I heard this song on the radio yesterday evening whilst driving back from the gym, and it hooked me instantly. The track opens with a low level foreboding tone reminiscent of the scores of many old horror movies, and this is accompanied by an almost inaudible vocal track, which appears to be a radio or television broadcast recording, creating a fascinating level of suspense, and evoking thoughts of fear, perhaps even terror. The odd word will occasionally stand out, such as the word “freak”, which forces you to listen to the song more intently, in case there is some hidden message buried under the layers of atmospheric instrumentals you might hear. The faint audio track is strongly reminiscent of the audio featured on many Church of Misery tracks prior to their opening riffs, which often feature interviews with serial killers, or news broadcasts relating to the same. The fact that you can’t hear what the vocals are describing in this instance, however, makes it infinitely more chilling, and at the same time, far more interesting as well. Rea's Voice kicks in straight after this, as most of the instrumental audio fades out, to leave his voice clear, and crisp, against a faint strings background. This is probably most reminiscent of Till's opening monologue at the start of "Heirate Mich", and sets a nice tone for the rest of the song.
When the song itself kicks off, it takes things to another level still, combining the atmospheric synths heard earlier with a very sharp sounding guitar tone, and what would be a catchy pop-style drum beat were it not for the dark sound of the rest of the song. This is all accompanied by a classical piano, yet another instrument frequently used in horror soundtracks.
Rea’s vocals themselves, however, are what really make this song. His dark, harsh, haunting tone is almost identical to Leonard Cohen’s in his bleak, dystopian record ‘The Future’, and the lyrical content of the song is similar as well. Whilst the latter part of the song deals with more mundane social issues than ‘The Future’, which focuses more on the more brutal social evils we see in the modern age, the lyrics in these later verses are still very powerful, and pass on a strong feeling of dread. The first main verse after the intro and bridge, on the other hand, is so similar in style to ‘The Future’ that if you had simply showed me the lyrics to the verse and asked me to guess who wrote them, I would immediately have said ‘Leonard Cohen’, especially for the line ‘And the perverted fear of violence, chokes a smile on every face’ – one of the most mind-blowing lines I remember hearing in years. In fact, it's probably the best line I've heard in a song since I went through Leonard Cohen's musical catalogue back when I was 18 and first heard songs like 'The Future' or 'First we take Manhattan'; it's that memorable, and evokes that much emotion. Stick lyrics like these in a Cohen-sounding song like this one, and you have a recipe for success.
On the subject of lyrics, I would also like to applaud Rea’s use of the word ‘Motorway’ during the first section of the song. Often, British artists will change their vocabulary to suit an American audience better, so it’s nice to see one who doesn’t, and this also gives the song a more raw quality, and makes it feel more natural, and therefore more relevant. By not changing the lyrics to hide his nationality, Rea has made them seem more personal, and this makes them more haunting than had he not done so, because the lyrics go from being just the words of a song, to someone’s honest opinion about the way the world is turning.
So, if you’re a fan of Leonard Cohen’s late 80s - early 90s work, or just want to hear a really cool-sounding dark song, be sure to check this one out. The video's also pretty similar looking to Oliver Stone's video to 'The Future' from the end of Natural Born Killers in places, with the sped up sections of traffic intercut with dark domestic scenes, so why not check it out? It definitely gets my approval.
There was a massive campaign last year for Rage Against the Machine's 'Killing in the Name' to be made Christmas number one here in the UK, in order to prevent the year's X-Factor winner from once again taking the Number One spot. The problem is, despite how well that scheme worked last year, Simon Cowell is still very much unstoppable in the music business, owing to the fact that people can't get enough of ridiculously rude British celebrities. Therefore, I believe the only way to stop Cowell dead in his tracks is to deploy our very own super-offensive English weapon; no, not Piers Morgan, they're in on it together. We need someone from outside Cowell's world, someone who can bring the music industry down from the outside. A man with nothing to lose. Possibly a man who was recently made fun of on South Park...
That's right, you read the title of the post correctly, well done. It's Gordon Ramsay!
I think we're onto a winner here, people! Someone copy this to iTunes, quick, and let's see how many downloads we can get for Christmas!
