilled in my life and I do like one or two tracks, but it all sounds the fucken same to me and I have exquisite musical taste. Not that sounding the same is necessarily a bad thing, you could say that of any band of course, but this is supposedly the biggest band in the world we’re talking about, could they not mix it up a bit? Geez even U2 went a bit fruity with their Pop album.

Oh and most importantly, I know the names of all the geezers in U2. Even their real ones. Coldplay? Not my cup of tea.

Good Music and Asian Children Are So Hard To Find

I'm just going to chuck something out there; I think there should be a Caucasian only music channel on TV. One that plays predominantly rock and maybe but other white folk music too, like alternative rock and hard rock or maybe even easy listening rock.

Now I don't doubt that Chris Brown and Usher aren't talented artists in their own right, when they're not ripping of each others songs, look and videos that is because they seem to do a lot of that, but I'm sick of seeing their faces - along with Rhianna and Nesian Mystic - every time I turn on a music channel. Thankfully there’s YouTube and alike to keep us, the majority that don’t dig Chris FitzUsher or Usher FitzChris, sane but it’s a sad day when a man has to interrupt his streaming online porn just to watch the latest Weezer vid.

If I really wanted to get rational about it all, I might argue with myself that the reason that the stations keep playing this shit is because the viewing demographic demands it. The fuck it does. I’m in the viewing demographic and I don’t. The top download on iTunes NZ at the moment is the Phil Collins classic ‘In the Air Tonight’ thanks to a bizarre – to say the least - TV ad. Last time I checked, Phil Collins was as white as my skinny arse so it just goes to show that there is an audience still out there gagging for a bit of classic rock and we all know there aint no party like a Phil Collins party.

While we’re at it - the Elemenop song that Telescum have raped for their latest round of bullshit has been erased from my play list too on account that I’d rather not have the mental images I now associate with that song. Shame, because it was a keeper and I really like them as a band. They let KFC kiddyfiddle one of their earlier hits too, the sell outs and they call themselves musicians? Jingle writers I think would be a better term. See The Beatles had the right idea in not letting anyone get their poo stained advertising hands on their back catalogue.

There was once a channel that catered for the majority of music fans, it was called MTV UK and it played its fair share of rock and whatever other types of music there are. This was real MTV too, not the dumbed down, browned out just-play-the-same-crap from the States version we have on our screens now. It was good in that it had specific periods where it played the different genres and you then knew when and where to watch if you wanted to see your favourite.

It also had the very rootable Cat Deeley as a VJ. She could have been playing Wiggles music videos and it wouldn't have mattered quite frankly because we were all just staring at her tits and luscious lady lips that we all imagined were wrapped around our remote.

Speaking of gorillas, Xin Xin the Panda was found safe and well this week, locked in a cupboard in an empty house 20 metres from her own. Does it seem weird to you that no one thought to look there five days earlier? It did to me but then I saw several of the residents of that extremely affluent street interviewed on the news and there wasn’t a Kiwi amongst them. I’m genuinely surprised they even stepped out of their houses to be interviewed let alone look for a missing panda. Why does every missing or abandoned Asian child have to have a nickname that sounds like an empty coke can rolling down the street? Why not try Lisa, Kate or Emma?

How unlikely is it that anyone having a boy in the next six months is going to call it Tony? Wife beater Veitch fell on his sword this week and possibly promptly packed himself when he heard that his ex has now filed a complaint with Police even after he paid her some serious hush money. Smart girl that, she got the money and the bag! But there’s still a chance for small man Veitch I reckon, he could co host with the Lion Man and they could share anecdotes on just how they like to smack their bitches up.

It’s a great country isn’t it?

Ze Germans Are Whack

Are we done with the gay Opshop song that seems to be played by some bugger every five minutes? Absence might make the heart grow fonder but not when we have to listen to some tosser croon about it every waking moment.

I’m all for a good song getting all the airtime but enough’s enough. Let’s be honest; it’s a good song, but it’s not a great song and now it’s just a downright annoying song. It probably wouldn’t be if it was just lame radio stations playing it every hour but NZ Post lay it on nice and thick in their TV ads too so there’s no escaping it. The Opshop boys should take a break from blowing each other and take a good long look at what over exposure has done to James Blunt, no one likes that poof either.

Speaking of sneaky bastards, those deviants at McDonalds are at it again. Their latest marketing campaign is good, infact it’s very good but you have to get up pretty early to catch out old ClubDes because I sleep with all three eyes open and the safeties off.

