X Factor final

I'm not going to write loads about this, because I'm sure everyone has pretty much had enough of X Factor by now. I like watching the show myself, but after 3 or 4 months of it I do start think "God can please have my Saturday nights back now?"

But anyway, little Joe won in the end and I'm really pleased. Although I said I didn't mind really which finalist one, Olly was always my least favourite, so once Stacey was out it had to be Joe for me really. I don't know quite what he'll be like in terms of longevity, as boys do really struggle to find a place in the charts I think, and I'm not totally sure what market he's pitching himself at. If he goes for the mums like most X Factor boys do (Leon, Rhydian etc) then he'll probably flop after a few months. A much better long-term prospect would be to go for the Will Young section of the market: girls, gay boys and a few Mums too. It won't really be up to him though unfortunately, as the record label will just do whatever they think is most likely to earn them their money back in the short term, in the full knowledge that they'll have another X Factor winner in a year so it doesn't matter if he doesn't last longer than that.

I kind of feel that he might rather have a career on stage instead of as a pop singer anyway - he's got a very stagey voice and it seemed to be what interested him before he was on the show. Which is fine, Diana Vickers is apparently doing quite well on stage now, so if he does end up doing that then good for him.

The thing I'm most pleased about is that neither Danyl nor Jedward came even close to winning; beyond that I wasn't that bothered. Danyl was just too much of a wanky twat, and Jedward made me feel physically sick. They've released the voting statistics now (available on Wikipedia) and at times it was a bit touch and go, particularly Week 9 when Danyl got eliminated. Joe was never in doubt by that stage though so it wouldn't have made that much difference. And I'm quite pleased that my assertion that no one who is ever in the bottom two can go on to win was proven correct again.

So anyway, that was the X Factor for another year. I'm not that impressed by the single they've chosen, and I think it's stupid that they pick the single and whoever wins has to sing it regardless of whether it suits them, but I don't think they're likely to change that. I've heard rumours that Dannii might leave and be replaced by Melanie B from the Spice Girls, which would be a shame as she's a good judge. They should get rid of Louis if they're going to get rid of anyone.

I think Joe should have released that Journey song he sang as it suited him much better. Maybe he'll release that as a follow-up single or something.

Oo and I nearly forgot - Robbie Williams mucked up his own song!!! I was delighted, and had to rewind it and watch it again so I could enjoy it's full glory. He looked like he was going to cry as he thought "shit, this was my chance to make up for my first crappy X Factor performance, and I've fucked my lyrics up and now look like a dick". Olly should have refused to have him for his duet, if anything was going to be a drain on your votes it'd be performing with that fat faced drug-addled potatoman.

My favourite moments of the whole series though had nothing to do with the final, and everything to do with televised falling over humiliation. First was the majesty of Rachel Adedeji sucking carpet in front of Dannii Minogue:

And then there was the beautiful moment when one of John and Edward fluffed their big entrance with a humiliating slip/trip while bursting through a paper screen. Only a full fall involving the loss of teeth could have made it any better:

They're performing at Revenge this Friday, apparently. Maybe I'll go so I can shout "Enjoy your trip six weeks ago?" and then feel very very witty.

See you next year for more televised karaoke and premium rate phone voting fun.

Yummy Tin Drummy

I had my office Christmas meal yesterday at the Tin Drum in Kemp Town. I know some of the people I work with didn't enjoy their food quite as much as me, but I thought all the things I had were really good and quite posh, so I took photos of them for you:

This was my starter, which was a squash, rosemary and parmesan tart with a pomegranate dressing. It was very nice.

This was my main course of pheasant with a port and damson jus on a mustard pommery mash. I've never had pheasant before, and I really liked half of it (the confit leg bit which tasted like crispy duck) but wasn't quite so keen on the breast bit which was a bit tough. I've never been a breast man though. The sauce (sorry,'jus') was yummy and all fruity.

This was my gorgeous dessert: hot chocolate fudge cake with vanilla ice cream. It was really nice, all gooey, and very very rich. Like a little block of pure calories really. I couldn't finish it, but enjoyed it nonetheless.

And then I had tea with a cute little mince pie with a star shape on it.

And the best part is I didn't pay for ANYTHING! Hahahahaha! Work pays for our Christmas meal here, which I've always thought is great, and it means everybody goes rather than some people saying they can't afford it or just can't be bothered. Even the wine was thrown in!

