timboblog

Things I Hate: Chris Martin (No. 1 in a series)

Apart from Ricky Gervais and The General Public, this knob is top of my hit list. In fact, such is my detestation that I'm not even going to give him the pleasure of having his picture on my site. He'd love that. He'd probably get really turned on by the thought, then act all modest and coy (act badly), so that anyone paying any real attention would easily spot what a publicity-loving, bollocks-talking (or not talking...) contemptable bag of piss he really is.

He of the seemingly sarcastic "It's good you came to see us now, before we go Bon Jovi massive." comments at Glastonbury in 2000, and of the "I don't really like talking about stuff" remark to an interviewer on Radio 4. Not when it doesn't concern how bloody famous and great you are, you don't! Who goes on the radio to be interviewed, then sulks off halfway through because he doesn't like having to think about what he's being asked? When some cheesy twat on Radio 1 asks him whether he likes his eggs fried or scrambled, that's fine. But ask him why he gave his album a faux-meaningful title and he gets all reticent. Poor baby.

To recap: 1) He's super arrogant. 2) He's all mouth and no substance. 3) His lyrics are pretentious and meaningless ('Yellow' was named after a Yellow Pages for fuck's sake). 4) He wears t-shirts that say shit like 'Stop Handgun Violence'. I mean, the sentiment is all well and good, but on a t-shirt? I don't think so. 5) He can't even sing very well. Which is a bit of an issue for me, seeing as he's a singer. 6) Bad hair. Bad bad hair. 7) And bad teeth. 8) Simon Pegg (UGH!) is the godfather of one of his kids and was even allowed to sing on one of Coldplay's tracks. Double UGH. 9) This is unverified, but I bet any money he really loves Ricky Gervais.

That's enough of him.

Here's some quality goodness from the mouths of Joan Wasser and Rufus W.

CLICKY 4 MUZAK!!!

And here is where to go to read all about Peach and Ariel's (amongst others) new blook (it's a blog-book apparently), and to be honest, if you're reading this blog you probably already know about this, but anyway. It's for charidee, and it has lots of bloggers' wordage in it. Not mine sadly, as I was on hiatus while the wheels were in motion. But rest assured I may possibly get my arse in gear if there ever happens to be a Blook Mk II. So go and buy it or something, and if you buy 250 copies (which by my reckoning would set you back a cool 3,125 of your Earth pounds) Ariel will even go on a coffee date with you. For that money I'd expect a muffin, newspaper, and possibly a foot massage as well, but I'm not buying 250 copies of it, so maybe the person who does will have slightly lower expectations than me. For Ariel's sake I can only hope that that is the case.

Dave (of e-luv fame) is also releasing a new book soon, which is all rather spiffing if you ask me, so good for him! You must all rush out to your, erm, computer, and buy it.

This post is dedicated to Cat, who I know hates Chris Martin almost as much as me, and has a cool new haircut, so good for her too! (Good for everyone!)

The pushy rabbit

My screen has a blob on it (sigh). But happy new year all the same!

I hope you're all well and festive and copiously fuckered, depending on your individual personal taste. The royal and plural 'we' are rather the worse for wear having been stricken down by every fricking illness going, all at the same time too, at the exact time of the year where being really fucking ill tends to throw a big soggy towel over your whole party. You name it we've had it. We've probably still got it actually so I wouldn't get too near if I were you. You might catch something nasty.

I'm not hanging around for long as I've still got Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, Bonnie & Clyde and in all probability Mary Poppins to watch. It is a busy time.

But as tis the season for giving, saying the word 'tis' and all that crap here's a widget thingy with which to watch Radiohead's New Year's Day webcast. We are not sad at all and so stayed in and watched the thing on the computer at the time (ie. midnight, January 1st 2008). So yeah, whatever, enjoy.

I love you all.

(Nb. Some of the stuff on the widget doesn't seem to work. Most of it does though so if you have any problems or complaints about it please don't come running to me. I didn't make it, it's not my fault, etc. The whole webcast is on YouTube too, but even that cuts off after 26 minutes so god knows what's going on, because I don't.)

