The Late Late

The superfluousness of The Late Late Show has been pointed out by practically everybody recently. But it was novel to see Tubridy and the show’s very own producers underline its irrelevance on the series premiere last night.

Straight out of the blocks came our Olympic boxing team in full training regalia, medals around necks. And for the next toe curling twenty minutes Tubridy tried to re light that fire, tried to corral a horse that had bolted a month ago.

There are some out there who probably think he made a decent fist of it. It is for these that The Late Late Show is allowed to trundle on.

There are some who think it was pointless trying to rekindle the buzz in the first place, who were appalled to see the great Ross Noble go down like a lead balloon while a piss poor medley from a pride of Eurovisionites was greeted with demented hysteria. It is for these that The Late Late Show should be given a lethal injection.

It’s the humane thing to do.

X. Rated.

Anything of value is predicated on a good idea. We have talked before about the toxic culture of the X Factor. The X Factor is supposedly about discovering talent. But discovering talent and discovering someone who will do exactly what you tell them to do are very different things. It is the latter that our friends at the X Factor are interested in.

They have no interest in discovering talent as you or I might recognize it; in the sense of someone having the vision and ideas to deliver something interesting and worthwhile.This is an intrinsic part of what you or I would call talent. But what the X Factor is trying to unearth is the opposite of this, the opposite of talent. What they are trying to unearth is a meek (X Factor translation “ambitious”) personality with a voice who will never disagree with them on anything.

Nick Cave is one of the most talented people in human history, he wouldn’t get through the first audition. Him and his pesky songwriting genius, and his humour, and his deep artistic convictions and his big ideas. Sure where would he be going.

Polithicks

It used to be that an engagement with politics was the sign of an alert, active mind, of a certain type of intelligence. But now, after all that we’ve seen, if you’re still reading editorials, if you’re still reading your Marc Colemans or your Fionnan Sheehans or your John Drennans and if you’re still posting comments on thejournal.ie then I’m sorry to say that you are a bona fide eejit.

On the radio the other day Pat Leahy said that it will be interesting to see the opinion polls around the time of the upcoming local elections. Yes Pat it will be interesting. To four people; yourself, John Drennan, Marc Coleman and Fionnan Sheehan. The people whose livelihoods depend upon the propagation of this turgid shite.

The rest of us will be too busy with season three of The Walking Dead, season five of Breaking Bad, the Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, Magners League and Heineken Cup. Amongst other things.

Criminal Careers

Oh RTE and their little procedural idiosyncrasies, especially when it comes to courts coverage. We have spoken here before about the phenomenon RTE created whereby the victim of a crime can only be named “locally”. Slotting in alongside that one is the insistence on giving us the occupation of the individual in the dock. The defendant is invariably unemployed when violence is involved. It is deemed important that we know this, probably to help us develop a more rounded impression of the squalor that attends this person’s existence.     

Ronan Collins

Ronan Collins played Crocodile Shoes by Jimmy Nail on his lunchtime Radio 1 show the other day. At the end of the song he referred to various collaborators Nail has had over the years. He mentioned Paddy McAloon. This is why despite some of the extremely dodgy stuff he plays Ronan Collins is still one of the good guys. Why does someone who has heard of and is familiar with the body of work of Paddy McAloon have to give up a full five minutes of his already short daily show to allow (a) Joe Duffy to summarise the storm of hysterical bullshit he expects to whip up in the day’s Liveline and (b) the news to be read in Irish for the four listeners out there who might be able to distinguish it from Latvian. Time to put the foot down Ronan, you’re better than that.   

Tenacious D

Sit back and enjoy El Presidente emptying both barrels into right wing arsehole Michael Graham. I can't imagine Sean Gallagher doing this, can you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5OWRRJh-PI&feature=player_embedded

Rear To The Ground

There was an election recently in this country with a voter turnout in places of around 40 %. It was still the only story covered for a week.

The thinking behind this presumably goes something like this – the public placed on record their lack of interest by not bothering to show up to vote but we’re still going to lead with it for several days in case of a mass, miraculous, unprecedented simultaneous change of heart.

To which we say; good luck with that.