I know these “give me money” things go around all the time so apologies in advance – but here goes…
I’m running 5 marathons in 5 days this September, 131 miles from Brussels to Amsterdam. It’s going to be torturous, arduous and painful-ous but at the same time, probably the greatest achievement of my life so far. I’m running with three friends and we’re aiming to do something amazing while also raising money for our nominated charity, Mary’s Meals. They provide daily meals to chronically hungry children in their local school, and in doing so, children who would otherwise often go without a meal are well fed, encouraged to attend school, and through education gain a better life for themselves.
Our £7,000 target will hopefully lead to more photos like this
We are firm believers in the notion of sustainable giving – that those in need don’t want to rely on handouts for the rest of their lives, but want the tools allow them to improve their lives themselves. A good education is surely the most fundamental of these tools. £7,000 will build a kitchen in a school in Malawi or Liberia through Mary’s Meals’ Sponsor a School scheme. Through this project, all those donating will know which school their money has gone to, and will be able to see photos of the what the money has funded. The last thing we want is for our donations to go into a black hole – 80% of all donations are spent on charity “admin” costs, or so we have read – so having this specific project as our target means that we know where our money is going, which is something I feel very strongly about.
Anyway, here are various web links to our various… things.
If you can afford to donate then it would be massively appreciated, but anything is appreciated really – a retweet, a Facebook update, forwarding this on to your friends; anything.
As an added cry for help, we’re also looking for corporate sponsorships – i.e., getting companies to provide us with some of our resources so that we don’t have to pay for them ourselves. Sadly the runs don’t mean we just have to show up, run loads, then come home. We need things like flights, accommodation, a hire car, drinks, kit, shoes, nutritional supplements, a portable ice bath… you name it. So if you have any contacts who work for companies who might be prepared to chuck any of these things (or anything else you can think of) our way in exchange for some free advertising via our website and various other PR portals, then I’d be really grateful.
Anyway, I’m going to stop rambling now and leave you with pictures of my training schedule (in miles) and our route, in order to try to inspire the sympathy vote. Thanks for reading!
This is an email which I have already sent to the Press Complaints Commission regarding today’s article on the Daily Mail website by Richard Littlejohn. I’m certainly not the only person to be outraged by it – if you haven’t read it yet, feel free to use the link below:
“First and foremost, the article itself is an utter disgrace to any reasonable person and is a detriment to the progress of the human race. I understand that technically Richard Littlejohn’s article doesn’t breach any of the points within the PCC Code of Practice. Now, I would like to cite a paragraph from your Q&A to support my complaint.
“Advertising billboards (and to a lesser extent television programmes, for example), contain information disseminated on a very wide scale, the consumption of which cannot necessarily be controlled. As anyone can look at an advert, it is necessary to ensure that all advertisements do not break basic standards of decency and taste. On the other hand, newspapers are actively purchased and therefore need not be subject to the same restrictions.”
In this case you are quite incorrect. You need to update the Code to reflect the fact that articles are now disseminated online and are arguably as visible, if not more visible, than television adverts and advertising billboards. I did not buy the Daily Mail today and yet I have been exposed to this filth. The internet falls under the category of “cannot necessarily be controlled” with regard to consumption and so, as the Press Complaints Commission, your jurisdiction must also extend to these newspapers’ websites. After all, you list “online” as an option when complaining and invite people to provide a link, so it quite clearly does.
I understand that the PCC cannot be a moral arbiter but you simply have to accept that drafting a version of the Code of Practice that only covers the printed press is no longer appropriate. Bigots like Richard Littlejohn should be no more able to freely post horrendous, racist articles on the internet than a motor vehicle company should be able to produce an advert that says, “Japan’s fucked, why not buy a British car instead?”
You simply have to see that this is true, and take steps to do something about it. Do a survey if you like. I don’t pretend to know what the majority of people want, but it’s about time you took the opportunity to find out.”
The notion that many people don’t fully understand the nuances of the complicated offside rule in association football, especially wives and girlfriends – who are the the people that ask us the most and still don’t understand even when we do explain it – has led to the supposition that “women don’t understand the offside rule”. When this assumed phenomenon is applied to a female assistant referee, who doubtlessly has years of training and experience and has risen through the ranks to become an official in the Premier League, one of the fastest and most intense leagues in the world, suddenly you are presented with an example of British satire at its most classical. Take a widely generalised stereotype, find a conflicting situation, pop your tongue in your cheek and parody the established fact with the unacceptable common view – making sure to throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder and check that your co-conversationalist is rolling his or her eyes.
Just in case you're unsure.
