Wow

Hello all. I've sat down to write another blog entry, but I'm having doubts about it. You see, a) it will be two blog posts in a row where I bash an article from a newspaper, and I always strive to make TRAROTL varied and interesting, and b) attacking the Daily Mail is like criticising Hitler, or kicking a puppy. It's all a bit too easy, isn't it?


But then I read the article again, and I realised I have to write about it. You see, this is so much more than "Miranda is shit lolz" like the last article I referenced - this piece is shameful, disgusting, misguided, irrelevant, pointless, worthless, crass, puerile, juvenile, an insult and so many other words that I'm not clever enough to reel off at the top of my head. I'm sorry Liz Jones, but I can't ignore this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1347621/Joanna-Yeates-murder-Becoming-just-thumbnail-police-website.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I'm ignoring the title, I think. The answer is "no" though, whilst we're here.


It's Friday night and I’m in the Ram bar on Park Street in Bristol.This is where Joanna Yeates spent her last evening before she set off up the hill, past all the twinkly shops and bars (a Habitat, a Space NK beauty emporium; Bristol is nothing if not upwardly mobile) towards her death.

This is particularly important. I for one never knew that Bristol had a beauty emporium, nor that it was upwardly mobile. I must visit one day.

The bar is OK but ordinary. The wine list, chalked on a board, says ‘Lauren Perrier’.

At this point I need to rein myself in a little here. I do get quite a few foreign visitors to this site - mainly those wondering who Tim Lovejoy is dating. As ever, I do not know. Nevertheless, for the benefit of our friends overseas, a little bit of back-story, if I may. This article is about a lady called Jo Yeates, who just before Christmas was murdered in her home town of Bristol, England. Her body was found on Christmas Day. It's all very horrific, sad and disturbing, and that's just the newspaper coverage of it. The simple fact that Jo was a bright, attractive young white lady means that the papers have whipped themselves into a complete frenzy over this one. As someone just remarked to me on Twitter, if a black man from a rough estate was murdered, the papers wouldn't care, and the headlines would be very different. Horrible to say that, but it's true. This article here is the latest about the murder, something I find relatively amusing considering that none of us actually know what the police are thinking right now. Anyway, let us proceed.

I wish she had spent what were probably her last hours on earth somewhere lovelier. The food is awful (I ask for a veggie burger and it comes without the burger – and without the bun!) but the young women behind the bar are sweet with huge, wary eyes.

There is so much about this paragraph which is just ghastly. I'm going to be very kind, and not remark that if you're a vegetarian you're probably a fucking idiot, but there are some things here we just cannot ignore. Is it really acceptable to write an article about a girl being murdered, and kick it off by complaining about food in a pub she happened to be in once? The horror, oh the sheer horror of it all! To me, that's like saying this:


"Picking my way through the shattered remains of Hiroshima, I found it nigh on impossible to locate a decent sushi bar."


Not my work that one - credit to @NicholasPegg on Twitter. I do love Liz's 'huge, wary eyes' comment - it smacks of satire, but the gas here is that you know full well it isn't. It's just horrid.

Alex is working her way through uni, where she is studying English. She comes from London and her parents are now terrified something is going to happen to her. 

She was working in the bar on the night of December 17, when Joanna was having a drink before heading home. ‘I don’t remember her,’ she says. 

‘It was so busy that night. I used to walk home but I always get a cab now.’

Lyn, with white blonde hair, who was also working here that night, says she is ‘more fearful now, I’m more nervous. It’s just so mysterious’.

These women have every right to be a little more nervous than usual, but I absolutely hate this section. It's peddling fear, something these papers do very well and very often. Someone as cynical as me can ignore it, but I do worry about my Gran. Every time I talk to her she starts a sentence with "I read in The Express..." and it will end with some nonsense like "...and then the meteor will kill us all, so I'm off out to panic buy some bread. You can never be too sure." As far as we know, Jo's death was an isolated incident, and has not been linked with others. Should women be a bit more worried? Perhaps so, yes. But it's not like there's a serial killer going round.

