Magnum

This sounds like a perfect outlet for my newly formed theory that Harry Styles is like a police composite sketch comprised of all the most punchable qualities in a face.

It's always amazed me how popular Dusty Rhodes was back in the day. I was watching the Ric Flair documentary DVD from the set they released a few years ago, and there was a bit on there where Flair talks about the territories and what a star Dusty was. Cut to two clips of Big Dust in the ring, completing a couple of big elbows before doing the fruitiest little dances known to man. Even by wrestling standards, a 40-year old bloke with bleached hair and a belly the size of the moon in tiny pants doing funny camp wiggles looks a bit strange, even more so in 1970s Hicksville, Florida.

I'm sure he had some decent matches back in the day, and he was a good promo, but fuck me, he looked like across between Big Dick Johnson, a Benny Hill character and something from a Tango advert.

They should change up the programme so that Fit but Thick fucks all manner of handsome arseholes in the next room to Nerd as he cries into his pillow due to his unrequited love and holding on to any chance of a relationship which we know he'll never get.

 

This post is more entertaining than The Big Bang Theory has ever been or ever will be.

Indeed. Somebody needs to make that show. And to kill Chuck Lorre so there's room in the schedules to screen it.

Also, how can you like Leonard as a loveable loser character when all he does is fuck very sexy women?

It's incredible in a character who talks and dresses like a paedophile, isn't it?

After a couple of series in the 'just the right side of shit' category, I find The Big Bang Theory too excruciating to watch these days. It's one of those shows that's too popular for its own good, in that its outlived the limited shelf-life of its original gimmick - unlikely will they/won't they relationship between nerd and fit-but-thick girl - and overshot the boundaries of suspending disbelief by, as you say, turning the 'lovable loser' into an unlikely lothario. Even legitimately good shows like Frasier and Friends struggled to maintain the momentum when the nerdy camp bloke actually got what he wanted, so BBT had no chance of pulling it off. Penny started off the series apparently shagging a string of catalogue models, but somehow got to the point where she was desperate enough to shag not just one socially-retarded ugly dwarf, but two. It doesn't help either that all of the supporting cast are cunts as well. Like Bannatyne or the bloke who played Niles, I'm out.

I believe this is the time frame that Corden admits he was a bit of a knob with a massive ego because of everything that was going on. He managed to come back from being a dickhead at least.

He did?

I was most pleased to see Glen was still in it. Probably my favourite Thick of It character, his henpecked outbursts are hilarious (especially throwing bits of paper around his desk at the end of the christmas special). It's brilliantly written, and always has been, dating back to the Langham episodes - which are, controversially, still my favourite of the lot.

I think between them, downloads and the X-Factor have really killed the music charts. Just so I'm not misunderstood, I'm not doing a 'down with this sort of thing' rant about Simon Cowell totally ruining British music, though I do hate him for killing the Christmas #1. I'm talking about the actual charts themselves. When I was younger I used to get a weird pleasure from watching a song I liked climb up the charts (though, with the songs I liked, that hardly ever happened), and even more so when records or bands I liked hit #1. Even today, I occasionally like looking back through online archives of music charts to remind me what was tearing up the radio and the nightclubs when I was in my teens.

Charts just seem mad and all over the place now, though. Even at the best of times, you might have 3 or 4 Adele songs stinking up the top 100, and I especially hate that thing with downloads where some fucker dies and then you have their songs taking up half of the top 20. At least back when Freddie died we did it properly and waited for them to re-release Bohemian Rhadsody.

The board is undoubtedly better for the lack of an X-Factor thread this year, but I've just seen my first bit of this year's series earlier tonight. Apparently they've decided the way to make up for last year's flop is to go in exactly the same direction and put through some cunt who's exactly the same person (down to the fucking leggings and shit singing voice) as Frankie Cocozza. Yeah, I've seen all I want to see of this series.

I fancied Ireland earlier in the week, but didn't want to touch them once that starting lineup had been announced. Pub players throughout the team.

Anyone got any tips for the weekend? It's hard to find much value on the football coupons during the international break if you're not seriously into your foreign footy.

This discussion of the Bossman got me thinking about that old Wrestlecrap clip of him as the Guardian Angel, where he says 'the referee wasn't even supposed to be in the RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!' in full-on Clay Davis style. Used to piss myself laughing every time I heard it, but it's not on the Wrestlecrap site these days. Does anyone know where I can find it?

I think they will get a second term to be honest. Has Labour done enough to provide an alternative? I don't think so.

To be honest though, the tories didn't do a whole lot of that to get in in the first place. A lot of what brought them to power in the absence of actual policies was the rhetoric of 'well, they can't be any worse than the last lot'. As they've now proven to be complete shit themselves, I don't think Labour will really need to provide that much of an alternative to get in. Elections these days seem to be like when your football team has a bad run - get rid of the useless knacker in charge first, ask questions about his replacement later.

For the record though, I think it might well end up being a Labour/Lib coalition.

So, in the aftermath of this cabinet re-shuffle and nearly midway through their term, does anybody see the tories turning things around enough in the next couple of years to get a second term? I know there's always a chance and two years is a long time, but I can't see it personally. Osborne is a fucking disaster, and to me Cameron's best chance of sneaking another win would have been throwing him overboard this week. As that hasn't happened, I can't tentatively see them pulling out anything positive enough to defend their record with in 2015.

Good Cop was great. What I liked about the performance of Graham and his crew was that there was nothing redeeming about them. Even the most brutal villains can sometimes stir mixed loyalties in a Tony Montana/De Niro in Heat kind of way, but Graham and the writers made his character into such an oily, thoroughly dislikable cunt without turning into a pantomime villain or detracting from the charisma of the performance.