I read that Keys remarked to Gray, upon noting that the assistant referee was female, that “someone should get down there and explain the offside rule to her”. When I read that for the first time, I chuckled to myself – not least because a good friend of mine had already made the exact same assertion as his Facebook status earlier in the day. Clearly, I thought, that’s a joke, and anyone who takes it seriously wants a good talking to.
So then the furore happened about them being “sexists”, and I thought, here we go again. The feminist bandwagon rolls into town the moment a man dares to embark on a bit of horseplay and suddenly they’re being stood down by Sky and attacked from all corners. What kind of world are we living in, I thought to myself. Sexism exists and it’s a very real and terrible thing, and there’s no place for it. But parody and satirical social commentary of this type is the very backbone of British sensibility. Take that away, ban it, and you’re crushing the very essence of why we’re regarded as having the best sense of humour in the world. Sometimes it’s edgy, sometimes it goes a bit too far, and sometimes someone gives a microphone to Frankie Boyle. But, I thought, saying a female official doesn’t know the offside rule “cos birds don’t know nuffink about football lolz!” is a mockery of the people who seriously perpetuate that point of view, and it’s not sexist; it’s humorous.
"You're about as edgy as a satsuma" - Vince Noir
Then, I actually listened to the recording of the exchange between Keys and Gray. If you haven’t heard it, please use the link below (apologies for using the Daily Mail but it was the first one I came across):
And suddenly it all makes sense. Gray and Keys aren’t engaging in horseplay… they’re actually massively sexist arseholes. Their context and intonation suggests that they seriously believe that all women, including this one, a licensed Premier League official, don’t know the offside rule. They appear to sound disgusted that a woman should be allowed to take any part in officiating a Premier League game, as if it is too complex for their tiny girl brains to comprehend. This is obviously ridiculous, disgraceful, unacceptable and pathetic. I’m sitting here typing this, still struggling to come to terms with the sheer idiocy required to honestly believe such a thing.
Gray and Keys, presumably with their "Pricks of the Season" award
And this frustrates me particularly because all the stuff I’ve defended above about the British sense of humour – which I will stand by until I’m in a hole in the ground – gets spoiled by these two unbelievable idiots. The whole notion of tongue-in-cheek is that you don’t really believe what you’re saying, and you’re allowed to say it because no-one really believes it, do they? Well it turns out that, unfortunately, some of them do. And here are two prime examples. At least with Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand it was a badly-conceived joke that got out of hand, but there was at least an attempt at being silly and funny in the first place. In this case, these two jackasses are being serious from start to finish, without a chuckle or a raised eyebrow between them.
I was no particular fan of either man before this incident. I’ve actually met Richard Keys a few times, and he seemed very nice. My overwhelming memory of him is that he has uncommonly hairy hands. And Andy Gray, well… how he’s managed to be a pundit for so long beggars belief, in my opinion. You’ve never heard such an enormous volume of garbage compressed into such a short space of time in your entire life if you’ve never heard one of his half-time or post-match analyses. Football punditry has been in the gutter for a long time, with TV stations always going for big-name ex-players with brains like rhesus monkeys in the quest for ratings; Garth Crooks has never said anything that makes sense to me but he says it with such feigned authority and insistence that he somehow keeps popping up on Football Focus every week. He must handle his BBC contract negotiations in a similar manner.
"Well at least this flag doesn't clash with my top!" - not a quote by Sian Massey.
And the great irony of all this is that the female assistant referee in question – Sian Massey – had an excellent game. She had one massive decision to make for the first Liverpool goal and she got it spot on; it was borderline, and in live action it looked like it was offside, but she made the right call and the goal stood. So it appears that a new, young, vibrant assistant referee is doing better than her predecessors in her new role and not making mistakes despite being under huge pressure; a changing of the guard has served them well. Maybe Sky Sports should make a note of that when they’re deciding whether to renew the contracts of messrs Gray and Keys.
Those who know me closely will also probably be aware of my sheer, unadulterated hatred for Apple and the cretins who mope around after every product release convinced that this one is going to change the way they live their miserable lives. They should release their own version of the Cockmaster VL2 so their legions of mindless drones can finally do what they’ve always wanted to do and literally shag the sleek, metal curves of Apple’s most recent piece of half-broken next-month’s-car-boot-sale bullshit. I’m sure they would do that if they weren’t so anti-porn; Steve Jobs is clearly asexual. Can you get your end into a FireWire port? You can bet more than one person has tried.