I'm not hungover at all today, which is quite good I suppose. Some of us went for drinks after the meal, but as we'd started drinking at 1pm we disbanded by 9, so I was still home in plenty of time to sober up before bed. I hadn't realised that there would be no senior staff at all in the office this morning, so I could have got away with being hungover if necessary, but I'm not going to try to get hungover just for the sake of it.

And now it's only a couple of weeks left until Christmas, yay! We've still got our Office Christmas Party to come (actually in the office this time, rather than out of it. I don't know why we have two events here), so that will be my next thing to look forward to next week. I'm feeling very festive now and just want to finish work for Christmas and go home - I can't be bothered to spend nine more days sat in this wheely chair doing not very much.

The rise of the blockbuster

I really enjoyed an article from the Economist this week, on the place of blockbusters in modern culture. I've found myself saying quite often over the last few years that everything is a smash these days, and everything that gets released seems to be biggest selling blah ever. The article, called A world of hits, dealt with the same sort of thing, but in the context of 'we have more choice than ever before, so why does that mean even fewer things than ever before become big hits?'

I'll use the term blockbuster quite broadly here even though that only normally applies to films, but really I'm talking about all kinds of media - be it the biggest selling film, or album, or book, or even newspaper.

Basically, the article argues that as the internet grew, people thought our new-found access to a broader range of products would encourage a vastly more diverse market, full of lots and lots of different things all selling moderately well. In fact, what we've ended up with is a market where a very small number of blockbusters account for the vast majority of sales, niche markets at the other end of the scale account for the rest, and all the stuff in the middle loses out. You either have to be a hit, or a niche, or you'll sell hardly anything.

One of the reasons for this is that people like to have something to talk about with their friends. If you all consume the same things, that's much easier, and that in itself encourages us to buy the same things as other people, creating a cycle of popularity. Or if you're part of a clique that enjoys a little-known band or author, you can discuss that band or author with other passionate fans and derive just as much pleasure, even though overall it's not a big seller. But if a product is neither a big seller, nor attracts a devoted niche market, it flops because no one cares.

At the same time though, we end up with blockbusters not necessarily being the best things that are available, but still being the most popular with the masses and receiving the best reviews from the public. That's because a disproportionate share of the audience is made up of people who consume few products of that type - e.g. people who go to see the latest big releases but don't watch smaller films - and they're therefore not that discerning. Those products get an easier ride with the public because the audience isn't informed enough to criticise. If you ask an American who has only read one book this year, the article says, it is highly likely it was The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, and he probably loved it.

Niche products, on the other hand, tend to be consumed by people who read more, or listen to more music, or see more films, and those people are therefore more critical in general and more difficult to please.

In short, blockbusters don't have to be very good, as they get buoyed up by a wave of ill-informed goodwill, while niche products have to work very hard to get a similar level of approval from their audience.

We end up with the market we've got today, where it is only worthwhile for a media company to push the few things that they anticipate will be big hits. Small fry get left out, because while they may surprise everyone and do really well, they won't reliably do so, making them an uncertain investment. It's a bit sad really, as consumers will miss out on some of the very best things in favour of the 'popular', and it will continue to be that way because that's what we buy.

It's no wonder independent films or new authors struggle so much; you can't just be quite good any more. You have to be exceptional, or be accessible, not necessarily that good, but get lucky and be 'the next big thing', and you can enjoy massive self-fulfilling popularity for no good reason (yes I'm looking at you, JK Rowling, you talentless bint).

So anyway, I thought it was an excellent article, and it's one of the reasons I highly recommend reading the Economist to anyone who'll listen.

Twinkling lights and celebrities

Last Friday we had the first annual Switching On Of The Christmas Lights on my road. Even though it may very well end up being the last one too, I still found it terribly exciting, not least because of the multitude of A List celebrities it attracted!

I should point out that I do not live on a main road, or in a town centre, so the very fact that we had Christmas lights of our own was slightly unexpected. Some of the shop keepers just got together and organised it, and one of them bought the Christmas lights from an entire town, or so we were told. I was therefore expecting a blaze of fluorescence up and down the street that could be seen from space, and was slightly disappointed that it ended up just being a few things on lamp posts.

Anyway, when it was initially advertised, we were told that Emma Chawner, a failed X Factor entrant and local lass, had been lined up for the grand switching on ceremony. In case you don't know who she is, behold:

She didn't get very far on the X Factor, even when she came back to sing a duet with her sister the next year.

Unfortunately, some of the road's shop keepers felt she would lower the tone somewhat and make it into a less believable event. They obviously weren't concerned with the hilarity aspect, or that Christmas is quite camp anyway and you don't get camper than a fat cavegirl in a home-made dress.