I leave the bar at 8pm and retrace Joanna’s steps. Even though it’s January, the streets are packed. There are a couple of women joggers but they are with boyfriends or husbands. 

I walk past the beautiful university building on my right, with Waitrose on my left. I wander the bright aisles, full of young women rushing round after work, leaving with carrier bags and expectation.

I head up the hill towards Clifton, the leafy part of the city. It’s quieter now, and darker. I find Tesco, and go in. I almost buy that upmarket pizza; the choice tells me Jo wanted a lovely life, something above the ordinary.

Yes, you can tell that, just by the pizza she bought. Naturally. I saw someone buying a Mars bar the other day - bet he's a right cunt. And abuses his wife.


There is one police van on the green as I turn right into Canynge Road. I bet Jo’s heart lifted as she reached this junction, looking forward to the feeling only a Friday night near Christmas can give you. As I near her basement flat, at No  44, the road is quiet. Earlier in the day there had been an ITN news van here but it has gone now. I’m reassured to see two policemen standing vigil at her iron gate, either side of a small, discreet pile of flowers in varying degrees of decay. I tell them I’m spooked, walking here. ‘Don’t be spooked,’ one says. ‘Residents are campaigning to get brighter street lights installed.’

Brighter street lights - good idea.


So the antique, lovely ones are to disappear to be replaced by ugly ones because of something even uglier.


Or not, clearly.


That afternoon I had gone to the lane where Jo’s body was found. It was horrible and windswept. I don’t know what I had expected but not this. 

I didn't know what you expected either, to be honest. A fun fare? An Indian restaurant? Noel Edmonds?


There was no ceremony here, no policeman, just that lovely face on a now dog-eared poster. I got the feeling the world is starting to forget Jo, that she’ll become just another thumbnail on the Avon and Somerset Police website, along with the faces of the other murder victims no one can recall.


She was a bright, attractive white female. No chance love.

I’d have expected the cars to slow down here to show respect but they sped past, carrying people on their way home from work. 

Literally insane. Liz, you're the person who slows down at car crashes aren't you?

The lane is narrow. I can’t see how a car stopped here and a man struggled with a body without being beeped at and told to get out the way, as I was.

Perhaps there wasn't a struggle there. I don't know. Neither do you. Let's stop playing Nancy Drew for a minute, eh? 


There were no messages with the flowers, just one card, still sealed in its Cellophane. The person who left it hadn’t bothered to scrawl a note. Leaving Jo’s flat, I return to my car. My satnav takes me to the Clifton Suspension Bridge. 

The theory is the killer took the long route from the flat to where he dumped the body to avoid the CCTV cameras. Perhaps he also wanted to avoid the 50p toll. 

I don’t have 50p and try tossing 30p and a White Company button into the bucket. It doesn’t work.

There is now an angry queue behind me. Isn’t it interesting that you can snatch a young woman’s life away from her in the most violent, painful, frightening way possible, take away her future children, her future Christmases, take away everything she loves, and yet there are elaborate systems in place to ensure you do not cross a bridge for only 30 pence?

Isn't it fucking disgusting that thousands of children died in Haiti last year, yet I'm not allowed to buy a PS3 for 12p and a tube of Smarties? Fucking joke.

Finally, a man in a taxi jumps out, and runs to me brandishing a 50p piece. ‘Not all men are monsters,’ he says, grinning. Maybe not. But one monster is all it takes.

He didn't say that.


End of article. One of the most insensitive things I've ever read, and I pray that Jo's parents never set eyes on this bullshit.

Miranda

Over Christmas, someone linked me to an article which they knew I'd hate. And funnily enough, I did. So I saved it, because I knew that at some point in January I'd dig it out of my Bookmarks list and have a look at it. "So here we are now", as Father Todd Unctuous once said.

You may or may not be familiar with the comedienne Miranda Hart. In my opinion, she's quite funny. That's tough for me to say, as I'm of the opinion that 99.9% of women are spectacularly un-amusing. In fact, let's just take a moment to list funny females:

Linda Smith
Clare Grogan (in Father Ted)
That woman off The Vicar of Dibley who isn't Dawn French. You know, the thick one.
Pamela Stephenson

Erm....