The suggestion that Apple never, ever release a piece of hardware that actually works properly is only a scientific research study away from being hard fact. We all know it’s true, but Apple have done an almost unholy job of rendering a few million people worldwide completely blind to it. There’s no doubt that it’s absolute marketing genius, the actual indoctrination of a huge number of people to the point that they will fight tooth-and-nail with someone like me on the merits of Apple products regardless of how limp their arguments actually are. I intend to tackle some of these flimsy arguments head on in the forthcoming bile-laden paragraphs. Just call me Osama Bile-Laden.
How many people were queueing around the block for the iPhone 4 in the UK alone? Literally thousands. Hundreds in Glasgow, hundreds in Edinburgh, thousands in London. The first bloke in the UK to get a new iPhone 4 was some loser from Stoke-on-Trent who queued for “only” 16 hours, according to the Herald Scotland website. And if you want depressing, this sentence takes some beating:
‘At the flagship Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York, more than 600 people queued to get a device that some were calling the “Jesus Phone”’
Jesus is right. Jesus H. Christ, are you serious? Without meaning to destroy these people’s tiny minds, you are queueing up for a mobile phone for crying out loud. It’s not the Ark of the Covenant, even if it is the best mobile phone ever to be released.
Or is it? Mere hours later, what’s this? Apple have put the antenna in the bottom left-hand side of the phone, meaning that if you do something like, oh, I don’t know… hold it up to your ear, your hand blocks the signal, you lose all the bars and your £650 iPhone 4 becomes…… the most expensive piece of plastic you’ve ever bought?
Yes. That’s exactly what it is. So Apple have, once again, proven that they are 100% interested in form over function. Style over substance. And you know the most frustrating thing about that? That’s why these cretins buy them time after time after time. That’s the reason. Not because Macs are better, and they crash less. That is the biggest lie Apple have ever perpetrated. I’ve used Macs against my will throughout my life in work and educational environments and I can safely say that Macs crash easily as often as PCs. There’s simply no debate about it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar. You might very well have a Mac that’s never crashed, but you know the last time my PC crashed? That’s right. Never. I’ve had my current PC for about three years now, and it has never suffered a fatal crash. Software crashes sometimes because I overload the processor, but that’s my fault. And you know what? That happens to Macs as well. And their processors aren’t usually half as powerful so what do you fucking expect.
I happen to own an iPhone 3G, which may seem strange considering my attitude. I decided it was time to get a smartphone seeing as my traditional, boring old “actual buttons” phone was looking a bit tired. I looked around at the options. HTC was a strong contender for a long time, but I started to hear things about them not working properly. The iPhone became an option, and as a direct upgrade as well – not tied in to one of these super-expensive contracts. I was offered my existing riotously-cheap deal but with a free iPhone 3G. I wanted to believe. I put my concerns and my instincts to one side.
Deal, I said, send me it over so I can start getting hold of some of these apps I keep hearing about. I’ve had it for about four months now, and you know what? It sucks. It doesn’t just suck a little bit, it sucks often and constantly. More often than not, when I try to unlock it, it hangs for a good 30 seconds before it kicks back into life. When I go down some stairs, all signal is lost. That could be my network so I’ll let that one go; but when I come back into an area that I know has good reception, my iPhone simply refuses to find the signal. It just sits there saying “No Service” despite me being in the centre of Edinburgh. Really no service? Or just no idea?
All too familiar for iPhone users?
Another thing it enjoys doing is taking about five minutes to reboot. Occasionally, seeing as my iPhone is almost permanently switched on, I decide to reboot it to give it a chance to take a breather. I’m a computer guy, I understand that rebooting is occasionally necessary to keep your hardware and software ticking over, and it’s good to reboot and reinstall things here and there in order to keep things running properly. Having said all that, I did a test last night: my PC restarts, boots back to Windows and I can be looking at my Facebook page faster than my iPhone 3G restarts. Seriously. It’s a motherfucking mobile phone. How long does it need to take? I’m not exaggerating here either – I wish I was. And don’t get me started on their computers.
The thing about Macs is that, for £1200, you can get the latest Apple MacBook Air. It’s underpowered, overpriced and extremely light on utilities compared to the equivalent PC. There’s absolutely no debate about it. You can buy the Mac mini from the Apple UK website for £649 – and that’s the starter price for what appears to be their cheapest hardware offering. Let’s have a little look at what you get for your hard-earned £649.
Apple Mac mini (basic)
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor 2.4GHz
320GB HDD
2GB RAM expandable to 8GB
8X DVD/RW Optical Drive
Various ports and things that you’d expect
Now this is just a base unit. It has no monitor, no keyboard or any other peripherals. That’s fine, I don’t need those. Let’s look at equivalent PC base units for the same price, shall we? Apple fanboys, look away now.
