Thursday, February 25, 2010

Dentistry and Doofuses

"ooo look at me with some fat people, I'll knock them into shape with my pie regime.."


"bit more suction here please..."

Not one to be adverse to having two ladies approach one of my orifices with vibrating equipment, it was an interesting experience going to the dentist today to get a filling, although the most painful part was the fact that Gerry Ryan was on in the background, not to be confused with this Jeri Ryan, God no. Admittedly my notions of dentistry, as with most of my life's experiences come from movies and science fiction:




When most people think of famous dentists I always think of Judge Death's da.

But to have Gerry Ryan warbling on about a lady caller's bed bugs and saying "and I suppos' they creep up your thighs and emmm into your 'how's your father'' made me a 100 times more uneasy than when the drilling started. For those of you who don't know who he is, this is his Uncyclopedia entry, which I can't stop laughing at.

So who is Gerry Ryan? Well we all know RTE, Ireland's major state-and-advertising-and-your-money funded broadcaster has a sense of humour, listen closely to the poor fella saying 'oh shit!' at the end of the below 'news' report. I would say something like, 'oh, swearing, the priests won't like that', but they have recently lost all claim to moral authority by fucking kids. In your face Popey! You've got a celibate workforce of deluded oddballs in a hierarchical system that favors secrecy who think they can 'absolve' sins that are in constant contact with vulnerable children! What's the worst that can happen? Oh yeah, what did.




Anyway, to add insult to injury, RTE have a show called Operation Transformation where a fat rich person tells fat poor people how they are going wrong in not being fat. When I saw it first in the listings, I thought it might have been something fun like this but no, it's like The Biggest Loser. You see, RTE's R&D department is like a simple child with a crayon and notebook looking at other TV shows like they're toy ads and RTE commissioners are like their mammy and daddy and when the R&D kid sees something it likes it goes "mammy! daddy! can I have one of those?" and the parents reply, "yes, but we can only afford a really cheap shit knock off version will that do", and the kid laps it up and goes "yep I'm delighted and excited"

Now I don't want to criticise RTE too much, for the size of our country they do a great job with news, documentaries and arts programs but when they attempt reality shows, light entertainment and comedy the results are sometimes excruciating. As a small country we don't really have celebrities, so anyone on RTE claiming to be a celebrity is clinically insane, also as everyone knows each other and they don't want to piss off the main broadcaster there is no genuinely satirical comedy although this one tries but there is nothing genuinely critical, so all the chat shows exist in this odd feaful vacuum, worrying in case someone has a negative opinion on the broadcaster, admittedly some, hilariously break through...








Gerry Ryan seems to have some sort of blackmail-like hold on RTE as they keep giving him shows that no one likes and pay him astronomical amounts of money for doing so. We had (eight seasons of!) Ryan Confidential, where he came across as more of a dick than Gordan Ramsey, in a horrible moment of television, captured forever, below:




He got to interview Conan O'Brien and failed to get any of the comedy master's jokes, it was like watching a master archer hit wee hilarious darts into a bemused zeppelin.




In Operation Transformation, this overweight, overpaid imbecile gets to judge other poorer people's attempts to lose weight, its like people who can't sing judging singing competitions, or people with no discernible talent judging talent shows...oh wait we have that too...



Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Lorcranium...




I started a Tumblr called Lorcranium, a name inspired by the likes of "Magic" George Quinn who occasionally calls me Lorcan McGranium or some such, which I am really enjoying. Had a twitter account but deleted it as it all looked like random syllables and bits of punctuation dipped in hero worship and reminded me of the line in Idiocracy

Pvt. Joe Bowers: Why me? Every time Metsler says, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way," I get out of the way.
Sgt. Keller: Yeah, when he says that, you're not supposed to choose "get out of the way." It's supposed to embarrass you into leading - or at least following.
Pvt. Joe Bowers: That doesn't embarrass me

Plus twitter seems to have been invented by lazy journalists so they can just repeat celebs' and politicians tweets' as research...




In other online news Scott Calonico the Plerplexin' Texan of Scott and Stacey fame has been hard at work sorting out the NI Comedy Web site with all the details of wicked upcoming events at places like Marcus Keeley's Voicebox at the Safehouse, The Pavillion, Lavery's, and now The Black Box, which I am very interested in entering as you can imagine.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Boregasm!!





Ah, I don't want to be down on Irish movies, and like, look at the above mooks, it's not like others can portray Irishness any better, but whenever I go to Tescos, there's all the normal films sitting there in their fun boxes and spaceships and that and then a separate sort of quarantined section for Irish ones that form a bleak wall of worthy depression, Catholicism, 'the laaaand', politics, historical period dramas, gangsters, and of course abuse.






I've got very specific criticisms of certain Irish films, like did Stephen Rea really not know what sort of a pub he was in in The Crying Game, did his reaction not paint Irish fellas abroad as sexually naive, insensitive idiots? Sure a fella's head is all messed up with the troubles, he don't know what way is up...look out for the 'hilarious' twist etc.

I remember thinking How to Cheat in the Leaving Cert would be good, a heist movie to steal exam papers, but inevitably the plot was that one of their classmates had committed suicide because of exam pressure and that's why they were doing it. It had to be some worthy reason rather than a fun heist. I recently saw Middletown (both the town and the film, both equally bleak), viddy the trailer all shouting and classical strings and religious hypocrisy...we know, we get it! This imagined 1950s borderland bleakness must have been terrible. When Brendan Met Trudy inched Irish films into the rom com market but the trailer implies FEMINIST TERRORISTS!...jaysus lads could you be up to it at all...