Their latest ads have people eating their same old crappy food in places in restaurants that don’t actually look like McDonald restaurants which are depressing places at the best of times. Incidentally does every McDees smell of saturated fat and children’s wee, or is that just the local one in JTown? So now they’re trying to subliminally trick you into thinking that by not eating shit in a place that doesn’t look like shit you’ll be okay eating shit. What a load of shit.

I actually ate McDonalds the other day but only because I was gagging for some shitty food. Needless to say it fulfilled all the requirements. I didn’t enjoy it mind you, infact I made all the same noises whilst I ate that I did when watching “2 girls 1 cup” for the first time, just so they knew I wasn’t enjoying it. And I ate one handed because I had my fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy the whole time.

I don’t condone Maccas in anyway, they are the makers of their own destiny, but it’s interesting to see the bad press they get when you consider a pack of two minute noodles – the staple of many a households pantry, including ours – has more saturated fat in it than a pack of fries from the golden tits. Yet no one is putting shit through the letterbox of Maggi as a result are they?

On a lighter note, the laughs never stop in Germany do they aye? A couple of years ago it was mutual cannibalism, now its keeping your daughter in the secret basement for twenty years whilst having seven kids by her. Not to be outdone, some fraulein kept the bodies of her three dead babies in her freezer for two decades. Her oldest son came across them whilst looking for frozen pizza! Bet you he wishes now that he’d gone to the local McDees.

What is it with Ze Germans aye? I’ll tell you something about Neo-Nazis I’ve only just learned after reading the ‘Ross Kemp on Gangs’ book on the TV series of the same name, is that they dig the numbers 1 and 8 because if you number the letters of the alphabet, then they correspond to the letters A and H. Which stands for Adolf Hitler, who you might have heard of?

This is great news for me really considering that I spend half my time walking around with a massive 18 plastered across the back of most of my football jerseys! I won’t be wearing my Spurs shirt to my next hate rally that’s for sure.

Incidentally, a little known fact about Ross Kemp is that he dare no utter the words ‘Ross Kemp’ because the universe might collapse in on itself. He is that hard.

Josef Fritzl, The sicko who kept his daughter locked away for twenty years was Austrian and technically not German, but then hey, neither was Hitler. In a bizarre twist, not that this story could be any more bizarre than what it already is, but Fritzl reckons it was his Nazi upbringing that caused him to do these things and he plans to plead insanity as his defence. I for one am not buying it and I don’t think the Austrian government will either. They’re only just getting over the bad press that one native son bought them 60 years ago, they won’t let Fritzl do the same.

Now I’m a big fan of an eye for an eye when it comes to nutjobs like Fritzl. He has quite simply ruined his daughter’s life and quite possibly the freak shows that are her children. The authorities have had to build a replica basement for her in the hospital because she can’t handle the open spaces; she hasn’t seen daylight in 20 years and all this before we’ve even gotten to the sexual abuse side of things! I reckon there’s only one punishment that fits the crime – lock the 73 year old bastard in a cell of similar proportions and give him regular conjugal visits from other inmates who like to give, rather than receive.

But something tells me he’d probably get off on that too.

Music Reviewers Are Crap

I loathe self appointed authorities on everything. Its people like them who think that they know it all that stuff it up for those of us that actually do.

Take music and movie reviewers. It must be a miserable existence having a job that has you finding fault in the things that are there for you to enjoy in the first place. I say ‘job’ but it really is a misleading term because how fucken hard is it to listen to music or watch movies all day? Even if they are shite, it would still beat the Groundhog Day drudgery of office life I reckon. You can’t open a bag of Twisties and start treating your body like an amusement park ride at your office desk that’s for sure.

Isn’t it interesting what people will say in a job interview because they think its going to get them the job? My personal fave is when they start dissing the current or previous boss and colleagues in the mistaken believe that it will somehow make them come across in the interview as the only person who did any work at their previous job. What it actually makes them look like is a moaning, back stabbing prick that will be doing the same thing to me should I be silly enough to hire them. They might as well walk into the interview with a tee shirt on that says “I’m A Cunt”.

Maybe they all end up getting jobs as music reviewers?