Well well well, would you look at that? By my reckoning, that’s… why, that’s almost EXACTLY TWICE AS POWERFUL IN EVERY WAY! And I’d like to add that I didn’t look these up before I started writing this blog. The first time I looked was at the end of the last paragraph, after I’d written “look away now”. You know how I could be so confident that I’d be right? Because everyone with a brain knows that Apple are ripping you off. You’re wasting your time and money buying products that are already obsolete by the time they are released. The Mac mini, at that spec, was “new” tech about five years ago. That’s not fucking new! It’s old news! So that brings me both on, and back, to the question: why the hell does anyone buy Apple products?!
Let’s look again at the marketing blurb Apple puts in front of its Mac mini.
“Introducing the new Mac mini. Redesigned in a very big way.”
“Way more than meets the eye. The sleek aluminium enclosure hides a powerful, full-size computer.”
Look at all of that. When does it first mention the actual computer, you know, the bit you’re really paying for? The very last word. The first two sentences are purely design-focused. They’re all about telling you how pretty their stuff is, and it baffles me how so many people buy it. It’s unbelievable. I realise that having nice, sleek, pretty products is awesome. If I could get a PC that was as pretty as a Mac, I would. Believe me. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the design. But the design IS NOT WHY YOU BUY A COMPUTER. It’s not a fucking vase or a painting. It’s a computer. It computes. That is what it is built to do.
Not with Apple though, you’re buying a brand and a lifestyle; oh the irony of that. My good friend Robert L. Barbour Esq. has put together an excellent Venn diagram to illustrate Apple’s positioning in the market.
So Apple’s “form over function” approach strikes again with the iPhone 4. I really hope one of the idiots who queued through the night to hand over £650 only to receive a piece of new technology that looks pretty but doesn’t make calls if you pick the sodding thing up is reading this blog. And I hope it makes you think about your life, because believe me – you’re wasting it.
Ever since going on an epic road trip halfway across Europe with my main men Ollie and Ed for the World Cup in Germany, 2006, I’ve been looking forward to it all coming around again.
And this was just the first night. Look out, rest of Germany!
While we were in Hanover drinking at an all-night bar – an evening that ended up with Ollie and I naked with only stolen balloons covering our modesty, photographic evidence on Facebook – we bumped into, among other people, a very friendly South African guy who ended up inviting us over to stay with him for the duration of the next tournament in 2010.
He wrote his phone number and other details on Ed’s shirt and made off into the night, and at the time we were all completely stoked that we’d managed to secure our accommodation for when we did it all over again in four years’ time.
The three of us said that if we saved £1 per day for the next four years we’d have more than enough money to take two weeks off, get flights to Johannesburg and experience the South African World Cup. It all seemed so possible at the time.
Sadly, we’re not going to the World Cup, though my excitement about the tournament hasn’t been dampened whatsoever. That road trip was epic, the tournament was spectacular and the holiday was one of the best times of my life. The excitement I’m feeling right now, with only a few hours until the first kick-off, is just as high as it was that evening we arrived in the World Cup campsite in Dortmund.
I haven’t seen much commentary on the internet about the World Cup (!) so allow me to project my opinion. I don’t think England will win it, and if they do it will be a huge upset. Don’t get me wrong, I desperately want England to do well, as I always do. And, I know that if it comes to the knockout stages and we end up at penalties – and statistically we’re likely to have to go through at least one penalty shootout if we’re going to get to the final – I’m going to be on the edge of my seat, heart in my mouth and teary-eyed when John Terry blazes one over the bar.
All too familiar for England fans. F*cking penalties!!
But I’m just as much looking forward to the opening games today as any of the England matches. I think the Euros in 2008 made me remember how much of a celebration football is, and the wonderment that comes along with major tournaments shouldn’t limit you to constantly talking about them in reference to your own national team.
Living in Scotland has also given me a great sense of perspective. Qualifying for major tournaments is more often than not a step beyond our neighbours to the north, but up here are some of the most knowledgeable and ardent football fans I’ve ever met. Their passion and commitment to the game is commendable and some of them have managed to convince me that North Korea vs Brazil could be the highlight of the tournament. I know I’m looking forward to it more than England vs Slovenia, anyway.
For make great glorious nation of North Korea!
So today is the day. This could be one of the best World Cups I’ve ever seen, and it promises to be eventful from start to finish. The weeks, months, years of waiting are finally over. Good luck South Africa – the eyes of the footballing world are upon you, and we’re bloody excited!
