Satan's bingo

I justed wanted to draw your attention to this advert, and make some comments on it, if I may:



A) That fox man is the freakiest fucking mascot I think I have ever seen. It doesn't look natural. If you plan to use an animal as a mascot, they should either be ridiculously oversized (ie, football mascots), cartoons, or real animals that happen to have the power of human speech. This... mutant hybrid is just frightening. It looks enough like a fox to give it an air of cluelessness about its own actions, and enough like a man for it to seem like a dirty pervert/pimp.

B) This advert is probably also one of the most sexist I have ever seen, and it happens to be prejudice towards its own target audience. All of the women seem to be slags, lusting after this horrible fox creature because he keeps spouting cheesy, building site inspired one liners. Is it really that easy to get female admirers? Try dressing up in an animal costume and walking up the middle of the road, whilst playing Sister Sledge at an annoyingly loud volume, see where it gets you. Probably even further than this guy, because at least animal costumes from fancy dress shops are pretty cute, while this fox thing is freakish.

C) As well as alienating its target audience by portraying them as a bunch of desperate housewives, it seems to be further limiting the advert's appeal by only featuring women. Where are all the old men that go to bingo? Oh wait, there is one prominently featured man in this ad...

D) The dead guy, who comes back to life when he "sees" the fox walk past. Is this for real? Is the guy gay, or into bestiality, or does he just love bingo so fucking much that it brought him back to life?

E) While this advert seems to be full of blatant prejudice, it misses one obvious stereotype; the majority of people who go to bingo are very old. I'm not saying all of them are, some might even be glamourous bimbos like the one at the zebra crossing, but I'd say about 80% of the people following the fox creature should have zimmers.

F) They all gatecrash some poor bastards house at the end, just to use his internet.

There's probably more I could say about this monstrosity, but not without feeling violently ill, so I'll call it a night.

Dada like these

Sunset Rubdown are releasing another album on Jagjaguwar, called Dragonheart. I've asked Clash if I can review it, but I haven't had an answer from them yet. However, I did get sent this by Jagjaguwar's PR guy, Manish:

Sunset Rubdown - Idiot Heart

It's a pretty good track. For anyone unfamiliar with Sunset Rubdown, they are a side project of Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug, who also plays in the "indie supergroup" Swan Lake. Heather pointed out that Idiot Heart sounds like an Interpol track, and I agree, although I wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad thing... Maybe a little bit bad. Not that I have anything against Interpol, but I'd rather other bands didn't sound like them, because Interpol themselves already sound like a few other bands (Spoon, Modest Mouse... Wolf Parade, etc).

Anyway, hopefully I'll get the album for free and I'll be able to judge it as a whole.

The sink got blocked last night and I fixed it. We also might be starting a podcast station. That makes me one of these:



We were also listening to a lot of soul/funk/disco last night, after watching a rubbish programme about 70s music. Here's a classic soul hit, followed by a kind of reworking by Alan Hawkshaw's band of session musicians, The Mohawks:

Otis Redding - Tramp

The Mohawks - The Champ

Funkaliscious!

I wonder where that fish has gone?

This is how I feel right now:



We bought some fish today. A black one, an orange one and a white one. We were going to by a lovely orange/black one, but some couple bought it before us, even though they fecking heard us talking about buying it.

We watched Blowup last night, which was pretty good. By now we're starting to get pretty used to watching obvious but heart warming classic Hollywood movies, mostly starring Jimmy Stewart, so it made a nice change. Here's a trailer:



It has a really great and strange final scene, and on the whole it's well worth a watch, even if the lead character wears an obnoxious pair of white jeans throughout.

It's cold, so I'm going to go and find a jumper and check Jam hasn't broken the fish tank yet (for pictures of our lovely tank/fish, check Heather's blog).

Goodle Tip!

A Perfect Day For Bananafish

I've been reading For Esme - With Love and Squalor, and to be honest I must have been insane to not do so before now. Catcher in the Rye is probably my favourite book of all time, and this collection of short stories hasn't disappointed so far. I don't always like reading short story collections, because I sort of enjoy the small sense of achievement and fufillment that comes with finishing a novel. When you finish a short story you immediately have to throw yourself into another, which can be tiring and irksome; not always of course, and certainly not in this case.

I just found A Perfect Day For Bananafish, which I urge you to read. It's probably best to just get hold of a copy of the story collection, but if Bananafish is online then there are probably quite a few others kicking around somewhere.

More colour field today. Here you can find the poet Frank O'Hara interviewing the colour field painter Barnett Newman; I didn't watch all of it, it's a little out of my depth in terms of intellectualism, but here's a couple of Newman's paintings:

Barnett Newman - Adam (1951-2):



Eve (1950):



Rather than try and explain these paintings, which of course I can't do accurately or even coherently, it's probably best to watch the afformentioned interview; however, I did find a quote from Newman which is very interesting in relation to these paintings:

"What is the explanation of the seemingly insane drive of man to be painter and poet if it is not an act of defiance against man's fall and an assertion that he return to the Garden of Eden? For the artists are the first men."

So there you go.

Everything I have is down in pawn

Alright, it's been a fucking while, so what?

I've been to Morocco since the last time I posted, which was extremely interesting, not as relaxing as I thought it might be, and a little scary. So on the whole it was a positive and worthwhile experience. However, for the extensive low down on that sojourn the best place to head is Heather's blog, which is crammed with great pictures of our time.

I borrowed some books from the library to try and get through in between looking for jobs and trying to set up radio stations (best not to ask right now). These were:

J.D. Sallinger - For Esme - With Love and Squalor

Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan

Phillip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?

Graham Greene - Our Man In Havana

So mostly American novels.

I also filled in another couple of gaps from my Sandman gallery, by purchasing Doll's House, Fables and Reflections and the stand alone Endless Nights. I've read Doll's House already, which is great, as always, and has more of the beloved Corinthian, who is one creepy and charismatic bastard. He has teeth where his eyes should be and he eats the eyes of others, especially those of rent boys. Well, since you insist, here he is as he appears in The Kindly Ones:

. 

Speaking of The Kindly Ones, it's still my favourite Sandman so far, which is really saying something, because they're all excellent. The art really stands out compared to the others; despite the gravitas of it's events, it being the virtual climax of the Sandman storyline (with The Wake acting as a kind of summing up book), the artist chosen for most of the book was Marc Hempel, who has a wonderfully bright, jagged, cartoony style:

Marc Hempel - Death:



To be honest, the artwork he has on his myspace doesn't really do him much justice, but here's a link anyway:

Marc Hempel.

It would be a much better idea to just buy The Kindly Ones - of course, it would make sense to buy and read the preceding books first. If you're lucky enough to know me personally I might let you take a look, inside my house and under my supervision.

I also found out that Chris Murray is running a module on British comic writers next year, which is the best news since Mr. Hovis wrote home to his son to inform him that he had just invented sliced bread. The Sandman is actually on the course, which is even better.

Anyway, I think Heather's a bit sleepy, so I'll call it a night.

Toodley George!