Bizkit Bon Mots

From today’s “In Brief” column in The Independent:

“The American rock band Limp Bizkit has cancelled a British festival appearance this summer to concentrate on their new album. The band, led by Fred Durst, [above], was due to play at the Download Festival at Donington Park at the end of the month. Durst said: “Sometimes you just have to go with the flow of creativity and we’re doing just that.” The band, one of the world’s biggest rock acts, are working on a new release called Panty Sniffer.”

Hot In Herre Head

Not since Erotica has an idiotic ditzy oversexed refrain so persistently tormented me. Nelly’s latest work of artistry features the eloquent chorus of:

Nelly: It’s getting hot in herre
So take off all your clothes
Random scantily clad ho’: I am…gettin’ so hot
I wanna take my clothes off

And it refuses to leave my head.

Celine Dion Reviewed

I have decided that every now and then on this site I should do something uncharacteristic. Branch out from the same ol’ same ol’. Stretch wings, and hopefully find myself surprised by unexpected gold at the bottom of rainbows, light at the end of tunnels, new and unhackneyed metaphors bubbling up from cesspools of cliché…

So here are some excerpts from a rather enjoyably-written review of Celine Dion’s latest album.

On My Heart Will Go On:
“The problem wasn’t so much an excess of technique, but rote excess. (Also, ever since Titanic I kept picturing Celine as the prow of a ship.) There was a primal leviathan of something, but it failed to engulf me. I felt right to be unengulfable, but not right to be ignorant about the nature of the engulfment. Twenty-eight million people can be wrong, but they’re not all likely to allow themselves to be bored.”

On lyrics:
“The sky is touched in one song, moonlight is touched in another, two songs have light in someone’s eyes, nine of the first 10 have sky or weather metaphors, rain can be cleansing but storms signify trouble, sun signifies rebirth, heaven signifies heaven, every child creates a skylight of beauty, etc”

I Heart Have I Got News For You

This might be one of those things where you just had to be there, but during the captions segment of Have I Got News For You last week, one of the pictures was a close-up of several medal-festooned Chinese military officials standing amidst others in a choir-like formation, eyebrows resolute and aggressive, mouths formed into perfect O’s fervently singing what must have been a political anthem.

Someone’s caption was “That man on the right is thinking: For God’s sake will somebody say ‘klahoma!”

Brilliant.

Sing-a-long-a Sound Of Cynicism

Apart from traditional ideological divides eg. East/West, North/South, capitalism/communism, pro-life/pro-choice, I have discovered yet another source of stark and violent division amongst peoples.

So tell me, if a good friend of yours called you up and said it was their birthday on Sunday and they’d decided to spend the afternoon at Sing-a-long-a Sound Of Music, would you say: i) “OMIGOD, that sounds SOOOO fantastic, I’ll come as a brown paper package tied up with string!” or ii) “Sweet Jesus, deliver me from this hell on earth”?

Humph. Well, screw the naysayers. I’m not old enough for dignity yet.

Wrong Wu-Syntax

The Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator is highly dissatisfactory and clearly ill-conceived. My Wu-Name is apparently Lazy-Assed Destroyer, which just goes against all MC naming conventions. Consider: the unchanged spelling of “lazy”, the unnecessarily grammatical “ed” on the end of “Ass”, and above all, the “er” that ends “Destroyer”.

I think my Wu-Name should have been Lay-Z Ass Destroyah.

Behind Scenes

I’m thinking there might have been a conversation something like this behind the scenes from Mariah Carey’s new video:

Director: Okay, Mariah, we think you’re really gonna like this one. We’re thinking this new video should break new ground, ya know, push the envelope, burst outta the box, yadda yadda buzzword.
Mariah: You want me to wear even less clothes than usual, act dumber than ever before, and generally just be the ultimate American white trash whore?
Director: Exactly. There’ll be race cars and lots of booty shakin’.
Mariah: Kewl.