Apocalypse

I've had an upset tummy, the missus has a dodgy throat and the toilet flusher hasn't worked properly for a fortnight now. The world must be coming to an end!

As something of an aperitif to The End we ventured out into town yesterday evening and had a lovely time watching and listening to Martha Wainwright sing her lungs out like a crazy woman. She was bloody-motherfuckingly good (spot the Martha in-joke) and despite having to stare unblinking into a fucking bright spotlight for the best part of the show my enjoyment was not diminished. She hung around afterwards and signed things for people, and I got a lovely shot of Charlotte and her having a hug (as you do) which I'm not allowed to show on here as Charlotte will definitely kill me if I do.

I took a load of other pictures too which you can have a gander at if you go here and then follow the link.

The gig was in a church (St. George's Church in Kemptown if you're interested in that kind of thing) which was a pretty strange venue if you ask me. Granted, Martha's stuff is acoustic and not tremendously grunge-tastic, but it has screaming and swearing and all sorts, so in theory it didn't really seem to fit. In practise however it was great and I completely forgot that I was sitting in a pew. The sound was really good too and the crowd were totally up for it. People were even sitting on the floor at the front like you do at school. Pretty weird. Still, next gig I go to is gonna be a standy-uppy jump about like a twat kind of gig. I need some relief after all these sit-down gigs. That's not a complaint, it's just me needing to dance. I was born to dance!

Now, I haven't done any linky stuff for ages, but I saw this yesterday and thought of you, so here you go.  It's a lawsuit filed by Jonathan Lee Riches, a convicted fraudster, against the Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick (full real story here if you can be bothered) and is easily the funniest thing I've read all year. He claims that Vick stole his dogs and used them for fighting (makes sense if you read the previous link) but then goes on to say that Vick sold the dogs on Ebay and used the money from their sale to buy missiles from Iran. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Frankly, if this doesn't make you laugh there's something wrong with you.

Amazingly though, there is something in existence funnier even than this.

The very same guy (who quite obviously has a serious amount of time on his hands, which you would do in jail, I imagine) filed a similar mind-bogglingly ridiculous suit in 2006 against practically everyone and everything in the world. All in the same suit. It's 57 pages of comedy genius. Defendants include Malcolm X, The Queen, Tony Danza and Venus Williams (which is fair enough), but Riches also cites Nordic Gods (?), Mount Rushmore (!), the Leaning Tower of Pisa (...), Mein Kampf  (err..), the G8 Summit (how can you cite a summit?) and rather less tastefully the victims of the Asian Tsunami. What's he got against them exactly? Plus most of them are slightly dead, so he may have difficulties in getting those ones up to the witness stand.

Basically this guy is a total loon, but he made my morning way more enjoyable than normal, so please, enjoy.

I bleached my hair too.

Sorting out

It's time to get my house in order. Too much energy has been expended on nothing much at all, because I have things I need to deal with that I'm not going to into in any detail on here, but rest assured that they are major things. And I need to get back to being a decent human being again, for my sake, for my girlfriend's sake,and just for the sake of sake in general.

Thinking about dealing with things makes me happy, so fuck knows how happy actually sorting it all out is going to make me.

Anyway, that will all happen as it happens.

The birthday semi-weekend was great. It pretty much revolved around a shitload of party nibbles (vol au vents, bhajis, crisps, sausage rolls, etc.) and balloons (you've got to have balloons), with some pressies, music and a birthday surprise thrown in for good measure. I think I may have lucked out in managing to find one of Charlotte's Top 5 Favourite Bands of The Moment™ playing a small venue in Brighton at incredibly short notice. I may never be able to luck out again. How depressing yet pleasing at the same time this fact is.