Well, yes, exactly. ANYWAY I quite like Miranda Hart, and I do like her sitcom "Miranda". Really, I do. Is it the greatest thing ever made? No. Is it going to win a bajillion BAFTAs? No. Is it the smartest comedic writing since Frasier? Definitely not.

So what is it? For me, it's just a bit of fun. It's light-hearted, it's warm, and the majority of characters are likeable. It's a sitcom you can watch with your parents, and there's always a bit of physical humour which kids would appreciate. There's no swearing, and no crude humour - I'm not a prude, at all, but sometimes it's welcome to watch comedy that can be aired before 9pm.

Nevertheless it does seem fashionable at the moment to hate the programme, which I struggle to understand as there's far, far worse out there (I'm looking at you, "Big Top") and it's not really harmful in any way. However, maybe I'm about to understand why people hate it so. Because Catherine Gee has written, for The Torygraph, six points as to why she thinks it's rubbish. Let's have a look.

One: Canned laughter. Once upon a time, audience laughter was used to signal where the jokes were, when producers thought that viewers wouldn’t be able to figure it out for themselves. Now that comedies such as The Office and Peep Show have proved said viewers more than capable, it seems strange to still use it. Even stranger is the audience's apparent need to squeal with laughter at the most insignificantly small remarks.

Utter rubbish. To compare a sitcom like 'Miranda' with 'The Office' is absolutely insane, as they are two very different beasts. A laughter track/audience laughter would never have suited the 'The Office', just on the basis of it's "mockumentary" style. In Catherine's point here there is an assumption that a sitcom which has audience laughter recorded onto it is somehow bad. To my knowledge it never stopped Fawlty Towers, Frasier, Friends, Only Fools and Horses etc. from being successful.

Two: The jokes are about as original as a clown slipping on a banana skin. Yelling “my eyes” at the sight of something rude was reused countless times by Friends in the Nineties. As was, come to think of it, the overbearing mother who wished to marry off her daughter. And the overly sexually liberated parents. And the male friend who struggles to prove his masculinity

It's fucking difficult to write something that is original nowadays. Yes, some of the characters are clichéd (as we'll see in the next point). But again, that's not necessarily a BAD thing - it only would be if it was a direct rip-off from 'Friends', and I defy anyone to watch 'Miranda' and think "Oh yeah - this is just like 'Friends' innit?" The really hilarious thing about this point is that the relationship between the mother and the daughter is the best thing about the show. Clichéd? Yeah, sure, but it works. It really does.

Three: The role she’s written for herself is basically the socially inept sibling you’re embarrassed to introduce to people. Why voluntarily watch them at their most excruciating? Every week?

Alan Partridge. David Brent. Basil Fawlty. Blackadder. Private Godfrey. Father Dougal. PC Goody. Woody Boyd. Frank Spencer.

All of those characters come from brilliant sitcoms, and yet they all have severe character faults. Some are stupid, some are excruciatingly arrogant and smug, some are bad-tempered, some are nasty and spiteful. Yet as characters they work really really well, the majority of the time when they have someone to play off. This is the same in 'Miranda' - she may be slightly socially inept, but that's in direct contrast to her friends and her aspirational mother. Earlier on I stressed that the show is quite sedate and simple, so I don't want to think about these things too deeply, but to claim that the character is un-watchable because she's often awkward is a really rubbish point.

Four: It considers itself old-fashioned but seems to have only retained the worst aspects of the sitcoms of yesteryear– the cheap sets being just one. Vintage comedies such as Fawlty Towers and The Good Life may have been built out of reinforced cardboard, but at least they were backed up by likable characters and genuinely funny jokes.

Really? There's only one character in the show I don't like, and that mainly stems from the fact that every episode this character starts waving a picture of Heather Small's head around whilst singing badly.

