For the Love of Liverpool!

I've been through this post a few times in my mind. There is, after all, a lot to say about Liverpool's performance against Spurs today. It has, however, come to my attention that there's really only one way to express the latest trip to White Hart Lane.

We had six yellow cards (a few of them baffling) versus their one - despite them having nearly double the fouls -, two of our players being sent off and none of theirs, our bewlidering lack of ability to maintain possession, run with the ball (instead of passing back) shoot, pass etc and, 'more importantly' their four goals against nil. Despite the well-earned credit I give to Tottenham today, the only way this reds fan can sum up the action is with this picture:

The 'Travis Bickle'

If you ain't familiar with the 'wink and sink', it is a move popularized in WKD's televisual advertisement campaign. To complete a 'wink and sink' you need to be playing pool with someone. When you have a shot lined up and want to humiliate/banterize your opponent, you look them in the eye, take the shot and - providing you pot the intended ball and don't foul - you're awesome.

I just did the 'Travis Bickle'. It's where you're having a piss and you line up your shot before looking in a nearby mirror and doing shooting pistol movements at yourself with your free hand in said silver-nitrated pane. Obviously missing the bowl here would render the 'Travis Bickle' a fail, but I didn't fail, and it felt good.

The thing that didn't feel good was age/wisdom. Hardly any of my friends have watched Martin Scorsese's 1976 classic Taxi Driver, and probably not many of my readers have. I'm old, bitter and fed up that most of you probably watch and love 'Glee' more than you do decent stuff...

:-( Boohoo moan moan!

Peace out guys xxx

Corrections for Oxcliffe Road

1. The BP garage is a garage, not a boxing ring or a shouting contest.
2. Oxcliffe Road is a residential area, not a discoteque, or ballroom or whatever it is you kids do these days.
3. Oxcliffe Road is a way of driving to/from Marine Road, Fairfield Road, Kingsway or further whilst obeying the rules of the road. It is not a bloody drag racing strip.
4. Further to point 3, car tyres work best when gripping the road's surface as opposed to wheen being wheelspun in an attempt to pull out of a garage looking cool.
5. Our garden is a garden, not a bin or tip. Keep your rubbish to yourself you dirty bastards!
6. Your car is a device that endables you to get from point A to B via the aforementioned road system, it is not a speaker on wheels that you should definitely use to blast out similar chavvy crap that the people from point 2 do.

Phone Hacking

There's an app for that!

Woop!

Just submitted some stuff for Gumbo Press' second issue! Bit nervous, hope I do well but we'll see.

If you want to check them out, here is their address: http://www.gumbopress.co.uk/index.html

Really sorry, if I was more organized I'd have told you about calls for submission for this issue earlier so you could have submitted as well. But hey, it's a bi-monthly e-zine, so just keep checking the website above and I'm sure you'll have plenty more chances :)

Keep on trucking folks!

My Favourite Song at the Moment

My favourites song at the moment is 'The Weight' by The Band.



Welcome to the madness Kane, and how're you doing after all this time?

Peace!

Does It Make Me a Bad Person?

Yeah, alright, I loved the new Pirates of the Caribbean film 'On Stranger Tides'... There's nothing wrong with that! I know I go on about how good cinema says something about man's struggle, the human condition etc, but don't get me wrong: I've always valued pure entertainment too! Why else would I love Ron Underwood's 'Pluto Nash'?

It's not even as if Disney have completely glossed over real life anyway. The opening scenes of the film show rolls of notes and bags of chinking change buying the services of the court and political ideologists respectively. Yes it was done in a pantomimely-obvious way, but I was still left thinking, "Hey, at least they're showing the world as it is, in a film primarily about supernatural forces amidst the oceans of the world." Okay, maybe it wasn't put so eloquently in me noggin...

These films have a similar appeal to westerns: the illusion of freedom. The wide open spaces of the seven seas (and beyond) and the lusciously shot on-location scenes in various parts of Hawaii are literally lovely to look at. The ideology of the pirates as free men (and women) doing what they want is an appealing, though obviously not completely polarized, spectacle which shows us that we are all free to get into a mess of our choosing, but then have to fight to get out of that mess. Ooh this could almost be philosophical!

Taking the idea of the western further, Pirates of the Caribbean films can compare to some of the best western chase thrillers. I'm taking David von Ancken's 'Seraphim Falls' as an example, purely because I want to mention that I've watched it. Groups, individuals or groups of individuals (there's a difference) are pitched against each other, and as the film goes on, motives, desires and flaws are exposed in the characters leading to the resolution. In POTC, we see how our favourite characters (such as Cap'n Jack Sparrow) get themselves into trouble and are inevitably drawn to supernature and its forces to establish equilibrium for themselves. This is redolent of the aforementioned western because the story's power is making sure you aren't certain who is the hunter or the hunted, who is good or who is bad, who you like or who you don't. Wait, that last one... Of course we love Jack Sparrow. And shame on you Ian McShane! I had you pinned from the start!

Anyways, I've gone on too long. What a fantastic film. It's not a terribly original addition to the franchise BUT I DON'T CARE!!! They set up a fifth in the post-credits ditty and I will go on watching them until they outsource the main characters' employment to Pune in India.

Peace out mes amis!