Since nobody visits this site, and that whole Memebase scene is somewhat popular (I think the comic I made on here which someone stuck on there actually got more hits than this site has in total), I'm gonna whore myself out - So I just thought I'd make a "Challenge Accepted Guy" comic for you to all enjoy:
That surprised you, didn't it? After all, you thought I was going to be commenting on Miley Cyrus turning 18, and how much I'd like to bang her. But in case you haven't noticed, I was doing it before she was 18, so her age really makes no difference to me (I mean, 16's legal in the UK and half the States in the US). Still, even I was surprised when she did that naked photoshoot to celebrate being legal. Yikes!
I never would have thought it. Stand-up girl like her.
Vice
Get it? Like Voice, but without the 'o' because we're talking about porn? Ah, frget it.
As a man who is currently trying to become a Master of Science, I feel I am in a position to answer some of those questions that people often ask themselves without ever bothering to research the answer to, simply because they realise they don’t matter. I have already tackled some fairly hefty philosophical issues on this Blog, and so feel now is the perfect time for me to dig into the world of science. So, without further ado, I present my answers 3 questions I found posted on New Scientist Magazine’s website, by curious young minds looking for answers. I hope you enjoy this article, but more importantly, I hope you learn something. Every last one of you.
“Why does hair turn grey?” Karen Bagon Radlett, Hertfordshire, UK
Karen – this is a very interesting question, with a fascinating answer. You see, originally, human hair did not turn grey, but stayed the same colour throughout an individual’s lifetime. This all changed in 1754 in France when it was observed that a visiting Dutch prince by the name of Adelbert Hildebrant was losing some of the colour from his hair. Of course, King Louis XVI’s doctors did all they could to try and maintain the colour of the prince’s luscious auburn hair, but to no avail. The colour faded, and it soon turned grey. King Louis feared for his life, as he was certain that when news of this outrage got back to King Frederick I of Württemberg, it would mean certain war with the Netherlands, so in order to pacify the Dutch, Louis decided to marry one of his daughters off to the prince, because what King would attack his own daughter-in-law’s home country? After the marriage took place, the strangest thing occurred – French women became unbelievably attracted to the prince’s grey hair, as they believed it showed him as distinguished and prestigious. The royal couple had 5 children between them, all of them boys, and owing to the fact that the women of France knew these young men would be carrying the grey-haired gene, each of the princes had numerous partners in the period between their achieving adolescence, and the downfall of the French Monarchy. After the French royals were guillotined in the revolution, the grandchildren of Prince Hildebrant and Princess Marie lived on, born out of wedlock to numerous female members of the proletariat. Once these children reached maturity, and the boys started to develop grey hair, they were again favoured for reproduction, because by that time people saw the days of the monarchy as “the good ol’ days, when France was a decent country to grow up in, without all these Spanish immigrants stealing all our jobs”, and thus grey hair became attractive once again. Since Paris was renowned at the time for setting the fashion trends, visiting British women intentionally had sex with men they knew through reputation would grow up to have grey hair, and birthed them back in England. This generation of Grey haired British men would grow up to become the same soldiers who helped take over Burma in 1824, and India in 1858. Soon after Singapore and the Americas were introduced to the grey haired gene, and the rest, as they say, is history. The reason the gene has never died out is that women, to this day, find it unbelievably attractive. For example, George Clooney (above) has been voted the sexiest man alive by People magazine twice, as has Richard Gere, another grey-haired gent. Carrot-top, meanwhile, has never once been voted Sexiest man of the year, in spite of the fact that he has the better physique.
I guarantee you that if this guy's hair was grey he would get more pussy than Neil Patrick Harris.
I hope this answers the question to your satisfaction, Karen, and if you’re between 16 and 28 and fit, feel free to drop me a private message – My father and both my Grandfathers have grey hair, and I’m certain I’m going to grow up to be the next Hugh Laurie ;)
Voice
… that’s fit as in attractive, not physically active, incidentally.
In case you were wondering which category you fit into...