Five: The humour relies purely on Hart’s attention-seeking oddball behaviour and rarely rises above the immature level of toilet humour and falling over gags. Or on the hope that breaking into song at inappropriate moments will remain amusing for an entire series.

Fawlty Towers is possibly the greatest thing of all time, and reflecting on it I realise how much physical comedy plays a part in it. Admittedly this is aided by John Cleese who is so wonderful at it, but think for a moment - the Hitler walk he does, the moose falling on his head, the abuse he dishes out to Manuel, when he implores Polly to hit him, when he accidentally gropes the girls breast, when the guests return back to find him lying on top of Manuel. I'm sure there's more but that's just off the top of my head, but my point is that if it's okay for the best thing evah~!, it's good enough for me. There's a lot of falling over in 'Miranda', yes. Is that necessarily a bad thing? No.

And of course let's not forget when Del Boy fell through the bar....and Trigger made a face.

Six: Miranda’s asides to the camera are completely unnecessary. In the episode in which she and her mother find themselves in a therapist’s office, Miranda asks the therapist (played by the woefully underused Mark Heap) if the fruit in his bowl was real. He responds by asking the old psychiatrist cliché: “How do you mean?” After she simply rephrases the question, she turns to camera and adds “I don’t know how to make it any clearer.” It’s a struggle to decide whether Hart considers her viewers to be so mentally challenged that they can’t see the joke implied, or if she genuinely thinks she's being funny.

This is such an unbelievably petty thing. So petty in fact that the cynical part of me ponders whether you were asked to write 6 points, but could only come up with 5 so had to cobble a load of shit together to pass off as the 6th one. You can't bullshit a bullshitter, Gee.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8215227/Miranda-love-her-or-hate-her.html is the link for the article, which also contains a brief defence of the show and lots of varied comments from readers.

Such fun!

Just for Men (Well, Ben)

2011 Bucket List entrants and their selections:

Ewar (Defending Champion)


1. Margaret Thatcher
2. Dick van Dyke
3. Jocky Wilson
4. Doris Day
5. Tony Benn

G


1. David Cameron
2. Louie Spence
3. Stacey Solomon
4. Will Ferrell
5. Freddie Highmore

Dan


1. Jake LaMotta
2. Zsa Zsa Gabor
3. Denis Norden
4. James Garner
5. Kim Jong Il

Cynical Ben


1. Hugh Hefner
2. James Best
3. Patrick Macnee
4. Helmut Schmidt
5. Yitzhak Shamir

No, I don't know either.

Cash


1. Margaret Thatcher
2. Elton John
3. Justin Bieber
4. Vernon Kay
5. Charlie Sheen

Hallstar74


1. Margaret Thatcher
2. Prince Philip
3. Angela Lansbury
4. Pope Benedict
5. Jimmy Saville

Good luck to all of you chaps. The Bucket List Game - making death fun!

The Bucket List

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas, guys! Mine was good, tempered slightly by the fact that our internet went down on Boxing Day and has only just returned this morning (29th Dec). Virgin Media, get the fuck out.

Also over the Christmas period, my letter criticising Val Duncan made it into The Sloppy Star (see previous blog entries) and her response followed a few days later. It was awful nonsensical bullshit, and hopefully I'll get round to posting about it in a few days time (providing Mother doesn't throw the paper away first). However, because the New Year is rapidly approaching, it's time to play a game that my influential Uncle (he who told me about Edward Woodward / Ewar Woowar) taught me. It's macabre, and it's a bit naughty, so if you are offended - please, fuck off now.

Every year, "famous" people die. This is naturally unfortunate, but a very British sense of dark humour seems to dictate that we cope with this sad news by thinking up jokes about the deceased. I'm not too sure why, but there we go. The Bucket List Game is a slight variation on this morbid thinking, and goes along something like this:

1. Each player can pick up to, and including, 5 celebrities who they think will "peg it" between 1st January - 31st December 2011.
2. The game is played based on GMT. Therefore, a death recorded at 00:37 GMT time (1/1/2012) and 19:37 EST time (31/12/2011) will NOT count.
3. Players must not pick a celebrity who is known to have a terminal illness at the time. This is cheating.
4. Players must NOT pick the same celebrity on CONSECUTIVE years. If you're playing the game for the first time on the basis of this blog post, this rule won't apply to you.
5. Picks are not exclusive to a single player. Multiple/all players having the same celebrity is within the rules.
6. There will not be a prize for the winner. That's a little too macabre. There will however be acclaim from your fellow players. Which leads me onto...

