2000 and Gr8.

Excess, turkey deaths, champagne, annoying relatives, relatives you like, shit presents, good presents, presents that are funny for like 10 seconds until you realise you could have just got an iTunes voucher, alcohol, awesome movies like miracle on 34th street, terrible films with vince vaughan.

All the lovely things that spring to mind when I think of Christmas. Oh and Jesus' birthday, but the less said about that the better.

Anyway, I know everyone is doing the whole '2008 in lists' 'best of 2008' thang but I feel like being indulgent so I'm doing one too. Switch off if you wish.

I have chosen to call it:

"2008: A Brief Appraisal - Beating the crunch"

MUSICA

My 8 favourite (using two or so words to sum up the brilliance of each) albums of 2008 were:

These New Puritans - Beat Pyramid

*Phenomenology

Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Flight

* Brilliantly Scottish

Foals - Antidotes

* Andy ROddick

Johnny Flynn - A Larum

*Dickensian Adventures

Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst

*Wilburys Revisited

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

*Graceland but better

Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now...

*Tweexcore lives

Lykke Li - Youth Novels

*Sexually Provocative

TNP probably leads that field with Frightened Rabbit a close second. Two amazingly different albums.

And my mixtape of 2008...
[I've tried to make it all illegally downloadable but I'm rubbish at that garb so we'll see if it works]

DISCLAIMER: Not all these songs were released in 2008 so don't cry. Also I made this in like 5 mins so don't beat me up neither. I couldn't be bovved to order it properly so it will sound all out of place in places. But do listen loser heads.

1. Melodies & Desires - Lykke Li
2. Andy Warhol - David Bowie
3. The Modern Leper - Frightened Rabbit
4. Eyes Wide Terrified - Johnny Foreigner
5. Line In The Sand - Q & Not U
6. 99 Luft Balloons - Jay Zena
7. Palmitos Park - EL Guincho
8. Leggy Blonde - Flight of The Conchords
9. No Pussy Blues - Grinderman
10. Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror - Jeffrey Lewis
11. Evidently Chickentown - John Cooper Clarke
12. Black Balloon - The Kills
13. Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks - Los Campesinos!
14. Lamb & Lion - The Mae Shi
15. Numerology (AKA Numbers) - These New Puritans
16. Teen Creeps - No Age
17. Get Close - Plastic Little
18. William, It was Really Nothing - The Smiths
19.Dancing Choose - TV On The Radio
20. 2080 - Yeasayer
21. It Could Have Been A Brilliant Career - Belle & Sebastien
22. Let's Not SHit Ourselves (To Love and Be Loved) - Bright Eyes

God that was awful, standards are slipping.

I'm so tired after all that and it wasn't even rewarding. It's the worst written post of my short and unsuccesful career.

Anyway, we'll call this part one. Part 2 tomorrow, with better more interesting content like the credit crunch and Barack Obama and Spooks.

Lovex

Geography

I'm coming out with it, I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY.

However....

It don't matter (has The Rock a.k.a 'Dwyne Johnson' ever spoke truer).

I thought though that I would update the wicked few. I've missed you (me speaking to Blogspot).

I'm back from the 'ol (arguably gay... [more on that later]/ cruise.

And ready to rock the party. Here's what I have before the new year....


1 End of Year Best of Extended Mixtape [anyone who can tell me how to load this to some sort of sharing/downloading site i will felaiche/thank provusively if male]

2 Anectodes

3 News round up (not ina "barack got elcted, credit crunch kind of way")

More I promise....



Has anyone EVER promised more?????

Dropping off the Radar...

Yo.

So I'm going on holiday today. I'll be in Miami in 10 hours. As awesome as this is for me I know you're all going to miss my inquisitive thoughts and cutting rhetoric. So, in the meantime...

Follow this...

http://goodstuffoffthecuffallthetime.blogspot.com/

Listen to this (real loud)...



Get in the mood for this...



And someone design Charlie and I a flyer for a clubnight called Heartbeats. We'll kiss you in a special place if you do...

Keep it real. I'll bring you back some presents but they'll be rubbish because the exchange rate is WANK.
x

Chi City.

P.S Get well Adam

Blehhhhhhh...

I'm sorry I'm shit. Whenever I think about my blog I just get this guilt in my stomach; it's eating away at me. Um, the Ultimate Killing Machine was unveiled last night live. The results - interesting. More later...

For now, I'm in love...

Cheer Up Adam...

My friend Adam is ill. He might have glandular fever, but currently it's just tonsilitis.



Glandular fever, I think, is when you swell up so you look like a blueberry, like Violet in Willy Wonka. Roald Dahl, it emerges, was actually a visionary pre-cursor for the teenager's favourite illness.



Anyway, Adam seems all sad because he's at home bored and people are forcing him to watch The Hills. So I thought I would do a post to try cheer him up.

