The decline and fall of Western consumerism

~ Inquisitor

MTV is free for a month on Telewest Essential, and as a result I stumbled across "Pimp My Ride UK" (Sunday 5:30pm). God help me.

Basically, the point of this programme is that celebrities with supposedly "clapped out" cars get an OTT make-over by (Tim) Westwood and a bunch of blinged-out morons – in this case, the one I'm watching is making over a black cab owned by ex-Happy Mondays dancer (and Celebrity Big Brother winner) Bez, and turning it into a psychedelic nightmare.

These are people who think putting 42" plasma screens in the back of a black cab is a good idea; they make the interior of the car look like a 70s disco with leopardskin and garish red leather; they add eight power amps and twenty speakers in the rear (in reality, it'll sound like a bassed-out nightmare); they put a DJ booth in where the front passenger seat used to be (a cheap mixer and a HP laptop running NI Traktor) and to cap it all off they paint the cab purple. Purple. A bad purple, at that.

So now we've established that the design is frigging awful, defiling the classic London cab – pretty much deserving of Bez, to be honest – what do I think of the show? It's unbelievably awful – no-one actually needs a video camera in the rim unless you're James Bond, Westwood is as annoying as he is on the radio, and everyone talks in an obviously faked "wazzup?" lingo.

And that's not going into the implications of referring to something as being "pimped up"; especially since, unless you're really rich, you're going to have to sell your sister to be able to afford such a makeover. People think that doing something like this will make them admired, whereas in reality they'll just look like a prat. And their peers tell them to do it.

No, it's a stupid, stupid, stupid show. And like most stupid shows, it's watchable in an open-mouthed way. Happily it's blatant enough that everyone should see that Westwood's a fake prat and Bez is a prat and the car is a Bad Thing, and the craze will burn itself out. We can only hope.

Embrace – “World At Your Feet”

~ Inquisitor ~ 14 Comments

It's terrible. Diabolically awful.

You're the first in my life
To make me think
That we might just go all the way
And I want you to know we're all hanging on

There's worse to come: 

They'll come and yes they'll try
To break us down
But we know that we'll never lose
If we keep moving forward and don't look back

Now, I thought the worst metaphor we were going to get was the title, but this is just taking the mickey now.

And then, to cap it all off, there's the chorus: 

With the world at your feet
there's no-one you can beat
yes it can't be done

[Embrace, "World At Your Feet", the official England World Cup 2006 song.]

You probably expected it from the title (I mean, come on) but there is absolutely zero excuse for lyrics like that. Compare World in Motion…

Express yourself
Create the space
You know you can win
Don't give up the chase…

[New Order, "World In Motion", the official England World Cup 1990 song.]

Now, doesn't that just beat the crap out of the Embrace song?

OK, so it's not exactly Dylan, but actual anthems don't need to be. "World At Your Feet" is not anthemic; it's Coldplay-lite with louder guitars and without any of the lyrical talent. As an anthem, it is a failure; as a song, it is a disaster. The FA should be ashamed. Shoulda given it to the Kaiser Chiefs, shouldn't they?

Funnily enough, this is possibly the first time in ages that I've agreed with the majority of posts on a BBC Have Your Say thread. Guess the song really is that bad.

PDSW1: For Pete’s sake

~ Inquisitor

Yes, the NME's favourite junkie has been arrested again. But before he was, he did manage to produce an amusing BBC headline:

For Pete's sake... (BBC News screenshot)
That headline describes exactly what I think of him. "For Pete's sake" indeed.

[And yes, that is IE7 on Vista. It's just what I was using at the time. Crappy airbrush circle added in MS Paint; oh the shame.]

I guess it’s my one month blogiversary

~ Inquisitor

So, once again, I've got to say how much I like wordpress.com – it really is exactly what I've always wanted from a blogging service, apart from the styling.

To all the people who've seen this blog: thank you. More articles hopefully on the way; just takes time to write them. 

RIP Muriel Spark

~ Inquisitor

It's really very sad. I like The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie an awful lot – it manages to pull off the trick of combining comic and tragic writing, something which far too many writers fall down on. A loss we should all feel, imho.

[This is the second in my blog series of celebrity obituaries that mean something to me; the first, on the old blog, was for Linda Smith. This series will hopefully not recur too soon.]

This is very strange…

~ Inquisitor

My blog dashboard has shown up in the "Top Posts from around wordpress.com" section on my blog dashboard. I know I do access it rather often, but surely it shouldn't show up in a top posts area…