There's a lot of funny people, smart people, intelligent people in Ireland but once a film project goes through the government sponsored route where half the running time is logos of cross border initiative and EU funding gubbins they get ground down in lengthy boregasms of identity and current issues.

One of my favorite Irish films ever is The Eliminator, an unashamed Peter Jackson/Sam Raimi type low budget horror that's very funny. The only picture I could find was a postage stamp sized scan of a Film Ireland cover, does anyone have any pics/clips of this gem? Surely even the a brief synopsis would pique interest

"Set in Northern Ireland of the future, Computer genius O'Brien is working hard to build the VIPER, a military supercar..."



Which brings me to 8.5 Hours.





When I saw the trailer first (yesterday) I was much more bitter, like this is an affront to sense and intelligence, and movie literacy, but then I thought well, I haven't made a film and my film studies knowledge attests that for any film that even gets made, there are probably 20-30 worse ones that didn't. So for that we should be thankful for 8.5 hours, not its actual running time, this isn't Fanny and Alexander, chance would be a fine thing. Instead I made up a dialogue between the director and the trailer guy:....

Director: We want something classy..

Trailer guy: classy or classs-i-cal?

Director: It's set in Dublin...

Trailer guy: Perfect, shot of Dublin then...

Director: it's about..

Trailer guy: I know, the end of the boom years, when was that? wendesday 4pm wasn't it? everyone's sad, even though some of them are getting the ride, what's that great line in it?...'oh fuck me that was good', perfect, we'll put that in, everyone says things like this during sex...

Director: It's about four working lives...

Trailer Guy: yeah! working alright! Working at the sex and drugs and bisexuality, and that, hohup! jaysus, so yeah they work at an office? I'll show the clock ticking, like Clockwatchers... hey! maybe they'll smash office equipment up like in Office Space...

Director: I wanted to deal with contemporary issues like the property collapse and immigration...

Trailer Guy: Yeah! I know, like a shady Eastern European guy/pimp maybe, he's the reason Ireland's lost its moral soul...plus we get to show ladies in corsets! high five! no, sorry, yeah, it's about the issues.

Director: It's about the emptiness of meaningless sex...

Trailer Guy: Hey! I just saw the trailer to A Serious Man, maybe a bit of headboard banging and an actress looking uncomfortable...perhaps a tough guy, or an office guy who thinks he's tough, with a cool catch phrase like ...'shooting...fish...in...a...barreeeell..."like that cool movie Shooting Fish, with the speech rhythms of genius Maaaat Beerry

Director: It's about sexual emptiness in Catholic Ireland...

Trailer Guy: Fuck yeah! I forgot about the church, a scene in a church where someone gets accused of having sex with a 19-year-old, implies the abuse scandal but won't get us into trouble...genius director dude ..oh yeah and drugs!

Director: It's about four lives that start to unravel....

Trailer guy: Hey, we'll get one of the characters to speak directly to the camera like in the trailer for Magnolia...awesome...hey wasn't there some gayness involved, better include that too as a sign of decadent times...and then we'll end with uplifting strings and people understanding each other...and...bam!! see ya at the Oscars dude! ...I'll be out the back offering my 'services'

Director: ahh thanks, I guess...


and of course...The Room



Monday, February 01, 2010

Congrats everone, we made it through January....


Officially, the most bastardingly shite of months ever, hence the lack of blogging as trying to articulate the horror would only increase it. I made it through, but only just, using the time honored Irish way of hot whiskeys and copious TV shows and films. Mostly my Laurel and Hardy box set, a thing of immense beauty, the great Fringe, Dollhouse and still amazing The Twilight Zone




Speaking of the Twilight Zone and feeling like you're living in it, I've also been being blasphemous about 30 times every day, and at 25,000 euro a pop that doesn't come cheap...p.s. God doesn't exist...and is a cunt...fact! sorry for the language, but he made me say that for the laugh. Full listing of Ireland's new blasphemy law here, I suppose you could read it along with the Murphy or Ryan reports and decide what is truly blasphemous.

Wording here:


35.— The common law offences of defamatory libel, seditious libel and obscene libel are abolished.


36.— (1) A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €25,000.

(2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if—

(a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion, and

(b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.

(3) It shall be a defence to proceedings for an offence under this section for the defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates.

(4) In this section “ religion ” does not include an organisation or cult—

(a) the principal object of which is the making of profit, or

(b) that employs oppressive psychological manipulation—

(i) of its followers, or

(ii) for the purpose of gaining new followers.



Mmm, "employs oppressive psychological manipulation" not the Catholics then, oh no.

Anyways, mark your diary or scrap of paper that you lose for Voicebox on February 5th, it's going to be great with Enda Muldoon, Marcus Keeley, Scott Calonico & Stacey Mead, Hotrod McCaughan, Aaron Marshall Anne-Marie Mullan, Ed Goodall, and Robert Best, with Ruaidri Ward MCing. I can't wait.


Stand up bit that includes my blasphemy routine, which I would not have written were it not for this ridiculous law, so will they fine themselves?