I happened to read a music reviewers online blog the other day. This blogger, who we shall call Simon, because his real name is actually Simon, is a fat man who blames you for making him fat. He’s the kind of guy that stopped getting invited to party’s years ago because he likes to tell the host that their choice of music was crap. He’s the type of guy that when he throws a party, very few attend because he likes to tell his guests that their choice of music is crap. He’s the kind of guy who reviews a music concert that he didn’t have to pay to see and says it was crap. The 10 000 other concert goers who actually paid for their tickets would disagree, but hey, what the fuck do they know? They’re all crap.

Simon and I actually have a wee bit of history. He was the first columnist I had ever read that got on my tits so much that I actually wrote to the newspaper to tell him just how much of a penarse I thought he was. He had written a review for a concert that I had been at that was so completely off track I actually questioned if he'd been in the same room as I, but then the review had started with something like "I hate this band" and pretty much went down hill from there anyway. Maybe its just me but I tend to think reviews should be about the event, not another chance for some fat fuck to tell you how miserable he is being at someplace he never wanted to be anyway.

Simon has that hoity toity air about him that all critics have about them because they think they’re better than you and I. They hate anything ‘popular’ because that translates in loser speak to ‘crap’. The irony of this of course is that despite gagging for the attention and adoration of the masses, the critic is caught between wanting to be talked about by everyone, but not so much that it makes him / her ‘popular’. Because then they’d be crap.

All music reviewers incidentally have the same list of favourite obscure bands, whose CDs they practically have to give away at the Warehouse because no one else buys them. Everything else musically, in the mind of the music critic, is crap. Bands that sell trillions of records and who bring delight to the trillions of people who bought them, are crap. Why? Because a fat man who can’t figure out why his stumpy pecker is a constant shade of Twistie orange and who has a black belt in being an arsehole said so.

I used to come across this kind of nothing argument almost every day when I worked in a music store. People trading off bands like they were sports teams. Who gives a shit, really? If you like a band and they rock your world then enjoy it man. Don't let some geezer who's sphincter sealed itself up years ago because all the shit was coming out of his mouth tell you otherwise.

Simon's latest blog is a list of bands he thinks are ‘over rated’ and who are therefore in his mind – wait for it – crap. Now I may be new to the blogging biz but I know enough to know that when you start making a list of anything, then you’ve clearly run out of ideas.

Simon? Merry Christmas mate. P.S Your blog is crap.

Dumb and Dumber

I’ve got a great idea for a TV game show. Its working title is ‘Blind Root’, which may be a bit ‘edgy’ so I’m open to suggestions at this early stage of planning.

The premise will be that each week one contestant has several sexual encounters (all on camera of course), whilst wearing a blindfold and then has to rate their performance. Then back at the studio they have to work out who was who by simply playing with their bits. If contestant number one picks his / her best Blind Root they get syphilis as a prize. If not, they don’t go home empty handed, they get pubic lice from one of the more mediocre roots.

This is not a new concept of mine. I’ve actually had this idea for some time but I’ve had renewed hope it will make it to TV this week after seeing them kooky Koreans choose their nations first astronaut by reality game show. It was an Astronaut Idol type concept and I hope there’s a second instalment for when all the astronauts are up in space; Who Gets To Come Home? idol. Now that would make for some good viewing and seeing as it’s a mission funded by the Ruskies, the chances of them running out of cash half way is not as far fetched as it would seem.

Them Asians really know how to do reality TV game shows though. Most of theirs involve self torture, or pain and that makes for good TV, especially in Asia where they like to bury their European girls in bath tubs of sand on the apartment room balcony. Here in New Zealand we just do idiocy on our shows, like Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old, copied from the American show of the same format.

Actually the first episode set all sorts of new viewer ship records here because all the paedophiles tuned in thinking it was called “Are You Tighter Than A 10 Year Old”. Needless to say they quickly realised their error and returned to trawling Bebo and Facebook.

This is entertainment at its lowest ebb. You take several shit for brain adults and prove just how thick they are. Everyone watching feels great because they realise they’re not as thick as the contestant and the kids on the show, the real stars, feel great because they know they're not as thick as the contestants. It must be one hell of an audition process. I would never have believed that we have so many dip shits in New Zealand but obviously I was wrong, for once in my life.

It can't be easy being labelled like homemade jam. You’d think that if you were slightly slow the last thing you’d want is for the van you’re riding in to read ‘Special Needs School’ in big letters along the side, wouldn’t you? I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the van load of spastics I passed on the way home the other day riding in just such a van. Man, they can’t even have a quiet dribble in the van without being labelled for all to see. I did wonder though if the ones sitting at the back thought they were getting a longer ride home....