Man, that's disappointing if true. The WWE will use them as a tag team, I'd imagine, and WWE's tag division is laughable.

Aye, it would be an utter waste. The Dudleys were a stale act in WWE in 2004, and I can't see much value in their act beyond the initial nostalgia pop, especially with most of the 'hardcore' aspect taken out in PG-era WWE. Seeing Bully Ray back going through the motions in the Dudleys after he's developed so much as a character in the last year would be a real shame, and you just know he'll get hardly any time on the mic.

Watched the first episode of the new Inspector George Gently series on catch up last night. It can be a bit hit and miss and heavy handed in driving home the politics, but I always like seeing the north east on film in anything that's not Vera or Byker Grove. I thought this was one of the better episodes and featured some good actors alongside Martin Shaw for a change, including Leonora Crichlow (who I thought accomplished the rare feet of affecting a geordie accent that didn't sound Welsh or Pakistani, after some terrible attempts by actors in the last series) and Eammon Fucking Walker. I actually did some extra work for one of the episodes later in the series, but now I'm gutted that I wasn't on the set with Karim Said

Galloway goes from strength to strength

The problem here is that Galloway could get away with stuff like that when he wasn't actively involved in politics or representing a constituency. A lot of his shit in the past has flown under the radar, so to speak.

 

That obviously isn't the case now.

Aye. I have to say I've always found Galloway entertaining as a voice from the margins who actually can express himself effectively against the oily PR merchants (key word here being 'can', though not always 'does'), but politicians generally have to be seen to be beyond reproach in their public conduct while 'on the job', so to speak - Twitter in particular is a minefield. The other year, one of our local councillors - a tory, needless to say - got in hot water for calling David Milliband 'a twat' on Twitter. Within a week, he had outed himself in the local paper as an alcoholic, been sacked from the Tory party, and launched a massive unprovoked attack on striking teachers and the Jarrow marchers in the same letter. Someone not in a position of civic responsibility might well have called him a 'window licker'...

I'd say a big part of the problem as regards applying this in the UK is that the idea of a man or woman getting absolutely blotto and ending up in bed (or more likely, a back alley) with another drunken stranger they've just met seems to be ingrained into our culture - in many cases, it's the first courtship ritual young people here learn. The nightclub industry thrives on it, and the Magaluf/Kavos/generic horrible 18-30 type resort holiday industry is built on it, not to mention the way drunken young women having sex with predatory men is typically portrayed as comedic in 'constructed reality' shows such as Geordie Shore. I agree with everyone who's said that there needs to be a sensible debate on this issue, but there are also whole aspects of the culture - not least the media - that need to change if the idea of verbally asking for explicit consent before sex is to become the norm.

That lad who wanted to stake out his hotel room for an autograph will be fucking gutted.

I don't know enough about Julian Assange personally to make a judgement about his character one way or the other, so I'm certainly no defender of his. However, Galloway has said that the woman in question went on to have several subsequent dates with Assange AFTER the alleged rape took place. If true, that casts significant doubt on the allegations for me. I could see a woman in an abusive relationship doing this after a traumatic incident, but not somebody in what appears to have been a casual fling.

For anyone interested, Galloway has just tweeted a link to this Australian documentary on the case. Not sure if it's convincing or any good as haven't had chance to watch it yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDaUGB3sjbs

Soccer AM: Tubes doing the same old "You're a top man, blah blah blah" act for ANOTHER season?!

 

Its embarrassing stuff truly. Bunch of tv producers acting like they're still in their 20s, injokes, stupid catchphrases and nowhere near as funny as it once was.

It's fucking desperate now, and has been since at least Andy Golstein's year on the job. Tubes and Rocket are an embarrassment, and the whole mid-90s feel of the humour is very dated. I wish they'd move away from the format and try something different. Either throw money at Danny Baker to come and save it, or try and persuade Jeff Stelling to get up early on a saturday.

Ive been making my way through Seinfeld, and have gotten into a pattern of watching an episode every night. Im up to the middle of Season 8. After running for so many seasons, I was expecting a decline in quality, but its still as good as ever. They could have become complacent, but they havent. For example, one of the early episodes of S8 referenced the ugly baby from Season 4/5 (cant remember exactly). It was pretty much a minor part of the episode, but just shows the effort they were still putting in. Episodes like the bizaro world one, and the movie pirating one are as good as any.

No hugging, no learning.

I maintain that the biggest killer of great sitcoms is writers who suddenly decide they want to write a romance or a soap opera instead of a comedy show.

Did anyone see the doco the other night on Channel 4:

 

"The Girl Who Became 3 Boys"

 

Not the greatest of docos I have seen but a very interesting subject matter. The only thing that I cam away from it thinking was "How thick were the two girls in the doco". I won't spoil it if anyone is going to watch it but even though it is a true story the way it unfolds seems unreal.

I didn't watch it, but remember reading about the story in the news when it first broke. My opinion is that cases like this are a natural consequence of girlymen like Bieber and Harry Styles being promoted as acceptable sex symbols by the media. Weak, underfed shrimps like these jokers shouldn't be endorsed or looked up to, they should be roundly mocked and shoved into gym lockers American teen comedy-style until they prove they can grow chest hair or drink a full pint of bitter.

Really enjoying Line of Duty on BBC 2.

 

Anyone watching ?

Yes. I fucking hate that little scrote kid on the bike. I hope they find some way to have one of the more morally dubious characters cave his head in in the last episode tonight.