Eclectic Trains

This video has got a certain edge to it and has been doing the rounds on the internet. The enjoyment from spitting out the word "TOSSER" seems be an essential element along with the Animal's guitar loop from their evergreen classic, 'House of the Rising Sun'. The host on a Saturday BBC radio show - I can't remember which - was asking for listeners to send in their own angry raps i.e. about stuff that they were angry about. Well, I'm pretty darn angry about Libya and so I wrote a short rap. Needless to say it wasn't read out. In retrospect, I think they might have looking for faux anger, but this, my friends, my crew, is the REAL DEAL. Here me now:

You patted yourselves on the back,
When you attacked Iraq,
Now all decoys have left the house-
There is no Dubya -
You thought WTF let's bomb Libya.

You make Gadaffi look like a democrat,
You've turned a civil war into a worldwide spat.
Your credibility is now spent.
Who are you?
You are the ruling, strictly humanitarian, British establishment.

2011 © MC ECLECTIC (TRAINS)

Wallace & Gromit "jumped the shark" tonight with their World of Invention show tonight on BBC1 (7:30pm). The kids were confused because they wanted Wallace & Gromit doing their normal stuff (as did I). Instead they were the comic anchor for a highly random series of "serious" invention news items stuck together with some ropey video footage*. I am quite surprised that the BBC polluted their W&G brand to this extent. What of course they are trying to do is create a contemporary twist on the old BBC classic, Tomorrow's World. Why bother? Just bring it back and leave W&G re-inventing our plasticine, flat-capped past.

*They also made the mistake of trying to mix a film aesthetic (W&G has the high production values we associate with feature films) with the, often lesser, production values of a magazine style doc shot on video for TV.

It just didn't work for me although I am always interested in anything with the "invention tag" attached to it. The chap with the lifetime project of creating robots without electronics, propelled by wind and made out of electricians' plastic tubing was pure Heath Robinson.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Twitter has been such headline news over the past month that even the BBC's Moral Maze couldn't keep away from it's incessant, pecking beak. You'll be glad to know I was dutifully listening to the show whilst trying to tweet a few off-beat, eclectic responses (as I am prone to do). At one point the kids came downstairs with their mother (my wife) wanting my opinion on which school photos were the best. I tried to stay focused on the Sky+ box's radio output, but it was clearly time to retire to the kitchen with the trusted Robert's radio (below).

Well, go listen to the show if you want to know how it all went. It'll be here for a week:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nkcfk/Moral_Maze_04_11_2009/

The discussion was pretty free flowing with the cogent writer and Twitterer, Kenan Malik, probing thoughtfully... and then at the eleventh hour, as Michael Buerk wrapped up the show, he read from 2 tweets and the rest is a Twitterer's, little, slither of semi-narcissistic, tweet-style vanity publishing, history:

Kenan Malik: "...it's pointless pretending that Twitter in and of itself is the problem. It's not the moral agent. It's just the tool used by moral agents and that is what we need to discuss."

Michael Buerk: "Just a few things off Twitter, before we go. 'Lynch mob mentality', this is somebody called elec- eclectictrains, 'Lynch mob mentality' says Melanie Phillips*. I think I like this mob'. And somebody called dogtrouser says that he is worried to find himself agreeing with a Roman Catholic."

[Laughter in the studio]

There you go an eclectic quip gets onto the big airwaves. New media piggybacking on the old.



*****

*Unfortunately yours truly spelt MP's surname with the one "l". Where is the Twitterproofer when you need him?

Well I hope you caught the show, Limmy's Show that is. I'm not going to bore you with a long, windbaggy review, suffice to say I was smiling and laughing from ear to ear throughout the show. It felt like an old virtual friend had jumped from the small small screen to the small screen and was talking to me right in my front room (are you talking to me?). Quite a shock for someone (me), who like Brian Limond (aka Limmy) has probably has spent far too many hours over the last 10 years staring at cyberspace. And what have we got to show for it? Well, Brian's got Limmy's Show and good luck to him.

Fellow Blogger, Antonine Plato, caught one of Limmy's rare gigs in London back in 2007 and wrote a nice little prophetic piece about how we might see this fella on the box. Blogtastic crystal ball usage Antonine! It must be getting late...

It is with great pleasure that I can announce the arrival of Limmy's Show to a telly (or Sky box) near you. Ever since I was sent a link by my brother to his Swearing Xylophone back in 2003, I have been a member of his fan club. Limmy, a Glasgow-based internet comedian, has a keen eye and ear for the absurd and plays with his audience's preconceptions of Glaswegian caricatures to hilarious effect. He had a brief outing on BBC's The Culture Show in 2007 and has performed at a few festivals, but now he is getting a long-awaited television series. Like all early-adopters of fringe artists, I hope he doesn't water down his material too much but I think in the current climate it might be unrealistic to expect a defensive BBC to let Limmy have full creative freedom. His website videos - www.limmy.com/blog/videos - are truly out there and certainly not to everyone's tastes. I have favourites and here are two of them and if you don't like these, don't watch the show.