February is here already; it seems like January disappeared in a blur of singing and drinking. However after the January hangover came the sobering news that my Nan passed away on February 3rd after an extended hospital stay. She was 87 years old, which is an exceptional knock by all accounts. I don’t want to turn this into a depressing entry about the nature of life and death but I would like to quickly mention the things I remember about my Nan.
We hadn’t seen each other for quite a while; what with me living in Scotland these days I don’t get a chance to head down south very often, though that is just an excuse. It’s an unfortunate symptom of our family that many of us aren’t particularly close, and don’t talk to each other much – if it weren’t for Facebook I don’t think I would have contact with any of my cousins, which would be a desperate shame because they’re all such wonderful people. I’m rambling a bit here; the point is, I hadn’t seen Nan for at least 18 months mostly because since becoming an adult, we drifted apart in terms of contacting one another. So all my memories of her are from my childhood – though I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
I remember Nan’s house had a doorway from living room to kitchen, but no door – she always had those plastic streamer things hanging down from the frame. They used to keep me amused for hours when I was in my pre-teen years… misspent youth or what. I remember her dog, Cindy, who was apparently not a Great Dane according to my cousin Kate (thanks cuz!) but, either way, was much bigger than me. Like all kids, I used to want to ride Cindy and made several attempts to do so – usually being castigated by my mum, quite rightly, at every attempt. Cindy was a lovely old girl and I was sad when I heard she had passed away; I couldn’t imagine Nan without her.
I remember Nan always used to have doilies everywhere, even in places that didn’t require doilies. Then again, I suppose doilies don’t stick to the rules. They play their own game. I remember that she had a Pink Panther lamp that I was desperate to see in action, but always sat on a shelf out of my reach so I couldn’t even accidentally break it.
I remember she used to cook us roast dinners every now and then, but it was always her cakes that got me. Nan was never short of a cake. Whenever we went around to visit, it was the first thing she would do after we opened the door – would you like a piece of cake, Michael? Nan always, always used to make fruit cakes laced with raisins and sultanas – sometimes I’d suggest they were more sultana than cake. As as kid, if you’re given a free choice of cake, you’d never choose fruit cake. It seemed far too healthy and that’s-what-they-want-you-to-eat for me. I’d always eat Nan’s cake though, regardless, because I wanted her to think I liked it even when I wasn’t sure. Doesn’t sound like much, but that’s a pretty big sacrifice for a kid to make.
Ivy May Paul, 1922-2010, with my Uncle Chris. Sweet dreams Nan.
I’m planning on running a series of 10k, half and full marathons for Alzheimer’s charities this spring – Nan suffered with dementia at the end, and Alzheimer’s disease is something that’s sorely under-funded in the UK at the moment. Plus I’m going to the gym a lot more these days and trying to get myself into a nice shapely shape so everything falls together quite nicely. Details of my runs (so far!) are:
And so I return, rather sheepishly, to my own blog. I actually genuinely started this thing with the sole intention of using it to document my adventures to America, but sadly the reality was that there was very little internet out Californie way and I just didn’t get an opportunity. I was limited to scavenging wireless on my phone from coffee shops or hunting for an internet-enabled computer in our hotels. It was barbaric; you understand.
Yeah, that was the one.
I got back about a month ago and just haven’t been able to bring myself to write about it. Over the course of three weeks we literally did so much stuff that I wouldn’t even know how to write a blog entry that would justify it all. It would have to be a series of blogs that would stretch over a number of days, or weeks, and eventually would become entirely tedious – both to write and to read. So I’m not going to do that, but suffice to say, it was an immense time. The best thing about it can’t really be described in blog format, which was seeing Chris and Mia – tremendous people with a fantastic lifestyle who have genuinely changed the way I look at life. That sounds lame, but is true.
And I didn’t see Becks! If you’ve stayed with my adventures thus far, which would be impressive seeing as my last blog was in October, you’d know that the one thing I was looking forward to was seeing David Beckham in action for the LA Galaxy. Alas, there was a game, but I decided not to go – Kerstin offered to drive, but it was a 5-hour round trip through Los Angeles at night that I really didn’t fancy. Palm Springs drew me in and I didn’t want to leave – I never expected that to be the case, but it is. And it’s awesome!
Red Mist
So Ryan Giggs won Sports Personality of the Year 2009, and I have to say, I was surprised. Now before I go on, I want to put on record (internet) that I’m a massive, massive fan of Ryan Giggs. The guy is still a tremendous footballer, an ambassador for Manchester United and role model for professional footballers – and human beings at large – in general. At 36 he’s arguably as good now as he was ten years ago, albeit for different reasons, and the idea of playing for the same club for 20 years and maintaining a first team place for that entire time is almost unheard of. So, in short, there is no doubt that the man is a hero and a legend.
