Reading Festival

This was the best line-up for a festival I have been to. But apart from the bands, this wasn't probably wasn't the most eventful festival. We had a pretty quiet spot in the Orange camp nothing much really happened on Thursday, Friday and Saturday apart from some intense boozing. "BOLLOCKS!" was back in fashion with a sprinkling of "TIMMEH!" and no "118 118!" Sunday was the usual rip down with the background noise rising to a respectable "aaaaaaaaaaargh!" until about 5am on Monday. Trolley was the flavour this year which involved pushing a trolley really fast and everyone following (it looked fun at the time). It started getting a bit daft when they started pushing the trolleys onto fires... occupants and all. There was also a bit of Emo baiting. Don't quite get that one because as far as I can see, Emo (allegedly uncool) = Goth (now allegedly cool). That piccy is from Saturday when we all hit the maximum average pissedness and Jay had a kip. The furniture has mostly been supplied by concerned passers-by...

Anyhow, this is what I thought of the music...

Friday

Goldie Lookin' Chain
Great way to open the festival. The music is irrelevant. They are still funny.

Fightstar
Boo!
/throws bottle
/leaves

Graham Coxon
Just like old Blur. You can tell he doesn't enjoy the limelight. Technically, very good.

The Coral
Forgettable but entertaining

Queens of the Stone Age
Awesome Band. Awesome set. Had a good jump around to this. First time I've seen them and they lived up to expectations.

The Killers
Part of the current batch of "bands of the moment". What a pile of utter cack! Dull, Dreary, Lifeless. Their spark will probably die out soon with any luck.

Pixies
Surprise of the weekend for me. I went into this not knowing what to expect. They appeared on stage and the lead singer looked like a bank manager and the guitarist looked like my old headmistress. The music was amazing and felt that I got where they were coming from. Their set list included the filthy "Debaser" and the angelic "Gigantic" which shows the amazing depth of their tunes and I now understand why they are so important to the landscape of music today. These guys did it years before anyone else did.

Saturday

Nine Black Alps
Pretty good

Juliette and the Licks
Juliette Lewis' band. You know, the Hollywood actress... Kalifornia... Natural Born Killers... Can't help but think that this is a hobby of hers and that it was all scripted. Kudos if it wasn't. It was entertaining and Juliette was wailing and whirling like a good'un. Not gonna buy any albums if you know what I mean...
NEWSFLASH! - It was too good to be true. She was definitely miming to a tape... At the Leeds festival, she dropped the mic and managed to continue singing... go figure. Silly cow.

Dinosaur Jr
Same as '97. Dull.

The Charlatans
Very cool.

Razorlight
Another of the "bands of the moment". Once they have a few albums under their belt I reckon they'll be really good. The music was tight and the frontman was vocal and got the audience going. This band will get somewhere and are worth keeping an eye on.

Kings of Leon
Another surprise. Never rated them much before now but they were cool. Good solid rock with disturbing Hillbilly tendencies which works well.

Foo Fighters
They didn't split up and I'm so happy that I've finally seen them! Amazing set and Dave was on form. I think I saw his vocal chords shoot into the crowd during Monkey Wrench. And mega bonus, we saw him on the drums again! A lot of the time, when the frontman is talking and bigging up the festival, you automatically think "scripted!" but I got a good vibe from him and thought he was genuine. Dave Grohl is the coolest person in music today... FACT!

Best on stage quote of the weekend - "Glastonbury is for smelly hippies, V is for the clean people, the fucking yuppies. The Reading festival is for dirty fucking rockers who come out to have a good time. Take it from your Uncle Dave I've been looking forward to this for a very long time." - Dave Grohl

Sunday

Bullet for My Valentine
Another surprise! These guys rocked BIG time. Worth watching out for in the future.

Turbonegro
Freaks! Scandinavian deathpunk gods. Also, Gay beyond belief. Eye shadow and navy uniforms. The frontman has a thing for vats of eyeliner and furry sporrans. What Village People would have been if they were metal. I think they only have three songs but they play the chorus in different order each time. It was worth watching though.