“My girlfriend tells me it is impossible to explain how the bumblebee flies. Apparently it defies the laws of physics. Is this true?” Torbjørn Solbakken Norway
Unfortunately, Torbjørn, your name is fucking hard to write on a computer. Even less fortunately, you seem to have fallen prey to a common misconception. Much in the same way as many people will tell you that A Clockwork Orange was banned, when in fact Stanley Kubrick merely withdrew it from screening in the UK, or will tell you that you are paranoid schizophrenic who needs help, and not actually an NSA agent sent to infiltrate an anarchic terrorist organization to prevent them blowing up New York city, people will pass on this fact about Bumblebees without bothering to actually look it up. The truth is, science can explain almost everything, and this idea that it cannot explain the movement of the bumblebee is preposterous. This myth originates from the 1920s, when women had only just been given the vote in the UK. In order to prove that they were mature enough to be given the responsibility, and not ‘flappers’, women who wished to vote were required to answer a test question, to see if they truly were intelligent enough for the privilege of enfranchisement. The question which was asked was simple enough; “how do bees fly?”. Of course, the rational, and correct, response was to say “with their wings”. However, a number of women who arrived at the polls early believed this to be a trick question, in order to keep them from voting, and so replied “science cannot say”. As the system in place at the time dictated that such women be told to simply go into a different booth to everyone else, where the ballot papers would be thrown out at the end of the day, in order to avoid causing a scene by telling them in the polling station that they were not eligible to vote, these women left under the impression that they had been allowed the vote, and that this answer was therefore correct. Word of the “correct” answer soon spread amongst the female population of England, and it soon became commonplace for women to believe tat science could not explain how bees can fly. Most men, however, were smarter and knew better, secretly laughing at women behind their backs whilst down the pub, or down the mines. Unfortunately, when World War 2 broke out, most of the healthy young men were called up for service, and many of them killed. During this time, the infant population of England grew up mostly fatherless, and were told this fallacy by their mothers whilst growing up alone with them. By the time the men came back, the answer of “with their wings” did not seem intelligent enough to the youth to override 6 years of being told it could not be explained, and so many of that generation grew up believing this was the truth, and the myth has stuck around to this day. I hope this answers your question, Bjørn, and hopefully next time a woman tells you something, you’ll think about it logically before believing it. You may also want to read my article on “the love drug” – this site really needs more hits.
Voice
Here’s a picture of a woman proving they are the inferior sex, just in case some of you are still suspicious:
Anyone up for a photoshop contest?
“Why is it that, whatever they may contain, dustbins always smell the same?” Rodri Protheroe Colchester, Essex, UK
Well Rodri, strictly speaking, that’s not entirely true now, is it? Have you ever smelled a dustbin with a 3-day dead hooker in it? I have, and it smells much worse than when you’re first stuffing her in there.
Regards,
Voice.
So there you have it, 3 very important scientific questions explained. Stay tuned to Voice From the Pillow for the next installment of: "Science Corner"!
Voice
WHAT DO YOU MEAN NEIL PATRICK HARRIS IS GAY??!?!??!?!!!!!!?!??!?!!!?!?!
This week it was announced that David Cameron has decided to give in to a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights to allow prisoners in the UK the right to vote. This has caused outrage online, with a lot of people attacking John Hirst, the lawyer and ex-con who brought the case against the UK Government, over the issue. I decided that, as a man deeply involved in politics, it was my duty to tell people my opinion on the matter, so here it is, my explanation why prisoners should NOT be allowed the vote:
Voice
p.s. first person to mention the yellow wall dies... unless, you know, it's complimentary.
At first, I wasn’t so sure The Other Guys sounded all that good. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Wahlberg fan and everything, and I loved Will Ferrell in Zoolander, but it just didn’t seem like it would be my kind of thing – which is odd considering my favourite comedy movie of all time is about a detective and his incompetent sidekick trying to solve a massive case no-one believes is solvable and constantly ripping on each other (guessed what it is yet?) - but, I dunno. The Other Guys? Just didn’t sound right.
But then I watched the trailer for it online, and pissed myself all the way through it. This movie looked like it had everything – cool action, great comedy. I was in! No doubt about it. So, we headed to the cinema, and bought our tickets to The Other Guys. God I wish I’d been to see the new Saw instead…
To be fair, this movie started really promisingly. It opens with The Rock and Samuel L. Jackson as the super cool hero cops everyone wants to be like apprehending a group of armed criminals in a spectacular car chase and gun battle, which really got everyone in the cinema into the film. We are then introduced to the other Guys, Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, who are the cops working behind the scenes, filling in the paperwork for Jackson and Johnson’s characters. The initial exchanges between the two of them are hilarious, and the timing is all perfect. Whilst some of the jokes were predictable early on, I still found myself laughing at quite a few of them, and generally enjoying the tone of the movie. However, things went downhill pretty soon after.