So they ditched Emma Chawner, and I was disappointed.

Instead though, we were upgraded to:

Annabel Giles, who performed no real function at the event other than lending it a BBC-level of classiness,

and

Michelle Collins! Yes, Cindy Beale turned on our Christmas lights! She was very gracious, and seemed to know a couple of people from our road. One of them was kind enough to collar her and ask if Chris could have her photo taken with her, and it was very weird to hear Cindy Beale's voice go "Yes of course. Chris! Chris!" and call him over.

I can see why she was more classy than the dumpy girl, but she was less hilarious. I was also very suspicious that there was no actual wiring involved in her 'switching on' the lights, she just did a count down, then sort of moved her arm. A couple of the lamp post lights came on, and then a man in a fluorescent jacket ambled down the road switching each one on one by one. But you can't have everything, we had LIGHTS and it was fab.

Oo yes, and I almost forgot, we had Santa!

So hurrah for living on the campest road in the campest part of Brighton.

Here's me looking Christmassy:

And then the next day, as if all that weren't enough, I saw Gok Wan in a jewellery shop in the lanes. It was an all-out celebrity overload. Oddly, he was wearing the same outfit he always wears on television, leading me to think he only actually owns one set of clothes. Presumably he stands naked in the kitchen while he washes them in the sink.

Anyway, I'm feeling all Christmassy now and can look forward to seeing twinkling lights every time I walk up my road from now until, erm, Christmas. Ho ho ho!

Cold dead eyes

I feel like I haven't been blogging so much lately about things that are actually going on in my life. That's partly because I haven't been doing that many things out of the ordinary, and partly because my Mum hasn't been quite as mental as usual. She's still mental of course, and she has her moments, but nothing has caused her to have a major freakout for a little while.

So rather than write another review of something I've seen on the television, I thought I'd write a little bit about one of the places I went to while on holiday in Gran Canaria instead. I don't know how it managed to slip my mind in my original post about our holiday - perhaps it didn't slip it at all, and just buried itself as deeply as possible in my brain, hoping never to be recalled.

The place was called the Basement Club, and it's a sex club. It's more than that actually, it's a whole sex resort accommodation thing, much like the set of bungalows we stayed at but with a rather different 'anything goes' kind of ethos. You can spend your whole holiday staying there if you want to.

It wasn't my idea to go to the Basement Club (I know you won't believe me), but it was our first night there and one of the staff of Club Mancha was out with us and offered to show us some places we hadn't been before. I should have realised at that point that there was probably a very good reason why we hadn't been to them before, but alas the considerable amounts of vodka I was pouring down my face and the 13 hours travelling that day impaired my judgement.

I've been in darkrooms before, lots of bars and clubs in Gran Canaria have them, and although they're not really my thing they're usually OK for a quick skirt round and then escape into the bar area trying not to laugh while hissing to your friends "Oh my god, did you see what that man was doing to that other man? He looked like my Dad!"

So when the Club Mancha man said they were having a sex party at the Basement Club that night and did we want to pop in there "just for a quick drink to see", I thought it couldn't be that bad, it's nothing I haven't seen before.

Actually yes it was that bad, and not for the reasons I was expecting. First of all, I think 'sex party' was a rather grand term for what it actually was. I was expecting some kind of porno-esque scene replete with tanned bodies and funky guitar music in the background. In fact, what I got was a group of about a dozen men, mostly in leather kilts and waistcoats, standing around a pool and bar area and not talking to each other. None of them were my type at all, but as they were all of a similar look I suppose they might have been each others' types, so... good for them I suppose. There was high energy club music playing, and a definite feeling of "is this a sex party? are we meant to be having sex? well I'm not starting, someone else can start, I'm going to stand here and wait."

It reeked in there despite being outdoors, possibly the result of a previous sex party or some problem with their drains, and was pretty much one of the least sexy places I've ever been. And the men, oh the men. They just looked so SAD. Not sad as in trainspotting sad, sad as in unhappy. They had lifeless dead zombie eyes that roamed around looking for some sort of connection with another person and not finding any. And if they weren't sad they looked angry, although that might not have been helped by me and my friends standing in the middle talking and laughing and generally not taking the this-is-meant-to-be-sexy thing very seriously.

In the end two men shuffled close enough together that each took it as sign the other may be vaguely interested in them, and they started doing something in the corner. The other kilties were inexorably drawn over like moths to a physical affection flame and decided to cluster around them in silence, and that was when we decided we'd had enough and wanted to go.