Alkaline Trio
I think I liked them. Nothing stuck in my mind about their set. This may be alcohol related but in reality, I don't think so.

Funeral for a Friend
Kerrang's best British band. I really can't see why though.

Iggy and the Stooges
Legend.

Incubus
Crap. Had a pizza instead.

Marilyn Manson
Showman! Really enjoyed his set and the visuals were impressive and unsurprisingly spot on with the bands message and intended image. If you strip away the attitude and Marilyn Manson's personality you actually get some really decent tunes.

Iron Maiden
I would never have paid to see Iron Maiden on their own. They are one of those bands that I never really got into. But, as I have found out with a couple of other bands, you really can't judge a band properly until you have them live. I now understand why Iron Maiden is so popular. Their set was made up of tune from their first four albums only. The great thing was that even though the "newest" tune was released in 1983 (!), every one of them was amazing and intense. Iron Maiden are SOOOO good at what they do. Bruce Dickinson is an incredible frontman and I really felt that I was part of something special and even legendary. Here was another person who was talking good things about Reading that I believed. This was real original Hard Rock and made all the others look like copies, even my favourite bands like Metallica and Foo Fighters and absolutely no disrespect is meant in that. Highlights included The Trooper which had Bruce at his patriotic best and Mini Trooper (!), Phantom of the Opera, Run to the Hills and Number of the Beast along with a twenty foot high Eddie with glowing red eyes receiving a brain transplant at the end of the set before the encore. I wish I could tell you the titles of some of the others... albums are now in the post :)

Each of the headliners this year were legendary which is very rare. What a great festival.

Shameless Nostalgia Wallow

The other day I googled ZX Spectrum and found a big pile of screen shots. I made a page for no reason apart from to wallow in nostalgia. Enjoy.

Big Brother is Foul and Unsettling... FACT

Well, it's nearly over and I've managed to not blog a word about it despite being tragically addicted to it. It's been another good year for BB and we are now down to the last four.

It's also been quite funny due to the fact that I've pretty much hated all of the housemates for one reason or another and very few of them have any redeeming features. I know... strange. Still, I found a fantastic article at Guardian Online by Charlie Brooker that, while mostly berating and putting down Big Brother, actually lists many of the reasons I like it. I think he knows why it's popular and realises that it's pretty base television.

++++++

The going, going gong show

Charlie Brooker
Saturday August 6, 2005
The Guardian

Foul and unsettling? Yes siree! As per tradition, let's put all human decency to one side, hold a pistol to our collective temple, and celebrate the approaching finale of Big Brother 6 (daily, C4) with a pointless little awards ceremony, coming to you live from an A5 piece of newspaper held in front of your eyes right now.

First up, the prestigious Most Sickening Housemate award, which this year goes to a couple: Maxwell (London's village idiot) and Saskia (burly, wrathful harridan with a face that could advertise war). Their daily routine consisted of bullying, bellowing, cackling at their own dismal non-jokes, glaring, sniping and discussing their imminent ascent to the toppermost peaks of stardom - until the last week, when, faced with eviction, they settled for sulkily rutting like doomed livestock. The latter surely ranks as the least sexy thing ever broadcast on television. I'd get more aroused watching a dog drown in petrol.

Next, it's the Stupidest Single Statement award. This year's show contained dumber utterings than ever before. There was an early classic from Anthony, who, while frolicking semi-naked in the pool, carped, "What's the matter with youse, you're sitting there like you're watching a television show," to a disapproving Science. Sadly, that's ineligible because it was immediately followed by the year's wisest rejoinder (Science: "I am.")

Which means it's a race between Craig's frank admission that "I aren't too familiar with the rules of the English language" and Anthony's claim that he's "more developed than a plant" - both of which are beaten by Saskia's jaw-dropping assertion that the second world war started in 1966.

The award for Most Alarming Behaviour goes, inevitably, to Craig - a high-risk FBI profile made flesh. When he wasn't proclaiming his own brilliance, weeping, masturbating, or shrieking uninformed opinions at a uninterested world, he was mindfucking his beloved Anthony - a man so profoundly thick you could sell him a pair of his own socks for £500, even if he was already wearing them.