Sigh. Look how perfect he is. And Giggs is there too.
But is Giggsy really Sports Personality of the Year, or is this more of a career-achievement award dressed up as something else? I mean, Giggs is the most decorated footballer in the history of English football, so you can’t doubt how good he is or how deserving he is… of something. Some kind of personal achievement award, perhaps. And also, I don’t want to run down the list of other nominees and talk about how they deserved it more than Giggs based on what they’ve done in the last twelve months, but there’s no doubt that over the last year, Giggsy hasn’t personally achieved what some of the other nominees have.
Man Utd won the Carling Cup, the World Club Cup and the Premier League, plus got to the final of the Champions League last season. Was Giggs the driving force behind this success? You have to say, no, he wasn’t. I might only be looking at what happens on the field because I don’t know what happens off of it, but you have to say that Ronaldo, Rooney, Vidic, Ferdinand and Van Der Sar were the players that really made Man Utd successful last term. You can’t honestly say that Giggs was one of their top five players.
And this season, yes, Giggs has been playing well, but compare what he’s done to what Mark Cavendish has done in the last year, for example… read if you care to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Cavendish#2009
In short, Cavendish won a record nine Tour de France stages and is considered the fastest sprint cyclist in the world. This is a guy who is right up there on top of his chosen sport, taking on the best in the world and beating them. Can you really say that he shouldn’t be in with a better chance than Giggs? Hell, Cavendish didn’t even make the top three for SPOTY which I think is a real shame. I’m not a cycling fan, by the way – not by a long shot. I know nothing about it, however I think I can see when congratulations and recognition is in order and I think Mark has been hard done by.
Either way, well done Giggsy – you deserve something mate, even if it might not have been totally appropriate. The fact that he seemed genuinely shocked and embarrassed to be accepting the SPOTY award speaks volumes for the man – deep down, he probably knows it should have been someone else. Great guy, total hero.
...shit hair.
TTFN!
That’ll do for now. It’s time to go home and reflect on Ryan Giggs’ hairdo. I think we could all learn a thing or two.
It’s all fake. The matches are rigged. The acting is terrible. They’re just pretending to be hurt.
These are just some of the criticisms levelled at professional wrestling and the people who dare to mention being fans. It’s almost a taboo subject in some places; I’ve been verbally abused in the past for enjoying wrestling as if I’m some kind of drooling imbecile who really believes the big men are hurting each other, for cheering on one competitor over another despite the matches being fixed or for daring to stay up until 4am to watch the big pay-per-views a few times a year rather than simply going to bed like everyone else. I’m not saying there aren’t people out there covered in drool and repeatedly walking into the same bit of wall who really do believe that everything they’re seeing is “real”, but then again, how do you actually define “real”?
I bet that fire isn't even hot.
It’s easy to see why so many people in the world don’t like wrestling; or rather, I should say, who don’t like the idea of wrestling, because inevitably none of them have ever actually watched it or tried to enjoy it. They find it very difficult to grasp the concept of these men (and women, but let’s focus on the men for the sake of argument) dedicating their lives to sculpting their bodies to the point where Adonis would get a complex and learning intricate and complicated sets of fighting manoeuvres that are specifically designed not to cause any serious harm to the other guy but look like they are. Of course, the wrestlers themselves get paid pretty well; some of them earn millions of dollars a year doing what they do, so it’s easy to see where their motivation comes from. I don’t mean to say that they’re all in it for the money, but it must certainly be a perk.
However, I’m not here to discuss that. No, the reason for this post is to finally dispel the two wrestling myths that are: 1. Everything you see isn’t real, and therefore 2. Everyone who regularly watches it has got something wrong with them.
There’s no question that the wrestlers in a pro-wrestling ring aren’t trying to hurt or injure one another – they’re trying to help each other to make the moves look as devastating and painful as possible without actually causing too much harm. I use the words “too much” quite deliberately because, however you look at it, there’s no way for them to do some of the things they do without hurting themselves, even if – by wrestler standards – they’re not hurt too badly. A wrestling ring generally has one gigantic spring underneath it in the middle to both stop it from collapsing and to absorb some of the impact. This leads some people to think it’s like a trampoline, but naturally this isn’t the case. The tension of the spring is set so that it absorbs maximum impact without the wrestlers visibly bouncing around whenever they hit the mat; otherwise, a wrestling match would be akin to two grown men in their underpants gaying it up on a bouncy castle.
You be Spiderman. Now shoot your sticky goo in my face!