I am dubious of reality shows though and of just how much editing goes into the process. Some folk are suckers for a good dose of edited make believe, like all those that watch rubbish like Sensing Bullshit or any other show that deals with ‘mediums’ solving anything. Just watching it wouldn’t be so bad I reckon but when people actually believe that what they’re seeing is groundbreaking stuff then that gets on my tits.

No medium or physic has ever been attributed with helping to solve a crime. Ever. Not just here in NZ but in the world. Now if that’s not definitive proof that the edited, scripted, shake stuff off camera to make it move production you just watched is the biggest work of fiction since the bible then what is? The reason this rubbish is on prime time telly and not buried in the twilight hours where only the kiddie fiddlers surfing Bebo would watch it, is because too many potential contestants for Are You Denser Than A 10 Year Old tune in and cop out at 8.30pm!

Mind you, the scariest thing I’ve seen on the box for quite some time was an ad for David Gray’s Best Of CD. I didn’t even know that Mr Elevator Themes had one hit song, let alone enough of them to make a whole collection of 10 – 12 tracks. I reckon guys like Gray, James Blunt and NZ's own Greg Johnson should all be locked in a room together with a few empty 1.2 litre Coke bottles and be forced to listen to each others songs.

The last dude standing who hasn’t hung himself with his own guitar chords gets to be a contestant on Blind Root.

Radiohead vs Nicky Watson

Radiohead, the once cool but now crap alternative band for the angst of my generation, have done something quite cool again this past week.

In a world where everything can be downloaded from the net at no charge and at no risk bar a few Trojans – viruses, not condoms – they’ve decided to heed the age old adage of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ by offering their latest album online for free download before it hits the shops. The cool bit is you pay as much or as little as you want for it. It’s totally up to you.

Naturally, Radiohead fans have wet themselves and crashed the website in a rush to download the album. They’re an honourable lot too with most of them admitting that they paid nothing, bar the 40p transaction fee to download it. So there you go, even when you offer a geek the chance to be honest he doesn’t take it. How low will these people go I ask myself?! Oh the inhumanity of it all. But Radiohead don’t seem to care, they made trillions from their first couple of albums before it all went to shit, musically anyway, so I suspect the income factor on new recordings is not high on the priority list for them these days.

The music industry has freaked though. James Blunt for one has done his nut which is a bit rich coming from a guy who can lay claim to being the most played but equally most hated artist out I reckon. Maroon 5 would be a close second in my book - does any other band actually sound like they're giving each other a blowie whilst they play as much as those dudes?! Blunt must be doing alright though because he seems to hook up with some fantastic birds. He either has a huge chopper or a tiny one and like Tom Cruise, pays his missus for a little more than just the housekeeping.

Record companies have poopooed The ‘Head for making their music free to all because from their point of view ‘it sets a dangerous precedent’. You bet your arse it does! It means that other bands might take up the cause and start offering their new music direct to the listener, the fan, the consumer at a cheaper rate than the $30 we pay these days for a piece of coded plastic. Every bugger who touches the recording after the actual artist adds a 100% mark up to the cost of a CD, you can be sure of that. In this day and age there is simply no need for a recording to pass through so many hands anyway, not when it can be marketed direct to my living room via the intraweb.

And for an industry that talks a big game about dealing with piracy, I don’t see or hear many artists taking the same stand Radiohead has. Why don’t successful bands put pressure on their record labels to lower the wholesale prices of their music? It sure won’t stop the freeloaders but it’s a damn good start for people like me who actually want to reward the artistic endeavour it took to write an album full of original music and want to pay something for it. Releasing your music legitimately online it seems is only a path taken by the struggling to break it artist and the savant act like Radiohead, who don’t give a rats about the money or the sales any more.

One new release you’d have to pay me to download though is the new Nicky Watson calendar *shiver*. If Nicky Watson is New Zealand’s answer to Pamela Anderson then I want to know what the fucken question was and who asked it?! For all the naive, easily influenced young ladies out there reading this – Ames, that means you – here’s a free insight into the mind of the quintessential ClubDes man and hopefully some peace of mind for you: We don’t dig football size bitty and most men don’t. Over rated rock band drummers do, but that’s because they were breastfed well into their teens and exhibit the mentality to prove it. The only guy who enjoys seeing girls with a rack you could hide a small Asian family between is the surgeon who pockets twenty grand to implant them.