This is his favourite video...



This is one of his favourite songs...



He likes...



and...



Here's a message from Bret and Jermaine to cheer you up...

Postcards from Italy...

Aaaaah.


So I went to a shit house-party last night. On the shit scale it was pretty near shit. It weren't even as good as this one.



Now I'm hungover.
However, on the bus this morning I was listening to Charlie's ipod. The sun was shining, I was hungover and I was listening to Gulag Orkestar on these crazy headphones that made it like a soundtrack to my life. It was like an epiphany. I think with epiphanies your meant to realise something but I didn't but it was still super loco.

v

Anyway, I've lost any eloquence I never had so I'll pipe down.

Charlie showed me this...

ESSAY.

So, I have had to do literally no work all semester and just as I was getting all complacent and ready to return to leafy Surrey for the yuletide period Monsieur Manchester has come and kicked me dans the proverbial balls. I got an essay for Monday which I am dreading. Footnoting, referencing and all the jazz that comes with it, I can't be bovved. Who cares what the core elements of liberal thinking in international politics are. Well, Francis Fukuyama does but let's not get any 'End of History' chat going down. This is neither the time nor the place.



In additionata, Manchester is fricking freezing at the moment. I'm mulling over lodging a formal complaint to the Met Office, or to the Gulf Stream, I havn't decided which yet. Maybe I will write both, or maybe organise march. 'The Say No To Rain Campaign' or 'I'm Too Old For Cold'. If we get enough people we could get radiators installed on every street light or something. Imagine that.

Look how warm this fella looks...



So yeah, its cold and I have work. Boo hoo

The Ultimate Killing Machine

Holla!

Now you're probably thinking that the reason I ain't posted nuffink for the last week is just down to the fact that i am simply a DISGRACE A pointless, functionless excuse of a human being i.e. All I do is get drunk, listen to Stephen Fry podcasts and eat 7p Asda noodles whilst neglecting University work. However, the doubters have got it all wrong. In fact I have been away under a false identity, holed up in a secret guitar/ukulele/kazoo hybrid research facility in Saigon manufacturing what can only be described as the future of music for the past week.
This isn't entirely true, if anything it took around 10 minutes with the help of my friend Adam and I had indeed just been doing the above (Fry,noodle,drunk etc). But as my father insists upon saying almost constantly, "Let's not let the truth get in the way of a good story".

So yeah, it's known to most as The Ultimate Killing Machine but I know him simply as Fred West. He's amazing, and he's being debuted next week live. He's pretty psyched the cheeky little fucker...



Anyway, he still requires a bit of work: the kazoo's not as sturdily attached as I would like and I havn't written on him yet but otherwise I'm pretty pleased. It kind of feels like all the dreams I had growing up have finally manifested themselves in the form of a guitar/ukulele/kazoo crossover.

Satisfaction

Ah No!....

This guy has egg in and around his face...

I've been waiting for this moment...

I am feeling particularly ineloquent today. I think my brain might be decaying, or at the very least it's in a state of disrepair. I was feeling very bored and sorry for myself earlier and ended up wacking on some Silversun Pickups. I have re-reached the conclusion that theyre awesome, underrated, under debated, over deflated etc. I like this song in particular, its marveloso. THe videos pretty good too me thinks?....



I've also been revisiting some of The Shins this week. I think Wincing the Night Away is my fave of the albums. I'm fully aware that this a taboo subject and that I'm alienating myself with this opinion but I don't care, it's amazing. My life is so dull at the moment that I don't have anything to chat about other than music, always a sign of intellectual and general existence defunctness ( my spell check reckons defunctness is a word. orson)

Oh, one thing maybe. Peter Mandelson wants to replace Sargeant on Strictly Come Blah Blah. Imagine That. Just Imagine.



I saw a band called Chairlift on Friday night (I say "saw", it was more like could vaguely get a glimpse through the haze of voddy and my system not being able to cope as a result of giving up the "sauce" for a week). They have good songs but I don't remember being particularly impressed. But then again my recollection is disputable and clouded at best. What can I say, I'm a reprobate.


Reprobate: One rejected by God; a sinful person; An individual with low morals or principles; To have strong disapproval of something; to condemn; Of God: to abandon or reject, to deny eternal bliss; To refuse, set aside; Rejected; cast off as worthless; Rejected by God; damned, sinful; Immoral



On record they sound pretty cool, plus they were in an iTunes advert (I don;t know why I said "plus", surely thats a 'minus'. stig it to the man aint it.) Anyway, check out Bruises (aforementioned sell-out, yet still ear sex, song) on the ol mespace

Your destruction is inewitable!