File Under Copout

From this week’s episode of the X-Files (Via Negativa/The One About The Guy With A Third Eye Who Creeped Doggett Out): Scenes From Story-Editing (aka Michelle Kvetches)

Chris Carter: Okay, droogs, this one’s gonna be all about Doggett, because he’s new, because we needed to chuck Mulder in a UFO so that whiny boy Duchovny could be in as few episodes as possible, and because I’m the Messiah.
Underlings: All hail Christ Carter.
Chris Carter: Oh, and because none of us are good enough writers to develop Doggett’s character while Scully’s in the way, we have to find a way to get Scully out of this one.
Underlings: Hmmmmmmmm.
Chris Carter: Hmmmmmmmm.
Misc. Underling: I know! Let’s get her abducted by aliens too!
Chris Carter: We did that already, remember?
Misc. Underling: Bugger.
Chris Carter: Hmmmmmmm.
Underlings: Hmmmmmmm.
Chris Carter: I have it! She’s pregnant, right? Let’s put her in hospital with acute abdominal pains! There’s nothing like a pregnant woman in jeopardy to yank viewers’ chains!
Underlings: Truly this is genius!
Chris Carter: Mommy’s Little Plot Device. I planned this all along. [earlier I wrote about the shorthand I use to note my displeasure when judging debates. This is the sort of claim that’d get an “OH, PUH-LEASE”]

Ugh. This is still my favourite show, but they really do deserve a whipping for that. Using the pregnancy for nothing other than to conveniently remove Scully from the action whenever the hell they feel like it is shamefully shoddy writing.

X-Files: Roadrunners

Right, so tonight’s episode of the X-Files was about a huge-ass garden-variety manifestation of the Second Coming, which was worshipped by a bunch of hicks who drove around the desert in a big bus looking for random stranded backpackers and the occasional red-headed FBI agent so they could shove the Slug Christ up their spines.

Methinks the scriptwriters and storyeditors who came up with this opus need a couple of Slime Messiahs shoved up where the desert sun don’t shine.

Last night was gloriously low-brow

Last night was gloriously low-brow and frivolous. I started the evening off with Celebrity Big Brother. Then Carl came into the TV room and waved the first two episodes of the current season of the X-Files at me, and so we had to watch those. Then the Italian girls came in and put on Cocktail, and we all had a good time yelling “Bastard!” at Tom Cruise and pulling apart the corny dialogue. It was all very Bridget Jones.

The thing which probably struck me the most about last night won’t be a surprise for anyone reading this who actually knows me in real life, but I’ll go into it anyway because I just feel like writing about it.

The X-Files, or its good episodes anyway, reduces me to a gibbering emotional wreck. I loved this show long before it was hip, while it was hip, and still love it now it’s pretty much unhip. I’ll be the first to acknowledge it’s had some laughably bad episodes (killer pussies, Bride of Chucky, Scully Madonna with limpid-eyed alien child…), a large number of hilariously verbose pretentious voiceovers (Chris Carter, lose the thesaurus already), and don’t even get me started on what they’ve done with the conspiracy arc.

But the thing is, there’s just something about the characters that gets to me. I could rehash the usual Mulder-Scully skeptic-believer unresolved sexual tension spiel but everyone’s already familiar with that. I guess what particularly endears me to them is their ability to do the whole undying trust and loyalty thing while generally avoiding Hallmark moments. People always tell me “Oh, Michelle, you’ll be more forgiving about gross couply stuff when you’re in a relationship.”

No, I bloody well will not. I can certainly see Hallmark moments enhancing any relationship I’d want to be in, but only in terms of their comedic potential. I’d be quite fond of a man who could deliver cheesy lines with an expression just one twitch short of deadpan so I knew he didn’t actually think “I love you always forever till the end of the world blah blah blah” would fool me into falling over with my legs in the air.

Er. I was talking about the X-Files. Yeah, the X-Files. Love it.