It was a great gig apart from having The Loudest Joan As Policewoman Fan In The World Ever stood immediately behind me for the whole show, drowning out the vast majority of all other sound in the venue with her tumultuous bellowing, during and between all the songs. And don't you just hate people who cheer a song a whole ten seconds before it's finished? I fucking really do. Me and Charlotte were thinking the same thing and were praying for the band to play some songs she didn't know the words to, and thankfully they obliged. Those three or four songs were pure bliss, I tell you.

In rabbit news, little Koko is still titchy, but isn't trying to bite my legs off anymore which is extremely heartening. Instead, she now tries to lick me to death, which in my eyes would definitely be one of my preferred methods of dying. She appears to be in the midst of her 'I want to be a mummy' phase, so is all energetic, loving, and NEEDS to groom something like her life depends on it. In the absence of baby rabbits me and Charlotte are fulfilling this role, and acting as surrogate lickable things for her. It's really rather adorable, as is she.

Now, time for some leftover birthday cake methinks.

Oh, and when it comes out you must watch Sicko. It's fucking amazing. (And yes, I'm a bad man.)

Shorts

Big Blogger has made me lose the will to blog, somewhat. It was bound to happen. So I'm going to stop treating this thing like a diary for a bit, because if truth be told I'm not the greatest writer ever (or even close) and I'd be kidding myself if I thought that for even a second. My grammer isn't great, I have a vocabulary of about three words, and some variations on those, and I write like I speak, ie. I don't think about it, it just comes out. Which I rather like actually, but I get overkill.

So I'm gonna mix it up a bit. Which will also mean I don't have to spend hours contemplating what to write, then another couple of hours writing and editing the thing. If I was as good as Ariel, Unreliable Witness and my Dad then I would, but I'm not. I'm good at other stuff so it's not getting me down.

Anyway, because interesting thoughts are eluding me I'm gonna start posting videos a bit more, random facts and bullshit, and will probably even amuse myself  by doing some reviews of things. I used to do that AGES AGO but kind of forgot about it. It will keep me happy, and maybe even tickle whatever readers have bothered to stick around while this place has become something of a ghost town.

Here's a thing I just found which I love. Jenny Lewis is special.

And the band that's been in my head all weekend is..... this lot.

Sarah, I will tell you why the bloke said that thing about the thing. Eventually. That is if I don't forget what it was he said. I was drunk, and will be drunk again I expect.
That's a crap excuse but I'm using it all the same.
And sorry, I haven't been able to keep up with people's sites in the last couple of weeks; I am, as I said, horrendously busy, so forgive me while I get pummelled at work and home. I may be able to breathe again in about a fortnight, but I doubt it.

Raising the Ruf(us)

So anyway, the gig was great; he started with loads of songs off the new record, did a couple of older ones (including Art Teacher with just a piano and horn - brilliant), then played more of a variety in the second half, with new songs, old songs, a couple of Judy Garland songs, one song done without a mic while dressed in lederhosen, then a couple in the encore while wearing a fucking dressing gown, and THEN did a couple of songs dressed up in just tights, a jacket and a hat; Rufus as a lady!

I was a bit sozzled by that stage after getting a fair old chunk of Merlot down the hatch, but it was definitely a very bloody good gig. I don't think, for some reason, that a few of his new songs are really that suited to being played live, so some of them were a bit anti-climactic in my opinion. I also had this really desperate urge at one point to get up and start leaping about as if I wasn't at a Rufus Wainwright show at all, and was actually moshing at a Metallica gig. I didn't do it though, and this urge possibly says more about me than about the gig, so ignore what I just said. I was drunk. Yet despite these probably misconcieved reservations it was still a fucking ace show. That bloke has a seriously amazing voice, I'm telling you.

We also met the man briefly (very briefly) and did the usual 'great gig' business, although this was rather fruitless seeing as security were doing their level best to get him the fuck out of there without too much of a struggle. Being pissed helped me here, because I was able to get through the 'should I? shouldn't I?' barrier and run after him and ask him if I could get a shot of him and Charlotte, to which he agreed, stopped his chaps from trying to bundle him in the taxi, and waited patiently while my brilliant camera took what seemed like five hours to take one photo. I'm telling you, next time I'm taking a smaller and less argumentative camera. The SLR is great, but it has a mind of it's own. I'm sure all I need to do is learn how to properly tame it, but right now I don't know how to do this, so yeah, plop.