North Korea, to me at least, is a fairly humorous concept. This is, admittedly, in part due to the enlightenment given me by that great World Politics Documentary 'Team America: World Police'. I recognise that living as a North Korean is probably not as much of a hoot as it seems to the casual observer but I nevertheless think the idea of Kim Jong Il hillarious.

We were talking about totalitarian regimes today and so I did a bit of youtube search and found this gem. Basically, NK created some sort of cult of the individual around this fella Kim Il Sung. Sung created the state in its current communist form and was succeeded by everyones favourite warlord, and his son, Kim Jong Il. He then went and died (what a silly sausage) and this was the resulting level of national mourning. Never has grief made me chuckle so much.





His son, despite his speech impediment, is a good looking fella I think you'd agree...

Lekede Soundsystem dead? Murphy kicks us all in the balls

James Murphy, the genius behind LCD Soundsystem and everyone's favourite slightly overweight and middle-aged but nevertheless ridiculously talented musical genius, is apparently not going to record any thing else under the LCD moniker.

I don't think I'm alone in believing 'Sound of Silver' to be one of, if not the, best album of 2007. It has everything: poignancy, floor fillers and tenderness all in a work that fitted together track-to-track almost perfectly. It was an opus.



But apparently we shouldn't dwell too long on a winning formula. Murph allegedy wants to get some crazy disco vibe going on. Where he gets washed up, barely alive former stars to front a band that hes gonna get together. I'm initially cynical but to doubt Murphy would be on a par with questioning the legacy of Steffen Freund at Tottenham Hotspur. We all know this would be churlish. Only time will tell I suppose. So for now, warm up a cup of cocoa, put another log in the fire and sit back and enjoy some of LCD's finest moments...




And I suppose steffen freunds aswell...

Rumours of my death: slightly over egged

Ok, Ive been out of the game for nigh on a week and can only offer the profusest (a word?!?) of all my apologies. I dropped the ball and can only offer comiserattia.
However, the big dog is back with a vengeance. Just a collection of fun stuff I have been perousing at a casual pace over the last week. I blame my complete lack of recent creativity/prolificity on the visit of my friend Vlad which was simply too drunk. I have been recovering this week: work wise and basically being a pansy, or what we in the blogging trade refer to as a 'dickwad waste-of-space washed up tabloidquality-at-best (talking more the Daily Sport end of things) vagrant'.

The sincerest of all my apologies...
Anyhow, to the nitty gritty travellers.

Uno.
An interview with Charles Manson. Frankly epic. I don't need to explain nuffink.



Dos.
Geneva in winter...




Tres?.

A fun little wiki(d?) link. Can you top these? A pineapple for the best suggestion...


Fourteen.

I think this is a hoot. I feel like I've been to Seattle. I havn't. I think.

Cinco.

Newspaporial evidence of my exploits at Shred Yr Face. Featured in the Manchester student paper. And the resulting tshirt reward!..





Six.

Who spotted my casual U2 reference????

There's a boy across the river...

Off to see Laura Marling with my Ukrainian chum Vladimir. Marling is over a year younger than me and has a Mercury Music Prize nominated album. Her songs have some of the most insightful and downright sexual lyrics and ideas of almost any songwriter I've heard, let alone one younger than me, a 19 year old.

Check her below, covering a Jeffrey Lewis classic with Johnny Flynn. I can't urge you enough to get into this lady. She's awesome.

How many times have I heard John McCain being called a 'maverick'?..

What is a maverick anyway?



Some definitions:

1. An unbranded range animal, especially a calf that has become separated from its mother, traditionally considered the property of the first person who brands it.

2. One that refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adherence to a group; a dissenter.

3. Being independent in thought and action or exhibiting such independence: maverick politicians; a maverick decision.

I'm guessing people are referring to the first definition.


I'm currently getting hideously caffeinated for the night ahead. Sounds as though everything going fairly smoothly so far though, good turnouts etc. Although, queueing for 3 hours to cast your vote is ridiculous it shows how important this election is to people.

I love Paxman, ripping through the bullshit on Newsnight.

MUST STAY AWAKE...

Au Revoir Jorge...

I was reading an article today in The Times that said the arts could suffer from an Obama victory tomorrow.

So much of the political comedy around today is directed towards the Bush regime that when he buggers off in January people aren't gonna have anything to talk about.

Sure, if McCain gets in we'll have some great OAP/general loss of marbles gags supported by plenty of ammo aimed at his Russo/Alaskan Vice President/invalid, but if Obama wins there could be a drought at least for a while.

I think I'm gonna miss George 'dubya', even if it is in a "we can no longer as readily take the piss out of the worst US President of all time" kind of way. I'm still going to miss him though. Hopefully, he'll take some sort of ambassadorial role like Special Envoy to the United Nations Peace Keeping Force, I think that would be appropriate...