Their relationship reached its nadir the night Anthony got paralytic and Craig sensed an opportunity. A bleak farce ensued - Anthony vomiting and crying for his gran, Craig frantically cuddling him while shouting, "I'm your only friend in here." It felt more like an extended outtake from Deliverance than a reality show. How Craig passed the psychological vetting process, and why he wasn't quietly removed from the house and given some gentle guidance, is a deeply worrying mystery.

The Cheated Winner award is a close call between two acquired-taste housemates. Only a heartless warlord couldn't warm to Eugene, a well-meaning human pylon whose ineptitude and timidity meant he was out of his depth from the off. But he's narrowly pipped by Science, a bull-headed, one-man belligerence engine who delighted in provoking Maxwell and Derek to breaking point. For services to torture alone, Science should've won.

Just time for a few parting gongs. The award for Snidest Conniving Prick goes to Derek, a man so devious he probably pisses cobra venom; the Ugliest Body award is split between Sam and Orlaith, for poking their fake, motionless tits in the viewer's face (presumably to attract the sort of person who'd like to screw their way through the plastinated corpses at Professor von Hagens' Bodyworlds exhibition).

Finally, the award for Unprecedented Dignitycide goes to Kinga, who, just when you genuinely believed TV couldn't possibly shock you from your jaded, end-of-the-world ironic detachment bubble, celebrated her second night in the house by masturbating with a wine bottle in the middle of the lawn - an act of such gruesome self-abasement, even the other housemates were appalled. Considering they're the most undignified people in Britain, that's an astounding achievement. Mark my words, we'll be celebrating it on commemorative stamps before the decade's out. Preferably self-adhesive ones.

++++++

EUGENE TO WIN! RAH!

England beat the Aussies

Bloody Hell that was way too close... I was watching the match through my fingers at the end and in typical British style I was expecting the worst when Kasprowicz gloved the ball to Jones off Harmison and we secured the win by 2 runs.

It was a fantastic match and we were ahead for the majority of it and it showed that the Aussies are very dependent on McGrath who was injured. Seeing as he is probably out for the rest of the series it means that we really have a chance at getting the Ashes.

I don't you think that it's weird that the football season has started and there are 3 tests still to go. It's not right.

Hot Coffee

This is bollocks. A Band Wagon at it's worst. For those who don't know, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is being banned for shipping with code included that shows a sex scene. This removed from the game but the code was still in the program. A modder managed to find and unlock it.

A patch to unlock the blurring of nudity THAT IS PART OF THE ORIGINAL CODE for the good wholesome fun that is The Sims and The Sims 2 has been available for bleeding ages! You don't see the major stores in America pulling that from their shelves now DO you? It's a "teen" rated title in case you were wondering...

I get the feeling that people here in the UK generally see it for exactly what it is.

Anyway, seeing poorly rendered, pixelated, fully clothed computer characters dry humping really honestly makes me want to climb the nearest tall building and shoot people. AND COVER THE LEGS ON THAT TABLE WHILE YOUR AT IT OR I MAY GET URGES. FILTH I tell you!

Actually, a particularly cynical part of me thinks it was shipped like that to cause exactly this kind of controversy. Now, twice as many people have heard of GTA: San Andreas. A marketing master stroke.

sock

:: SOCK
:: Celine Dion covers Michael Jackson's Bad. WRONG!

Dustin Hoffman Syndrome

There's this website that I got severe Dustin Hoffman syndrome on. It is BugMeNot and it circumvents all the free registration crap that a lot of websites, especially newspapers, seem to want you to do. It's dead useful.

I also tried this fun exercise. I made a 12 track mix CD from my internal jukebox. No CD collection, no MP3s, no interweb. One is a little artificial because I had "River Deep Mountain High" infecting my brain after a conversation with a cow-orker and demanded a random tune title/artist from a mate on MSN.

