1. Claude Makélélé – How to turn a game about scoring goals, into one that isn’t. Since the emergence of Claude as every pundit and journalist’s favourite man about whom to write a ‘tactical’ article, each team has splashed millions on purchasing players with an unhealthy desire to pass sideways. Remember remember Djemba-Djemba? Of course you do – because he was an awful ‘Makélélé role’ purchase that viewed his purpose in life to spoil the games he played in not only for the opposition, but for his own team and for the people watching.
2. MP’s Expenses – In the 1890s when people were pissed off with politics, they threw a bomb at a prince. In the 1980s when people were pissed off they rioted and organised dissent. In 2009, when we discovered that our MPs had been systematically raping the public purse, we all bought the Daily Telegraph and came to the conclusion that they probably weren’t paid enough.
3. Jo Whiley – Simply for praising everything you would find on a HMV Recommends list. (Pigeon Detectives, Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Now That’s What I Call Vacuous! Vol. 26.).
4. Tesco – A dangerously bigger and more abstract version of Whiley, Tesco has enjoyed a fine decade of promoting bland taste. Ever flicked through Tesco’s top ten books? All you will learn is that Dan Brown has some very stupid opinions about Jesus, and that Katie Price is a stupid opinion. Ever listened to Tesco’s top ten albums? All you will learn is that Mark Ronson makes incomprehensibly shit songs even worse, and that Johnny Borrell can’t possibly have listened to his own ‘voice of a generation’. As well as this, Tesco’s Finest seems to enjoy a sterling reputation – why? It might be the best in Tesco, but that doesn’t mean it is worthy of praise. I mean, ‘Definitely Maybe’ is the finest Oasis has to offer….
5. Deal Or No Deal? – Everybody hates this crap. You don’t even have to comprehend Noel Edmonds to hate it. It represents the worst kind of spirituality to be found in people. The “£20,000 for a box is a good deal, but you do what is true in your heart” kind of speak. It is a show packed with literally the worst advice in the world. If something is true, then it is true. It can’t be true in my heart and not yours. It is either true or not true. Stop feeding into the hands of the producers (sorry, the nasty ‘Mr. Banker’) and all deal as soon as you get offered such badass sums of money. If I came up to you in the street and asked you if you would like £20,000 for not walking into a room, and also told you there was a tiny chance that in the room there was more money, you would definitely take my £20,000 and walk away from me and my bizarre generosity. If you didn’t you would be unhealthily stupid, and as such I would ensure that the room didn’t contain more money, but simply Josef Fritzl. A year for every grand you could’ve had – this is what Austrians call ‘justice’.
6. Being Patriotic About Soldiers – At the turn of the decade, the dominant opinion with regards to Britain’s foreign activities is “it doesn’t matter if we should be there or not, what matters is that we give the troops out full support”. Actually, it really does matter; it matters an awful lot to the people in the country. If I came home to find soldiers firing guns at my dad and detonating my grandmother, I would probably want a good explanation. And why oh why must I give support to the army exactly? I care so little about it, and anyway it was their choice to take a job shooting at people. So given a choice as to where to spend public money, I am going to promote the NHS for a massive increase in funding; definitely after having seen adverts for some soldiers who have released an album upon returning from Afghanistan. If this is what tax money produces, then I want nothing to do with it. Having said that, a full scale cover of Edwin Starr’s ‘War’ complete with outfits could change my opinion entirely.
7. 50 Cent – An odious little prick if ever I saw one. This man is the most overexposed tool in the music industry – constantly playing up to the negative themes and stereotypes that hip-hop was born to rid us of. Afrika Bambaataa told us about renegades of funk, Public Enemy had a nation of millions trying to hold them back, and 50 Cent has a gun in one hand whilst driving an expensive dick-substitute rapping about pricey piss-sweet alcohol. Cretin.
8. Ironic Genre Adoption – When The Clash got involved in burgeoning New York hip-hop and disco scenes, as well as the super good dub of the late 70s, do you think it was done with a smug wink to postmodern theory? No, because Joe Strummer wasn’t a penis. And he never once thought about how being retro (see also, ‘nu’) was such a wonderful way to play with culture and the metanarrative of time. And he didn’t make a throwback 80s synth album because all of his music scene mates were. He wrote ‘Radio Clash’ instead.
9. T4 – Constant irreverent humour, constant crap sarcasm, constant bad music, constant bad programmes – constant thorn in my side. The people who present this show are basically breathing Topshop mannequins, but with poorer conversational skills than their inanimate predecessors. They are the kind of people who think that the Ricky Gervais style of humour is the funniest thing of all time (as well as THE most intelligent form of wit), and that Extras was a genuinely high-quality show. They often end up on comedy quiz panel shows, during which they will speak roughly once – and it is always painfully unfunny, or an inane comment that leads to a gag from a second rate comedian. I do hope you read this Alex Zane; for God’s sake man, you are the comedic bitch of Michael McIntyre.
10. Hollywood Re-Hash – This past decade has witnessed horrendous examples of systematic abuse. It was a period that gave us a real strong effort from the US army, who forced suspected terrorists into dressing like Slipknot fans and engaging in what I can only assume were nude games of stuck-in-the-mud (the photos don’t lie). The torture was endemic, but conveniently palmed off as a matter of semantics. And when you think about it the neo-Cons were right; how can we be expected to act morally when words have such slippery meanings? I propose some kind of ‘convention’ in which we lay out these meanings. Maybe Geneva could host it? A mere thought. We also saw the Catholic Church in Ireland really open up to contemporary liberal Christianity – but not in the way we expected. Rather than re-examine it’s stance on abortion, or homosexuality, or contraception, the church decided to re-examine the role of child abuse. Having adopted a thoroughly modern approach to exegesis, the church determined that God wasn’t totally black and white with regards to the issue, so set about methodically abusing as many kids as possible. Both of these episodes pale in insignificance however when compared with Hollywood’s systematic abuse of movie icons over the last 10 years. Remember how great ‘Star Wars’ seemed? Remember how much you loved ‘Indiana Jones’? Remember thinking that ‘The Pink Panther’ was as good as Sellers could give? Hollywood clearly doesn’t. For fuck’s sake, even the captivating ‘King Kong’ wasn’t sacred. “Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast” concludes Denham in the final lines of the 1933 masterpiece; but having seen Hollywood’s new offer, I think Peter Jackson had a hand in it.
Richard Duffy
love from afar
10 years ago