No, I can testify that a wrestling mat is hard. I had a friend at uni who was a pro-wrestler and I once did a spot of ring announcing for an event in Reading – I watched them set up and I spent a lot of time in the ring, and I can tell you, I wouldn’t want to be knocked over onto it, let alone picked up and forcibly driven into it back-first. One current WWE wrestler recently said that the impacts of a wrestling match are equivalent to being in a series of 20mph car crashes. Not necessarily serious by themselves, but if you’re doing that for hours at a time five days a week you’re eventually going to need to make a sheepish call to your insurance company.
However, despite probably being in the sort of pain that you or I would take a few minutes to recover from with, perhaps, a nice sit down, a cup of tea and a quick check on Google to assess the chances of fused vertebrae, wrestlers have to get right up and take the next hit. And the next, and the next, and so on, leaving them very little recovery time between each move they take or perform. So, in reality, a lot of the time wrestlers aren’t pretending to be hurt: they arehurt, but they’re pretending not to be. This is something that seems to totally escape most wrestling naysayers. There have been guys who have suffered broken bones, muscles and tendons completely torn away and even the humiliation of their pants slipping down halfway through a match but unfortunately for them, as we all know, this is a show. And the show must go on. It didn’t look very compelling at the time, but when Stone Cold Steve Austin had his neck broken halfway through a match and still finished it, I realised all this for myself.
Now obviously he was booked to win the match, hence the ridiculous-looking finish. But I think it kinda supports my argument in the most potentially paralysing way. The overarching point I’m trying to make is that, yes, the match outcomes are pre-determined. We all know this. We also know that the guys in the ring are trying to strike a balance between making their moves look dangerous while not totally incapacitating each other and, in fact, trying to protect one another at all times. However, to call this fake is just not fair – it’s incredibly skillful, and some of the wrestlers, both male and female, are among the best athletes I’ve ever seen. The people taking part are legitimately hurt quite a lot of the time and sometimes get hurt very seriously – they’re putting themselves in danger by getting in the ring, it’s not a picnic regardless of how much they try to avoid hurting each other. And, more to the point, it’s compelling; if you’re prepared to tune in long enough to appreciate some of the remarkable feats of strength, agility and balls that take place on a typical show (metal folding chairs and kendo sticks to the face fucking hurt, I don’t care what anyone says), it’s rippingly good fun to watch.
Oooh, stop it, it tickles!
And so we come on to the people who sit down and enjoy wrestling. Let’s assume that you’re on board with what I’ve said above, but now you’re asking about the often-absurd storylines, plot twists and characters that have more holes than a slice of swiss cheese that’s turned a shotgun on itself. Surely these are indefensible? Well, no. There’s a girl I used to work with who would scoff at me for being excited about the Royal Rumble but then spend the next half an hour talking about Eastenders as if it was really happening. For me, there’s very little difference in terms of what you’re doing when you sit down in front of these shows – you’re suspending disbelief, you’re investing yourself in the entertainment and you’re allowing yourself to be lost in another world for an hour or so. It’s escapism at its finest, and if you choose to read about things going on behind the scenes and then relate that back to what you’re seeing on the television, a whole new world of real-life interest opens itself up to you. Wrestling storylines are no different to or more ridiculous than soap opera storylines – they’re appropriate for the world that the scriptwriters create. If the doors of the Queen Vic burst open and Phil Mitchell strode in through a dry-ice cloud wearing a one-piece leotard to the tune of “Eye Of The Tiger”, people would be confused. And so it is the same with wrestling; the things that happen are appropriate to their surroundings and moreover, the people watching it come to expect a level of ridiculousness and are happy to just go with it. It’s fun. You should try it some time!
So my first proper blog is mostly to test out the limits of WordPress and to try to figure out all these little features and widgets and niggles and trinkets. However, seeing as I’m here, I might as well also use it to go on a bloody great rant about “Digital Britain” and its various spin-off issues, and how the people frequently speaking about it in the press are out-of-touch with the realities of the situation. I like to call them “berks”. It’s an under-used insult and one that I feel is nicely appropriate.
Not to be confused with this Berk, who I'm actually rather fond of.
Ostensibly the irritation that has prompted this post has been caused by an article on the BBC website today; a website and organisation that I’ve got a lot of time for, in all honesty. The BBC gets a lot of crap from a lot of commentators but when it comes to leading from the front, at least in a web 2.0 sense, they do a pretty bloody good job. BBC iPlayer is a tremendous addition to an already impressive website, and something that I appreciate being made readily available to me as a license-fee payer despite not having a TV aerial that works. I like being able to watch Top Gear at 11pm, on my computer, while simultaneously playing Football Manager and chatting to friends on Skype and MSN. It’s 2009; men can multi-task now, as long as it doesn’t require us to take our faces away from just the one screen.