Supergrass - Richard III
Garbage - Only Happy When It Rains
Metallica - Fuel
Megadeth - Sweating Bullets
Foo fighters - I'll Stick Around
Wildhearts - Everlone
Muse - New Born (I was actually thinking of Plug In Baby but got the title wrong)
Ash - Orpheus
Inspiral Carpets - I Want You
Kula Shaker - Hey Dude (courtesy of Jay)
Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Snoop Dogg – What’s my Name

I have no idea what it says about me but I do know that as soon as I got home (did this while bored at work...) and looked at my CDs, my choices instantly changed.

By the way, Dustin Hoffman syndrome refers to an incident many years ago, before IMDB, when myself and a friend were trying to remember who played that bloke in the film with the thingy (vagueness intended). I swear it was about 18 months before we remembered... it was Dustin Hoffman! I wonder if there's a proper medical term for that?

EDIT: Blimey... Two posts in less than a week!

EDIT: EDIT: What's with me and this EDIT thing? If I didn't do it, there would be five posts in less than a week.

EDIT: EDIT: EDIT: Meh... who's counting?

Good Riddance

I'm still alive... honest. I saw Green Day in Milton Keynes on Sunday and they were absolutely awesome. In the words of the lead singer of Taking Back Sunday, "They rock so hard that you're gonna have your ass handed to you!" This is actually true. And there is something very appropriate and very satisfying about an utterly triumphant underdog singing "American Idiot" in the most soulless pseudo-American suburban sprawl in the United Kingdom. They are my favourite band for the foreseeable future... which probably means until straight after the Reading Festival :)

Have some links to celebrate the fact that I'm still here...

:: Bugger me it's hot! And why is air conditioning so flipping expensive? It's not anymore! If your a tightwad... make your own.
:: Strange smiling girl!
:: Kitten War! Yaaaaay!
:: Virtual Bubblewrap. Manic mode is the way to go! Must have moooooore!

EDIT: For some strange reason, spending half an hour blogging any old drivel has cheered me up no end.

Go Dan!

Dan Wheldon has won the Indy 500! It was the best race I've seen all year. At the end there were four drivers who could have taken it and our Dan ended up on top. There was a woman leading the race with 10 laps left which is great. Kudos to Danica Patrick who showed most of the field how to race. The coverage from America was such that you would have thought that Danica had won... that's the Americans for you. You can rely on them to devalue any achievement by a non-American.

Also, I'm waiting to see what sort of coverage his win will get over here. I'll be surprised if anyone will be aware of what he has achieved. The Indy 500 may not be the absolute pinnacle of motorsport but in my opinion, its the best spectacle in motorsport so far this year.

It's a shame I made such a negative post from such a truly positive event so I'll finish with a...

YAAAAY! DAN WON!!!

Half Time Monster Trucks

The whole Manchester United, Malcolm Glazer thing is very interesting, especially from my point of view being a Wimbledon fan. This is a pretty good stab at an impartial view of what is occurring.

Unfortunately, football, especially at the top level, is no longer about the love of the game but the love of money! Wimbledon was an extreme case of this and had its league position stolen for a property deal. How extreme, only time will tell. Pete Winkleman wants to make money from a stadium in Milton Keynes in a deal with Asda and he is using the MK Dons simply as a sweetener in the deal. I started typing out a history of the events (AGAIN!) but I will simply direct you here if you want to read about the facts.

My opinion is that Manchester United is too big a club to be properly shafted by this. I honestly can't see them moving to the Lake District as a franchise or anything that drastic. They already make tons of money. What will happen is that ticket prices will rise, merchandise prices will rise, they won't have as much to spend on players and the Manchester United name will be thrown at anything that will make a buck. I have heard rumours that there may be a Manchester United online casino in the pipeline (I read it on the internet so it MUST be true...). There's also nothing stopping him selling off the players, selling Old Trafford and redeveloping the land... The truth is Manchester United sold its soul to money years ago when it was floated on the stock exchange and the inevitability of these events was pretty much assured back then.