It was all so serious, and moody, and angry, and silent. I thought sex was supposed to be fun, and you might even be able to laugh at times during it (although laughing at the moment your partner drops his trousers is possibly not helpful). I couldn't see anything to enjoy there at all, and even though I felt maybe it's just not my thing, none of the other men seemed to be enjoying themselves either.

I don't know, maybe I missed the point or something, but it left me feeling rather sorry for them. I know that's hideously patronising, and I don't really mean it quite like that, but if they look that angry and sad when they're having fun, fuck knows what they look like the rest of the time.

It was an experience anyway. Not one I'd repeat in a hurry, but an experience nonetheless. Am I being terribly narrow-minded? I don't think I am really, most narrow-minded people don't tend to go into sex clubs in the first place. And I don't mind if that's what the people in there want to do, that's up to them. They weren't hurting anyone. They had a rack thing you could tie someone up on if you wanted, I suppose you could hurt someone on that, but I'm almost certain that's normally used in consensual circumstances. I'd be interested to know what their clients get from it anyway, because all it really gave me was the feeling I needed to take a shower.

Changeling - excellent film, stupid title

I watched a film called Changeling last night, on rental from LoveFilm, and I have to say that it was GREAT. It was so much better than I was expecting, and in actual fact it was nothing like the film that I thought it was.

The one-line description on LoveFilm read: "A mother's prayer for her kidnapped son to return home is answered, though it doesn't take long for her to suspect the boy who comes back is not hers." Based on that, and on the fact that it is called Changeling, I got it into my head that the boy who returns to her is not only not her son, but is actually not a boy at all, and is probably an alien or a demon or something like that. So I was expecting a thriller or a horror.

I could not have been more wrong, and I'm blaming it largely on the title which is thoroughly inappropriate for the film. Yes the boy is not hers, but the film isn't about that specifically, it's about the mother's struggle to convince a powerful and belligerent police force that he's not her son, and to find out what has really happened to him.

I'm not going to say much more because I don't want to spoil it, but it's a great story, even if that short description of it makes it sound like it'll be boring. Angelina Jolie is excellent in it, and I actually didn't realise it was her until about halfway through. I always quite like that from an actor - where the first thing you think isn't "Oh that's Angelina Jolie", because you're solely concerned with the character they're playing and not the fact that they're famous. Reese Witherspoon and Hilary Swank both wanted the role apparently, but didn't get it.

It's even more gripping to watch when you know that it's based on a true story, with very few of the details changed. The plot doesn't actually need much spicing up for the big screen, it's all there already, and knowing that it's true is fairly horrifying. It was nominated for three Oscars, and even though it failed to win any I'm surprised I didn't know more about it.

I thoroughly recommend it if you haven't seen it. Yes it's written by the man who wrote Babylon 5, and yes it's called Changeling, but ignore those two things - they're a distraction and they don't tell you anything about what this film is going to be like. It's very rare that I finish a film and think "Wow, that was really good", but I found Changeling really exceptional.

Trinity and the old bait-and-switch

A while ago I blogged about the new ITV2 series Trinity and its nudity-laden first episode. The series finished last night, with a sort of semi-cliffhanger 'will we get renewed for a second series?' finale.

Overall, the series was fine, and was reasonably entertaining. It was rather confused and muddled about what genre it was hoping to be, because it seemed to veer wildly from racy romp, to teen drama, to thriller, to comic sci fi. At times it was fairly gory (including someone blowing their own brains out with a big red splatter last night), and at times it was farcical and ridiculous (particularly the comic relief 'fools' characters, who added nothing to the series except a bit of padding).

Christian Cooke was alriiiight in it, once you got used to his dodgy posh accent. His character even gained some depth, as he became more vulnerable later in the series. And the hammy characters managed to settle down a bit after the first couple of episodes, so it was fine really. I even got quite into the story.

It has to be said though that they used a blatant nudity bait-and-switch to hook you in during the first episode, in much the same way that Queer As Folk did years ago. There was LOTS of sex and nudity in the first episode, Christian Cooke was barely clothed for most of it, and then there was pretty much nothing of the kind for the rest of the series. It was quite annoying to tune in dutifully each week in the hopes of seeing him nekkid again, only to be completely unrewarded. I think they owed us faithful and pervy viewers a bit more than that, and he should have at least done a shower scene halfway through the series or something.

Apparently there is a DVD boxset of it coming out. I won't be buying it of course, it wasn't that good, but I hope they do get a second series. They left a lot of stuff open for further explanation at the end, and so it will be frustrating if they don't. Like the whole Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles debacle, which had JUST got good when they suddenly cancelled it. Network executives are idiots.