So I have a shot of him and the missus, which I like but she doesn't because he's not properly smiling due to the camera taking fucking ages to do it's thing.

I'd also just like to wonder out loud as to how come there were more people waiting behind to meet him at this gig at a not huge venue than there were a) when we saw the Flips at the Brighton Centre - a much bigger venue, and b) when we saw sodding Radiohead at a frigging football arena in Holland? I afraid I just don't understand at all.

Lastly, we also talked to the guitarist (who did a great little banjo cameo in not only this show, but also to close Rufus' set at Glastonbury) who was a very nice chap indeed. He was also not totally swamped by fans, unless you count three extremely genial people asking you fascinating questions as being swamped. And he said that he thought Glastonbury was shit, which was not was I was expecting him to say, but which was interesting to hear nonetheless. He had his reasons, but I'm not going into them because you don't want to hear it. What you want is photos, isn't it?

Click for BIGNESS.

And yes, some of them are a bit blurred. Told you I was drunk.

And finally...

(Not) Going to a field

Going to see this bloke tonight.

Should be rather spiffing I expect, as long as my stupidly expensive poncey digital SLR camera with all the flashing lights and whirly bits doesn't get confiscated.

Presuming that doesn't happen I should have a bunch of top quality pictures to show y'all tomorrow.

And no mud anywhere. Who needs mud, loonies in shit hats, flooded tents and ridiculously overpriced kebabs anyway?

Not me. I'm coping just fine with my central heating, fluffy beanbag, red wine (at room temperature)  and Dolby 6.1 surround sound thanks.

Ponce? Moi? Mais non!

Back to nature

We were sat under the trees in the park this afternoon, the pair of us, all alone, drinking cider, eating sandwiches, sausage rolls and pork pies, playing with daisies, talking about things from the day, things from the past, and things from right there and then; I let a wood louse uncurl itself in my hand and then crawl about in my palm, then from hand to hand for a minute or so, and the sun was warm, the grass was damp, and apart from the occasional geordie on a mobile or random hayfever sufferer sneezing it was pleasantly quiet, intimate, and heart-warming.

I forgot all about the damp and death, and all the other bullshit; I think she did too. I'm amazed at how a mildly sustained period of time cocooned within a tiny patch of nature can energise and refresh the soul.

Which means that, as of today, if we can't find a new gaff with a garden then we just will not be satisfied.

Random fact for the day - Edgar Wright, the director (not producer) of Hot Fuzz and Spaced, used to work as a car park attendant at Wookey Hole. Who knew?

Random song for the day - For all the Lost lovers out there; close your eyes and pretend that you're Desmond. Go on, he's lovely.

That's me told

Okay. I've had a stern telling off.

No rabbits.

Yes, it's official. THERE WILL BE NO RABBITS ANYWHERE IN THIS POST.

Apart from in those last two sentences.

Promise.

Everything else is allowed though, so it's time for some links and music and general bollocks. I was going to do a post about 'something' for Clair, but seeing as that 'something' is banned I won't be doing that. Clair, I'll email you. It's all good.

Right, first some linky stuff.

1) Everyone has to go and peruse and comment on and generally be a fucking huge avid fan of Big Blogger. Why? Because it's my baby and I've devoted what seems like a ridiculously huge chunk of my time to making it all run smooth as clockwork. Plus bloggers are tempremental creatures at the best of times and keeping 15 of them under control and on schedule is a fair old mission, so I deserve some kind of award or (preferably) substantial monetary dispensation for my troubles. Be nice and come and say hello.

2) Re the above, do it, or I'll find you, tickle you a bit, and make you watch endless repeats of Casualty and Holby City. It will not be pleasant.