However, some berks have today said that the corporation should start to charge for catch-up programming on iPlayer á la iTunes. Now, I realise that hundreds of post-Y2K products having a lower-case ‘i’ in front of them so that they sound more 21st Century is getting slightly confusing and that we also live in a world where making money is most people’s ultimate aim. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t trying to make as much money as possible at every opportunity possible while exerting the least effort possible, and these people are exactly the same. However, they seem to have not only missed the point entirely, but also I would suggest have totally made up some “research” to support their views.
Here is one berk...
Lorraine Heggessey, CEO of Talkback Thames (the illustrious company that brought us such “entertainment” gems as WAGs Boutique and Dale’s Supermarket Sweep) and Steve Hewlett, a man whose views I generally agree with despite him being associated with The Guardian but who has got it all wrong this time, both think that the rich, undertaxed general populous of Britain should be made to pay for catch-up online programming like that found on iPlayer.
The fundamental problem with this is that it’s not a viable way for them to make money – and let’s get this straight, they’re not thinking about the BBC’s revenues when they suggest that iPlayer should charge for shows. Heggessey in particular knows full well that her company can’t start trying to charge for catch-up programmes online if the BBC don’t set the precedent. Not that I can believe anyone would pay to see a repeat of Minder.
However along with some gems from Hewlett* comes some startling research from Fremantle Media, who are by complete coincidence the company that own Hennessey’s Talkback Thames. The research apparently concludes, and I quote,
“Research carried out by Fremantle suggests that people would be willing to pay up to £2 for certain shows.”
...and here's another
I’d be very keen to find out exactly who was asked and what questions were put to them for Fremantle to come up with this conclusion, because I reckon I could do a straw poll that would blow their research out of the water. My single question would be,
How much would you be prepared to pay to watch BBC TV shows online using iPlayer, bearing in mind that they are currently available online and on BBC television for absolutely nothing?
I’m pretty confident that everyone within a one hundred mile radius would come up with the same answer. The question isn’t what do you think a show is worth, rather, how much are you prepared to pay for them when your license fee means you’ve already paid to watch them on your television? It’s absurd. Some will argue that having catch-up TV still costs more than not, which I appreciate. However the BBC rakes in a good £3.4bn each year from license fees, so I think they can probably just about scrape the barrel. And, to be fair to the corporation, they have said in that same article that they have no plans to start charging for iPlayer content. Quite right too.
ITV aren’t complaining because they stick ads into their catch-up and live online streams, and for me this is the way for companies like Talkback Thames to make their money. By forcing people to start paying for programmes that they are currently getting for free they’re only going to succeed in alienating their online audiences in the pursuit of bottom-line – and this is the absolutely fundamental problem with all the people who are making these ridiculous suggestions about how to police or charge people when they’re using the internet. You can’t just cut people off for downloading things illegally because it’s not that simple, and you can’t just start making people pay for services that they’re currently getting for nothing because the very nature of the web means that there’s almost always some other means of acquiring the material you want. Web 2.0 or whatever you want to call it has so many opportunities for creative people to make money – depressingly, it appears that the people in the media industries that we have revered as being the height of creativity for so long are just as lazy and stupid as the rest of us.
Ooh! Ooh! I've thought an ideas!
The other thing of course is that there’s no sign that catch-up shows being made available online for free is damaging anyone’s revenues; all that’s happening is that some people who don’t think they’ve quite got enough money already have spotted an opportunity to try to squeeze a bit more out of the resources they have available. What they don’t seem to realise is that they’re not ripping off Generation X or the baby boomers any more: they’re dealing with Generation Y here, and we know far more about all this than they do.
*Gems from Hewlett include: “At iTunes prices, I would pay” and “The BBC never thought it was appropriate to give away DVDs, so why should catch-up be free?” Well, perhaps because DVDs cost money to manufacture, burn, package and distribute you cretin?
Hello internet. I thought I should introduce myself properly… I’ve spent so much time looking at you over the years but have never plucked up the courage to really say anything. So this is it, I hope I get it right…
Will you go down on me? Oh, no, I mean go out with me! Shit.
Well that’s that fucked already. It’s only uphill from here.
Hello internet. I thought I should introduce myself properly… I’ve spent so much time looking at you over the years but have never plucked up the courage to really say anything. So this is it, I hope I get it right…
Will you go down on me? Oh, no, I mean go out with me! Shit.
Well that’s that fucked already. It’s only uphill from here.
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