In the next scene they appear in, we see the Rock and Samuel L. Jackson chase a group of jewellery store robbers onto the roof of a building, and watch them escape on zip lines, which they then cut to prevent the two cops from following them. The pair look at each other, before awesomeness happens. There is a brief exchange of some manly fucking dialogue, and then the two of them jump:
“Whoa!” I thought when this happened. “I did not see that coming!”
I had been under the impression that the whole movie revolved around Ferrell and Wahlberg being in The Rock and Jackson’s shadows, as the ‘other guys’, and yet the two guys I had thought were taking 3rd and 4th to main characters had just died only about 10 minutes in. Ballsy strategy. And you know what? It worked – for a short while.
You see, at first, I was very impressed that they had killed off the guys who were set up as the main support characters, because it was so different, and I kind of thought “wow, if they can afford to kill those guys off like that, this film is gonna rock!”. Unfortunately, however, I was sadly mistaken. You see, whilst Wahlberg and Ferrell do manage to keep pace for a good while after this scene, the movie still dies before the halfway point.
As it progressed, I noticed there were less and less laughs to be had, but wasn’t that concerned, because I was certain the pace would pick right back up again, and things would be back to how they were at the beginning. Then came the scene that really got me bothered.
In one scene, Mark Wahlberg’s character goes to see his ex-girlfriend, who is a ballet dancer. When he sees her, he confronts her with “what are you doing, living like this? Coming in here, and shaking it for dollar bills?” and I was laughing, thinking “man, what an awesome way to piss off your ex – act like a twat and make out that her ballet studio is a strip club – that would be so embarrassing for her!”, but then realised, to my horror, that the character was actually supposed to think it was a strip club. And this pissed me off so much.
I’m all for having idiot characters – I loved the way Wahlberg was saying lots of non-sensical phrases earlier in the film, confusing metaphors and so on, but this just went way too far. I think one of the problems was that Will Ferrell is already set up as being the moron, and it would be nice to have a character who wasn’t a complete idiot for him to play off of. Another issue was that it was just so unbelievable. Right after this as Wahlberg shows off his ballet moves and when asked where he learned to dance like that replies “I learnt it when I was in school to make fun of the queer kids who did that shit”, that would have been a golden idiot moment for him, had it not been absolutely ruined by making the character look too moronic just a minute before.
After that point, the film really started crashing – the good jokes were poorly executed and fell flat, whilst the rest of the running time was filled with what nowadays passes as being a joke, but is really stretching the fucking definition. In short, it was a combination of the kind of scenes that appear in films like “Epic Movie” and “Date Movie” where they probably looked good on paper, but weren’t funny because they were executed poorly, and he kind of jokes they sometimes put in Family Guy which aren’t funny, but go on and on and on, because the idiots watching will have to start laughing eventually, right?
To an extent, I think it is partly my fault that I didn’t enjoy this film, because I didn’t particularly like Anchorman, and hadn’t realised that it was by the same guy, and in the same style. That said, however, the trailers were pretty fucking misleading, and clearly designed to get people who like real comedy to go and see the film, rather than just the Anchorman crowd. On top of this – at least Anchorman I sat through without thinking “this is just boring – I hope it ends soon”, because a few of the jokes were actually half decent – it’s just that whilst in Anchorman they spread a few decent jokes over the course all the movie, interrupting the crap occasionally, here they put all the good stuff at the very start, and the rest of the film was absolute wank. No joke – I literally went from that Ballet scene all the way to the end narration without cracking a smile, the film was that dull. Even in the scene where Steve Coogan bribes the guys with theatre tickets, I knew that the joke itself was actually quite a funny one, but it was done so poorly that I didn’t laugh in spite of the voice in my head saying “that’s a funny joke. How is this not funny? How the fuck do you take a joke that would make me laugh if I read it, and ruin it on screen? How is that even possible? I even know this should be funny, but it’s not! Fuck this director!”
In fact, it got so bad that even when the plot resolved itself in the big climactic scene, and we finally found out the truth behind the big case, I didn't care. It was a decent twist and everything, but the mindless non-jokes had just killed my enjoyment of the film by that point, so all I could think was "meh". When Mark Wahlberg then proceeded to take out two handguns and shoot a ridiculous number of people in ultra-slow motion whilst making his way across a room, all I could think was "man, Max Payne was actually pretty good..." - that was it, the action in their big finale was just stolen from another film. Not to mention the chase outside, which had such a lousy resolution I can't believe it actually made the final cut.