Watson must be getting desperate for the money too because in her calendar she is as airbrushed as one of my old 1/24 scale Tamiya models. She looks more look 3D rendered porn than she does real which will no doubt please those into 3D porn, an audience I suspect not too far separated from those that find Nicky ‘all that and a bag of chips’ anyway. 3D porn aye, what is up with that?! Now I can understand an animator getting a little bored in his downtime and rendering some girl on girl action late one night, we did the same in the back of our maths books at school. But now it’s gotten well out of hand. Why would anyone choose a drawing over the real thing when there’s so much of it on offer? For free even.

Maybe it harks back to the early days of a boys sexual awakening when the first girl he ever had a semi over was Daphne on Scooby Doo and her knee high boots. The minx. She was gagging for it too. Even now, on the odd occasion, Kim Possible in her cheerleader uniform can get a fella a little bailed up in the morning…

Or so I'm told.

Sex Doesn't Always Sell

I once wrote a scathing letter to a sports magazine I used to subscribe too. I had received my latest copy in the mail, had taken one look at the local C grade 'celebrity' on the cover clad in only a bikini and wondered - quite rightly too - what did this have to do with sport? Up till then, recent covers of the mag had been decidedly soft porn, so Eva the Vulgarian was the last straw as far as I was concerned.

I questioned the wisdom of having the magazine look no different to all the other soft core magazines bought by men who are too afraid to buy the mags in the plastic wrappers. Wouldn't it be better to have your magazine stand out on the news stand, rather than be lost in a see of airbrushed titties I asked? If you must stick with the theme I asked, why not have some of NZs champion sportswomen on the cover and promote a positive image of women?

To their credit the magazine printed my letter. The editors satirical reply hinged only on the premise that he suspected I was actually my wife, as both our names appear on our email. I guess he thought that no red blooded male would be complaining about a blonde in a string bikini. But he thought wrong.

To cut a long story short, the editor resigned a few months later (he now writes for a trashy Sunday paper). The new editor at the magazine changed the policy back to having actual sports people on the cover and the magazine seems to sell quite well these days. It is certainly a lot easier to find on the shelf. Proof then, that sex doesn't always sell.

Amusingly some IT magazines are yet to find that out though. Certainly nothing makes me more excited about my latest issue of Poindexter Monthly than a girl in a bikini holding a mother board on the cover.

See, I am a bit of an 'untypical' type of guy when it comes to things like this. But I don't believe I am the only one.

I enjoy rap music as much as the next frightened Caucasian, but the videos are absolutely disgusting. Not that this a phenomenon confined to rap music - soft core titillation is so mainstream these days that we've become numb to it. Yes, I realise that the women in the videos are paid for their time and do so by choice, but that doesn't make it right.

The ultimate irony to me is that rap 'musicians', who are predominantly Afro American, will rap lyrical about racial oppression and just how badly they're treated by the five-0, yet don't hesitate to promote women as being nothing more than possessions. What do their mothers think of all this I wonder?

How about the confused adolescent girl who gets her prompt on how she should act around boys from what she sees on MTV? What of the adolescent boy who does the same? How does he now expect to treat girls do you think? Skip forward down the chain of consequence with me a few steps - and now throw in the world wide web. Is it any wonder we have an ever increasing number of young girls exposing themselves (mentally and physically) online?

Parents should be playing a positive part in this type of scenario, but many don't. I especially applaud the mothers - and lets be honest here, it is the mother - who buys her 10 year old daughter the short skirt, knee high boots and padded bra combo. Allow me to offer some advice (it's free advice too): Your daughter is not a Barbie doll that you can dress provocatively in order to overcome your own self image anxieties! Just because you can't pull the outfit off, doesn't mean she should have to.

Now I don't necessarily believe there are more paedophiles around today than there were, say thirty years ago. Only now we make it more easier for the bastards to get their jollies by sexualising our kids - particularly our daughters.

So don't endorse anything that promotes the fallacy that soft porn is okay. Don't buy the crap the rappers record if their lyrics and videos continue to trash women. Don't buy the sports mag with the bikini on the front. Don't watch the incestuous programmes that portray life (and women) as being one big continuous shag. If enough people did, then the record company doesn't finance the crapper because his records don't sell. The sports mag returns to sports people on the front cover and the programme loses advertisers and eventually it's funding because no one is watching. It's that simple.

Most importantly, protect your kids. Sex doesn't always have to sell, not to your kids anyway. Don't dress your daughters like hookers. Clothes don't maketh the child, their innocence does.