Anyway, I'll leave you with some of his greatest golden moments. Try not to shed too many tears...

Hedi Slimane watch your back...

I've designed some pretty sweet t-shirts.

Check 'em...





and this old chestnut...




Fuck tertiary education, I think I've found my calling.

Help with the debt crisis...

Just by chance found this blog. Is he taking the piss? A fellow asking people to ease the load of his credit card debts with donations on his blog! Amazing, an innovative new tact.

Also...



I think it's generally accepted that if you litter you're looked upon as a bit of a pariah by the general public. Kind of a Jade Goody post-Shetty, pre-cancer era pariah.
How come though it's fine to just casually drop your cigarette butt on the floor. Hypocrisy amongst the aristocracy bureaucracy?.. Look, they picked up so many they re-constructed Australia. This version seems less competitive/resentful of convict roots though which is an improvement.

The above obviously said tongue in cheek. I love Australians and am in no way xenophobic. Except for the Danes

ANGER.... and elation.

I've just watched pretty much the best football match of my life. Tottenham Hotspur coming back from 4-2 down to draw 4-4 in the final 5 mins against the bloody Gooners. I was riding on the proverbial wave of elation until I was pointed in the direction of this...



This is utter bullshit. We need to get a sense of humour. Russell Brand has been around long enough for people to realise that he occasionally is prone to a slightly more abrasive style of comedy. If they didn't like him in the first place then they shouldn't have let him work up the rungs of showbiz. The entire incident has been blown out of proportion. Basically by the antichrist, The Fucking Daily Mail.

Before the Mail on Sunday led with an article on the recording on Sunday there were 2 complaints. However, it seems all we need is a tip in the right direction by the right wing press and we have 27,000 complaints and a resignation by Wednesday. What's worse is the fact that next to none of these complainers have actually bothered to listen to the clip in question anyway, going on what they've been told. Its just fucking Daily Mail Britain and its depressing. Its not like Andrew Sachs is the figure of perfection, portraying a stereotype Spaniard for years in Fawlty Towers didn't exactly endear him to the Spanish. But I suppose the Daily Mail hates foreigners and thats why they didn't make a big deal about that.

Anyway, we've lost one of our best comedians at the BBC today and I'm not happy. I now have an hours free time every week that I din;t before that I shall have to reallocate.

Its a sorry state of affairs.


Tomorrow, cigarette butts!..

The Complete History of Punk Rock... with Jeffrey Lewis

The man's an absolute insaniac!..

OH... Dearest Science,

Who could have thought you could get any better than Return to Cookie Mountain???? Well, me. I only thought it was alright...

Dear Science is a cocking tour de force. It may be lacking in the Bowie backing vocals of previous efforts but it dicks all over everyhting else regardless. Imagine pop, but just much much better. Hooks, hooks, hooks,

Sitek is a genius. Dancing Choose is the best TV On the Radio song ever. I just went there. Check the vid...

Not again?!...

Don't want to turn this into a McCain cock-up blog but sometimes I can't hold back.


WHO WOULD ELECT THIS MAN?!

I'd prefer a 3rd term George W, at least he's not senile. Just dumb

Bret, You've got it going on.

The rumours are true...

Duck & Cover

Researching a bit of Cold War propaganda.

Amazing. I find its the best technique in nuclear attack. That and creating a forcefield around yourself, a la the game of 'it' year 3.



Also, check out the sexy ladies early on.
x

Marmite

So I was just making toast and I ended up getting quite angry. I had an inner monologue discussion about the weighting/airtime given to the famous Marmite love it or hate it debate. Personally, i'm not bothered either way, take it or leave it.

There seems to be a huge social hoo-ha surrounding Marmite. A 'condiment apartheid' I suppose you could say. I think, similarly to, oh I dont know... Hollyoaks or Kerry Katona, Marmite is one of those things that people spend far too much of their lives talking about. See, I'm even doing it now!

It just seems a shame when there a such superior products out there on the market. What we should be doing is discussing the wonders of versatile, svensational tasting and frankly innovative products like Bovril, or Small Chunk Branston Pickle. It saddens me that the dominant condiment on a market thats built its reputation on thriving for diversity and pushing things forward is a one-dimensional, backwards product that can only really be described as a mediocre toast spread.

Anyway, I best get going. I'm off to make a mug of Bovril...

The First Days of Rome...

Who would have thought... my first ever post! It all starts here baby: the boredom, the torture, the grammatical errors,,, etc.

You'll be seeing what tickles me, what grinds my gears and things I'm indifferent to.  Start off with some clips. Viddy your eyes on these bad boys.

Can only thank Have I Got News For You for these gems...

Now I may not be one for physical humour but sometimes, someone falling off a chair is the probably the funniest thing in the world...

I am always game for some McCain cockups however. Speaks for itself. Awesome