It's 13:00 on December 29th, which means for the 2010 Bucket List Game, there are mere hours left in the game. Let's take a moment then to look at the scores currently:

Ewar (for it is me) - ONE point (1)

Dan - NO points (0)

G - NO points (0)

Cash - NO points (0)

Unless things change dramatically in the hours remaining, I win! Because I'm great. God bless, Norman Wisdom. God bless and good speed.

If you'd like to play this upcoming year, get in touch. Blog comment, e-mail, tweet, smoke signal....I'm very contactable. We're all going to have Thatcher on our lists, aren't we?

Ewar's Guide to Christmas

Hello all. I appreciate this is late (I am typing this on the 21st Dec) but I thought I'd give you a quick run-down of what to do/what not to do this Christmas. I'm delighted to say that I have a diverse array of hardcore readers to this blog - lovely ladies, West Brom fans, Americans, Twitter friends and hardcore Socialists - so I'll try and cater for as many of you as I can. Let's have it then:

1) When shopping, be prepared.

Seriously. If you're going into, say, a shopping centre, have a list just like you would if you were going to the supermarket. As my father and Roy Keane like to say - "fail to prepare, and prepare to fail". A list will help you to pinpoint the exact stores you need to go to, thus saving you time and energy, and also reduces the chances of an impatient person such as myself wanting to behead you when you wander around aimlessly, dawdling with a glazed look in your eyes. Of course, a list written by another person, when you're looking for presents, is also a good idea as it eliminates the chances of giving someone a crappy present. Which leads me onto....

2) Try to avoid gift cards.

I could write an essay on why gift cards are very sneaky and naughty, but let's stay on theme. For someone you don't know brilliantly well - a colleague, a distant family member who's managed to invite himself round for dinner - a gift card is not a bad choice as such. However for others who are closer to you, it smacks of laziness. If you are going to purchase one, do try to tailor it for the person in question.

For my birthday my sister got me an iTunes gift card, which was bloody brilliant as I could use it not just for music but for other downloads, including apps that aren't free. Brilliant. My sister used her brain - it was a simple present, but a smart one. If you know someone who LOVES shopping in, say, Game, go for a Game gift card. However if their purchasing habits are broader - say they like buying books, but for the cheapest price and they don't have any particular brand loyalty - don't get them a Waterstones gift card, but a more general book one that can be used in any good bookshop.

3) Think on your feet. Especially when queuing.

The other day I went to Greggs for some lovely saturated fat for my lunch. Naturally, there was a queue, so whilst I waited in line I decided to be proactive. I took out £2 of my wallet. I looked at the prices, and realised I could afford a steak bake and a can of Coke. Once I got to the front of the queue, the conversation went thus:

Lady: Next please.
Ewar (for it is me): A steak bake please.
Lady: Anything else love?
Ewar: Can of Coke please.
Lady: That will be £1.80 please.

I thus handed over my £2, I got my 20p change and I exited. This whole exchange took...at the very most 30 seconds.

Now, that may all sound very basic and slightly patronising, but clearly the woman in front of me needs to be informed of this etiquette. I'm not being funny, but waiting until you are being served to decide what you want, and then looking shocked at the revelation that you actually have to pay for what you want is a bit of a twat's trick. I try and take the shortest amount of time, not just for myself, but for the others behind me. "Think On!" as that ex-copper in I'm Alan Partridge liked to say.

4) It's Christmas Day, and the key here is to pace yourself. Quite simply, it is a rookie mistake to stuff yourself with the main meal itself. Why? It's not going anywhere. Tomorrow, you can have sandwiches with the turkey, you can make strangely nice Bubble and Squeak with the leftover veg and the mini sausages with bacon go down nicely on their own.