Yes or No - Ever wanted to get violent with a contributor from the floor? Watch this.

What would you do? - Under extreme pressure from work, your family or the bank? Have a taste of this.

Limmy's Show
Wednesday 18th February, 10pm
BBC2 Scotland (Sky 990 / Freesat 970)

And repeated...
Monday 23rd February, 11:15pm
BBC1 Scotland (Sky 971 / Freesat 960)

And, of course, BBC iPlayer.

I hope everyone has enjoyed Channel 4's 'The Devil's Whore' - I certainly did (with a few qualifications). The last of this big budget 4-parter was broadcast last night (10/12/08) and I'm missing it already. At one stage it could have been a 10 hour series on BBC and if you read about the production's long gestation, it may never have been made at all.

I've written a review for the The Culture Wars website which you can read by clicking on this link: Passionate people at w…w…w…war!

The coverage of the build up to the US presidential elections has had to compete with Brandgate (or Manuelgate or Sachsgate or Whatevergate). The US is about to elect a new leader and we have had another media scandal that engulfs the media in a cannibalistic feeding-frenzy. This alone is quite shocking.

I must admit my head has been spinning with issues that sometimes appear very trivial and then very serious, simultaneously. Ross and Brand weren't funny on this particular occasion - there seems to be a wide consensus on this one. (I'll come clean: I can find Ross funny and on occasions his cheeky childish wit can amuse but his rude, boorish, self-congratulatory shtick - a large part of his act - has started to wear thin. Or put another way, "sisters", I think if I were a female celeb I would think twice about appearing on his chat show. Juliette Binoche, Jane Fonda, Nicola Kidman and even our own Jade Goody have all been subjected to Ross's sexist, car crash sense of humour. Brand's humour has always been too obscured by his ego for me to appreciate his "talents").

Anyway... talk about a diverting issue. As some intelligent articles have pointed out this isn't about Ross or Brand. The column inches devoted to the subject aren't an extension of a public debate about the nature of humour and what makes us laugh. "Can the comedy of cruelty ever be justified. Discuss." No, the official liberal media response to "Brandgate" has betrayed a papable disgust with the thousands that have complained about the Brand-Ross Radio 2 show. Charlie Brooker's column - a very funny column that I read regularly - in The Guardian was entitled: "Want a rush of empowerment? Join the angry idiots registering their disgust with Ofcom". His opening salvo was: "So it's here at last. The dawn of the dumb has broken in earnest."

At the beginning of the week I must admit I was caught up in the fears of the liberal media elite (being a lesser member with aspirations). In particular, the worry that a "Daily Mail witchunt" against Ross and Brand might increase the likelihood of a knee-jerk and censorious response from the BBC, troubled me. But there was something else going on here...

...and then I stumbled on Neil Davenport's article on spiked: A revolt of the masses against the BBC?

Neil takes apart the issue and really explores the BBC's contempt for its audience. The Ross-Brand affair is set in the context of "the media’s low horizons and lack of faith in its audience". This article is a devastating critique of dumbing-down whilst also being a fresh clarion call for funny, and intelligent, comedy. I couldn't recommend it more.

I think I might like the work of David Hare but unfortunately I have seen very little of it. I saw "Skylight" in the 90s with Michael Gambon and Lia Williams at the National Theatre which I really enjoyed at the time. I stumbled across a trailer the other night for "My Zinc Bed" and decided to stop everything and watch it with my better half. What a disappointment. I am a fan of all three actors: Jonathan Pryce, Paddy Considine and Uma Thurman, but their talents were lost in a "tv play" that just felt forced and quite undramatic. Anyway, I never planned to write a review, or anything so formal, but isn't it nice when you find an articulate reviewer who says everything you want to say and more? Lucy Mangan's review in today's Guardian did just that. I leave you with two intelligent quotes that re-raise some very pertinent questions about the nature of good tv drama.

I can't work out if it is a depressing testament to the debasing effects of the junk-television diet we habitually follow that the heightened language of My Zinc Bed - unashamedly writerly writing - felt like an affectation and distraction, or if it is simply a sign that the intimate medium of television does indeed require a less mannered form of language, lest it overwhelm rather than serve the piece.

...Even an ideas play needs drama as well as discussion.

This great review, which also takes a swipe at BBC policy towards commissioning drama, can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/28/television.television1

Thank you Lucy.