3) I've also gone all new age, sci-fi, wi-fi, web 2.0 or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, and have set up a Big Blogger Fartbook group. So this means you all have to sign up for Fudgebook and then join the group. By doing this I shall be able to monitor your every move , thereby making it far easier for me to accomplish number 2.

4) This programme/series has been a great watch, although the one all about Pink Floyd and Genesis could have done with a lot less Genesis and a lot more Syd Barrett, but what ya gonna do eh? Some Barrett is better than no Barrett. Time to go and re-listen to Madcap Laughs and those early Floyd LP's...

5) That judge who sent Paris Fuckwit Hilton back to jail is offically the greatest judge, if not human being, ever. Most judges only seem to do stupid things like releasing serial killers into the community because they've got mental issues (like, yeah, obviously you knob), or sending old ladies to jail for not paying their council tax, which I'm pretty sure everyone has agreed is a totally shit tax and yeah, jail will sort those old bitches out alright. But no, this guy actually did a good job, went against the rule which says that if you've got enough money you can pay your way out a situation, and sent that braindead streak of piss back from whence she'd come, crying like a big fat baby. Which means that this goes down as one of the photos of the year. Mr Judge, I salute you.

6) drD maketh me laugh with his wit and superb photoshop skills.

7)  "We're doing a feature for Country Life. Survey of rural types: farmers, travelling tinkers, milkmen; that sort of thing."

If you don't know what film this line is from then you are officially off my Christmas card list.

I couldn't find a clip though, which is total bollocks if you ask me. Bastard YouTube.

*Interlude*

*Sips on his Guinness which isn't from a pub so isn't the greatest, but it's still Guinness so that's okay*

And now for some moozak, presented in the style of Tony Green from  Bullseye:

IIIIIIIIIIIINNN ONE! (I'm From Barcelona - Oversleeping)

IIIIIIIIIIIIINNNN TWO! (The Concretes - On The Radio)

IIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNN THREE! (Elbow - Buttons and Zips)

AND BULLY'S SPECIAL PRIZE! (Thievery Corporation - Shadows of Ourselves)

Things and stuff

A gratuitous cute otter shot for Lucy and Charlotte, because I can:

I can't be arsed to put this next thingy on Timbomedia cos it needs to be heard and people seem to shy away from the lovely blue page wot I made for some reason. Sigh, oh significant sigh. What's the matter with you all? It's got music on it! Free music! And rabbits! I really do not know. I don't! Some people would not know good quality merchandising even if it came and did a massive heaving poo all over their favourite nephew who is only five years of age and is extremely innocent!

I just ranted for no good reason and for that I apologise.

If you're still here then read on for the good stuff.

• Listen to this very excellent thing. The inspiration, along with the behaviour of one ginger dumpling-shaped rabbit, for the title of the last post.

• And then listen to this, from in my opinion the best album of last year.

I have also set up yet another pointless excuse for fannying about on the laptop and would really asppreciate somebody sharing with me the REAL reason for it's existence. I know it's supposed to be for finding long-lost friends and acquaintances and attempting to find somewhere to fit in this vast and mind-bogglingly confusing universe, but apart from that, what is it REALLY REALLY for?

In News: Charlotte went to see the scarily talented Rufus Wainwright at HMV in Oxford Circus yesterday and he was apparently bloody great. I could have predicted that, but then I'm just great at predicting most things. Even more distressingly, she also had dinner at OUR FAVOURITE RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD, EVER...without me! How thunderingly upsetting is that? And I had to wait up til 2am for her to get back. I tell you, she's bloody lucky I love her, or else I might be quite jealous and stuff. But I'm coping admirably, thanks for asking.

And where has the frigging sun gone? Rain bad. Sun good. And I feel terrible leaving the rabbit out in the wet. He gets soggy fluff, and might catch a bunny cold which would be shit, probably. Let's face it, weather is unnecessary and unpredictable (weathermen and women have the most pointlessly futile job in the world) and we'd all be better off without it.