Unfortunately, we seem to have reached a point in film where absurd with no explanation is deemed to be the new definition of funny. If something is ‘random’, people will laugh at it. You know what I say? FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
Seriously, bring us back some half-decent comedy, guys! You want idiotic characters in absurd situations, what was wrong with Wayne’s World? It seem like the Director of this film has taken the style of Wayne’s World’s joke telling, but not actually realised what made Wayne’s World funny in the first place. Kind of like if you saw that Coca Cola is a billion dollar selling business and so brought out your own beverage which has only one thing in common with coke; a red can. Some idiots would still buy it, thinking it must be like coke, but those who actually have brain cells would judge the drink on it’s own merits, and see you had really just pissed in a bunch of red cans, you bastards! That’s kind of how this feels – people who think ‘random’ is cool will laugh at this, whereas people who actually know what comedy is will say “fuck this shit”, and walk out (or like me, say “when is this gonna pick back up again? It was really good at the start, why isn’t it funny any more?”). Seriously - not even Ray Stevenson managed to save this movie. The fucking PUNISHER could not save this movie. Did you see what a good review I gave War Zone?!?!?! And now I'm ripping the shit out of the next movie I see him in? That's how bad this film was. it was dull. It was boring. It was not funny.
Even the scene that most people are going on about, where Wahlberg and Ferrell get trashed in a bar and it's all shot as a series of stills put together which the camera moves through as though travelling through both time and the bar in one movement didn't impress me. Sure, it's different, which is good, but it killed the pace of the action, being such a slow scene, and just ultimately wasn't worth the pay off. i can imagine the exact same effect could look awesome elsewhere, but it just didn't work in The Other Guys - except to the extent that the fancy technology seems to have blinded people from important factors like flow and continuity, and left them pacified to the shit blizzard that was the second half of this movie. Fucking Shit Blizzards, Randy.
Shit Blizzards.
In short, save your money, don’t go and see this film. I got a copy of Kiss kiss Bang bang for 4 quid 3 years ago, and I bet it hasn’t gone up in price since then. Take the money you would have spent on seeing this, and watch that DVD instead – I guarantee you, you’ll have a much better time, as it’s a hilarious film by a competent director who actually knows how to do comedy. The other Guys, on the other hand, is one of the worst movies I have seen this year. Hell, I’d rather watch 2012 again than sit through this shit one more time. The only thing I can suggest is go into the cinema, watch til the end of The Rock and Samuel L. Jackson’s funeral, then get the fuck out of there before it goes to shit. But wait, don’t do that – because if people actually pay to see movies like this, they’ll just keep making them. This movie had a 90 million dollar budget, and still isn’t even a tenth of the movie the Trailer park Boys Movie (2006) was, which had a budget of 5 million CANADIAN dollars! Shit, going like for like with the detective theme, Kiss kiss Bang Bang only had an 18 million dollar budget, and that’s infinitely better. Now, I know you can’t always compare movies like this on a dollar-to-value basis (especially when 2 of your favourite ever comedies were very low budget affairs) – but come on, you could have made 10 Seagal films for the cost of this movie, and I guarantee they would have had me laughing far more than The other guys did (though not always intentionally).
Don’t see this film. And don’t see Let Me In, because Låt den rätte komma in should not have been remade. In fact, fuck it, if you have to go to the cinema, go see Mr nice, and tell me what you thought of it, because I loved the book, and I really wanna see that movie. Let’s just hope it’s nowhere near as big a let down as this one was.
Rating:
*
1 star
I know it seems dumb that I would give a movie I was quoting with my brother only a few hours ago just one star, and to be honest, it is pretty stupid; there were some good jokes in it, and I loved the beginning, so I would really like to give this movie a 2 star rating. It's just that this was a real disappointment, they took a movie which could have been great, and just ran it into the ground. It's not absolutely dire, but definitely not worth giving the time to. I'd still recommend it over Buffy the Vampire Slayer or 28 weeks later, but only just. As I said, loved the opening, and a couple of bits were incredibly quotable, but it's just not worth sitting through all the boring unfunny crap they threw in with it to watch those bits. I think it's time we stood up and said "no" to these "comedies" which don't actually know how to tell a decent joke, and go back to good old fashioned film entertainment. And hey, You know what they could have spent that 90 million budget on instead?
George Clooney as Sam Fisher?!?! WHY DOES THIS MOVIE NOT EXIST ALREADY?!?!
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