There is talk of fans setting up an alternative club. AFC Wimbledon has been referred to repeatedly. 20,000 fans are pretty much assured in such a venture and Ole Gunnar Solskaer would allegedly be the manager. No doubt such and entity would blast through the lower leagues in very little time but in the end, it would be doomed to mediocrity and struggling in the Championship or League one at best and inferior to Manchester City. How many United fans do you think will turn their backs on players such as Rooney, Van Nistelrooy and Keane? United fans ultimately have to choose mediocrity or Glazer... give it a few months and they will choose Glazer.

A bit of perspective is needed. All that's happened is a change of ownership. And be careful what you wish for. I seem to remember not so long ago United fans screaming for McManus and Magnier to sell their shares in Manchester United. Well, they have done. That's one problem solved. One thing is certain, this is not over by a loooooong way.

For the greater good of FOOTBALL and the REAL supporters, I SINCERELY hope it all works out okay. But, I would also like to add that for every TRUE fan of Manchester United, there are 50 ARROGANT TOSSPOT GLORYHUNTERS who will no doubt be supporting Chelsea next season. Manchester United's fortunes are based on them as CONSUMERS and not SUPPORTERS. They are what I DETEST about Manchester United and I would like see it all go to SHIT at Old Trafford to SPITE them. Good Luck...

ASTERIX!
That is all...

Windmill windmill, for the land
Turn forever, hand in hand
Take it all in on your stride
It is sticking, falling down
Love forever, love is free
Let's turn forever, you and me!
Windmill windmill, for the land
Is everybody in?

This is the best thing I've heard in ages. Shame I'll be sick of it by the time the album's out on May 23rd (which looks like it'll be awesome...) I may isolate myself from the radio and the music channels until then...

edit: I thought I'd got away with it but it's the new fucking iPod ad. Buggery Bollocking slimy marketing fuckers! Can't they leave a decent tune alone... /sobs

Taller than Brad Pitt

I'm taller than Brad Pitt. That automatically makes me a complete and total stud-muffin. I'm also 4 inches taller then Adolf Hitler. What a short arse!

:: Tall or not?

Bored

Well, it was all set up to be an excellent career move. It's a company that makes plenty of money and is full of really intelligent and talented people all working towards the same goal. Problem is... I'm bored out of my skull!

At the last place I worked, a QUIET day would involve about 100 emails, one argument with the warehouse, ten confrontations with various sales people, I talked to suppliers all day and it was not just about work because I had got to know them and some were actually cool people. I was busy all day and you could tell because you would wonder where the time went.

Now, I would get two emails and talk to two people IN TOTAL. Bit of a contrast.

One thing is interesting though. People are often heard to say "Time goes SOOOO quick, I don't know where the year has gone!" I've figured it out finally. They're not bored... The last month feels like a YEAR! I'm BORED! BORED! BORED! If I knew for sure they didn't check, this blog would probably be bursting with updates. Unfortunately, the IT manager is a muppet so I can't risk it.

When I told someone at work, they said "At least you're getting paid for it." For some reason, that doesn't really work for me. I'll give it another month and see what they come up with.

Best Lineup Ever

Tickets for the Reading Festival have sold out already! Festivals are going to be BIG this year...

This is not a bad thing like it was last year because I got the tickets already and there's no need for ANY of us to panic and have to get ripped off by muppets on Ebay...

I wasn't going to go. I didn't really feel like it... until I started hearing the rumours. Furtive whispers in the darkest corners of the interweb were saying Iron Maiden were going to be there. And it's TRUE! The total MASTERS of true British Heavy Metal are going to play the Reading Festival! I'm not really that excited... no...

The Foo Fighters are appearing too. They are one of my favorite bands and I've never managed to get to see them in the entire ten years they've been going. I've always had the feeling that they'll split before I see them live. Still five months to go. Look on the bright side, they may simply cancel :)

Pixies, The Killers, Queens of the Stone Age, Kings of Leon, Razorlight, The Charlatans, Marilyn Manson and (drum roll) Iggy and the Stooges are going to be there too. IGGY! YAY!

Best festival lineup ever? Could be. And there's still another 100 or so bands to be announced...