So, chill out. Take your time. After the main meal you might have pudding. You might have cake. You might have pudding wine. You might have chocolates. You might have mince pies. Whatever you have, the key is to be prudent. Like I said, it will be there for days to come, there's no rush. Making yourself feel poorly on Christmas Day due to over-eating is so last decade. However....

5) Stock up on toilet paper.

You know?

6) There won't be anything good on TV. There just won't. So instead of moaning about it, indulge in some family time instead. Play a board game, or play cards. Let's be honest, in this day and age, if there really is something you want to watch, you can always record it. You're not doing anything on Boxing Day anyway, let's be honest. Talk to your elder relatives. Yes, they'll bore you, and yes, they smell of sprouts, but you'll miss them when they've gone.

Maybe.

7) Be nice! No-one wants an argument over Christmas. Admittedly, it may be fun at the time, but you'll spend the rest of the year reflecting on it. Be patient and tolerant - if it's because of "not sure if welcome" family members - it is only for one day and one meal, after all.

8) Make sure you listen to "Driving Home For Christmas" by Chris Rea at least once. A finer Christmas record there never has been, nor will there ever be.

9) Make sure you wear the paper hat from your cracker when eating the main meal. And, yes, the little gifts in the crackers are shit. Deal with it.

10) Have a Merry bloody Christmas.

Stop! Reading Time!

I've mentioned before on this blog about my book-buying addiction. Quite simply, it needs to stop. Earlier, the car pulled up outside, and as the man got The Book People box out of his car, I literally squealed for joy. This isn't healthy.

Nor is it helpful, as none of the books you are about to see are ones I need to read for university. They are here simply because I like reading. There's no shame in that, of course, but after opening the box, and adding it's contents to the books I already own but haven't read yet, it did flicker through my mind that maybe this is a little shameful:

December 13th

Last Thursday I was sitting in the hall of my brother's Primary school trying to watch a Nativity play, but my mind was elsewhere. At that exact same time, amidst all the chaos, the protests and the rioting, the University funding vote was happening down in Westminster. As well as that, someone told Dan that a uni assignment was due in - not for the middle of January as previously thought - but for the very next day, resulting in a MMS conversation riddled with confusion, apprehension and copious amounts of blue language. After sending another panicky text, I looked up to the stage to see my brother hand a gold box to Mary, speak his line and then turn to give me the thumbs up. I was very proud, but it got me thinking.

My brother, and all those other children on that stage, don't know what tuition fees are. They don't know where Afghanistan is, they weren't born when September 11th happened, they don't know about all the hate and awful things that exist in the world, and they don't have any real responsibilities, bar going to school every weekday.

It's impossible of course, but part of me yearns to go back to my childhood. When it's football every lunchtime, where there's no exams, no worries about girls or money, where it's packed lunches, and cartoons, and spaghetti hoops for tea and Gerry Anderson programmes, where it's a good nights sleep every night and Saturday evening TV was great. It's Sharpe, Cantona and Schmeichel.

The funny thing is, the other part of me likes this age right now. Where it's fantastic games consoles, it's alcohol, it's having money, and freedom. It's knowledge, it's fantastic literature, gigs and adult humour. Where it's David Attenborough programmes, smart phones, Sky TV, HD TV, 3D TV. It's Evra, Nani and Rooney.

Perhaps it's too easy to reminisce. Too easy to look back and say "Everything was so much better then!". There's only so many episodes of Captain Scarlet I could watch, after all. Perhaps in life, we should never look back - only forwards, with occasional glances sideways. Or perhaps the great golfer Walter Hagen was right, when he said:

You're only here for a short visit. Don't hurry. Don't worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.

I don't know. What I do know however is that this blog entry has turned into an episode of The Wonder Years, it's 2am, I've drunk far too much sherry and I really need to stop this shit and go to bed. Oh, and it's my birthday. Happy birthday, me.