btw, sul, you didn't miss much on the ben elton thing
Posted by
scrybl, around 3rd March 2007:
*parrrrrrp*
How's you Sal?
Did anyone punch Elton's smug face? Or a lighting rig fall on him? Did he at least perosnally apologise for 99% of the stuff he's done? And was Alexa Chung as fucking georgous as normal? Did she mention wanting me to do naughty things to her?
Posted by
Grim..., around 6th March 2007:
Did he at least perosnally apologise for 99% of the stuff he's done?
What, like Blackadder or The Young Ones?
"It's called a Ben Elton because it's eight storeys high."
Yes, I'd hope so. The Young Ones is so disappointing in retrospect.
Blackadder and The Young Ones were great. It's the other shit I'm on about:
Any of his stand-up
Popcorn (the only one of his books I read but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the rest are also shit)
The Thin Blue Line
Maybe Baby
We Will Rock You
Tonight's the Night
Of course it's only my opinion and I dont have any proof on this, but I think all the shit jokes in Blackadder and The Young Ones were also his.
/doesn't like Ben Elton
I'm with you. He's a smug twat who will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Now
THAT will be a hard act to follow.
Actually, wishing death upon someone is always a bit harsh. Maybe I could force him to snatch the fag from my hand everytime I went to spark up. He'd smoke them himself until such a time when I deem the life he's wasted of mine has now doubley expired from his own. Or until I stab him for nicking my fags. Whichever comes first.
Posted by
ellipse, around 7th March 2007:
peep peep
Posted by
WarHead, around 7th March 2007:
Thank you for that considered input.
But back to Elton. If he's not going before the firing squad I think we should let the doctors loose on him, an an attempt to perform the first successful smugoctemy.
Posted by
Grim..., around 7th March 2007:
We Will Rock You was only 'theaterised' by Elton, the story came from the Queen computer game.
I agree with you on The Thin Blue Line, Maybe Baby was a film about a book about a film about a book, but it wasn't hateful, and I've never heard of Tonight's the Night.
However, I thought Popcorn was fantastic (as were most of his early books - I've read them all). What didn't you like about it?
Posted by
WarHead, around 7th March 2007:
Actually, I quite liked the Thin Blue Line. It's just
him that gets on me tits. As far as his books are concerned, I only tried to read Gridlock and it was dreadful. I also seem to remember having seen some of Stark on TV as well, and gave up on it after about 10 mins.
Interestingly, there are no reader reviews of Gridlock on Amazon. Maybe they were so insulting they had to delete them.
Damn, they've deleted all the reviews of the Hoff's Greatest Hits as well.
Bastards.
I found Ben Elton's Popcorn bland. Ahgaha. Seriously, I was ready to enjoy it, I just didn't.
Maybe Baby was dire.
Had no idea about We Will Rock You being based on the comp game. A bit of wikipedia(I'm not taking it as gospel before you start) research seems to suggest that that's an unofficial opinion. Even so, that doesn't absolve him.
Tonight's the Night - The Rod Stewart musical. Need I say more?
Oh dear Lord, no.
Stark was on TV?
/investigates
BIG fan of the young ones. the sheer brilliance drowns out even the pure-posture bits.
i had a crack at one of BE's books once --i *think* it was popcorn-- : i came-into-it full of glee-eyed cheese-grinned short-breathed anticipation. i mean... c'mon : Ben Elton. Ben Elton!
OK, post- YoungOnes, he'd seemed rantily dully samey in the pseudo-standup bits i'd seen on the telly, sure. bemusingly full of himself even in the presence of witless assertions-- no matter how many or how loud. or how obviously self-serving. so obviously status-needy.
but, still, look at the quality of the stuff he'd been associated with previously!!
it was dreadful.
DREADFUL
truly gobsmackingly actively aggressively anti-interesting. i try to give every author i read every benefit of the doubt and finish every book i start in order to give them every chance. i've not-finished perhaps as many as half-a-dozen books in my life (can only think of 3 right now, but being ultra-conservative, estimate-wise (i don't forget things easily) ). be's was the second (of 2) book of my life i tossed within 5% and with a deeply and vehemently felt angry relief. the other was "Lucky Jim". and they both had the same faux-superior actually-identical whining about someone doing better at a game they themselves so desperately wanted to win.
bitch-lit.
wheening whining.
faux-victim posturing of the type that, whenever it finds itself in a position of power, always turns into savage repression of everyone else.
four legs good. two legs BETTER.
tedious as fuck.
looking at essential characteristics and authors' intents, "Hello" and "OK!" have more literary merit. i mean that very academically and very seriously.
re the show: sul, you missed out on alexa chung. i'd never heard of her before, but she does come across as quite a nice girl. and she has BEAUTIFUL skin. which with a static face makes up most of "model beauty". i don't find her physically attractive (she's very unfit), but loved her immediately for the contrast between her entrance and her response to be's "how are you tonight, alexa?!" false-bonhomie, pre-taping: "i'm absolutely shitting it."
oh and btw: sul- re "smug" - it was awesome. i have never seen ANYONE throw so many "i'm one of you" signals and so much "yo! energy!" rev-ups, yet so utterly alienate an entire audience.
there was a "warmup guy", Dave. he came on beforehand and had a slightly offputtingly relentless series of not-really-connected slightly droll lines but nothing that really grabbed us all and stood us up and shook us with humour. think: tim vine.
on the other hand, there was absolutely nothing malicious about him. so: not tim vine.
it was just a mostly-funny guy who wanted to be funny trying to make a living out of being very-funny for random groups of people who were there explicitly to NOT see him, to see someone different, someone famous who was not him. and worse- he had to do it to-order, on-demand, to fill up any and every "down-time" moment in a taping which was unrelated to him or to anything he said.
and there was not a thing malicious about him. quite the opposite in fact.
ben elton made a BIG POINT about putting him down.
every
single
time
he came on
always in a passive-aggressive backwards-slap kinda way. and one which got nastier and nastier and more and more vehement as the night wore on.
the bigger the laugh dave got, the more snide ben elton would be.
put it this way:
by the third time BE had tried to whinewhingeposture his superiorness over this everyone-really-should-think-he's-scummy-but-i'll-make-noises-about-standing-up-for-him ex-schoolfriend jokes-for-salary guy, the audience was silent for nearly all of the "show" and cheering Dave on and "awwwwwwww"ing him off. and by the end of the show, the "cheering Dave on" had turned into real relief -- thank god: we're going to hear something FUNNY. and the "awww..." had changed from demonstrative to seriously rumbling angered sympathy for him for the way he was being treated by elton.
Ben Elton finished on a dozen murmuring mixes of the disparate audience's various attendees' various irritated silences, deep distates, confused not-laughings, and a handful of young girls braying.
Dave finished on half a dozen whole-audience ovations.
Good for ol' Dave.
Shouldn't it be around about now that we get the Ben Elton googlers posting defence for their alt-com idol?
Posted by
Grim..., around 13th March 2007:
bitch-lit.
wheening whining.
faux-victim posturing of the type that, whenever it finds itself in a position of power, always turns into savage repression of everyone else.
four legs good. two legs BETTER.
tedious as fuck.
looking at essential characteristics and authors' intents, "Hello" and "OK!" have more literary merit. i mean that very academically and very seriously.
You didn't like it then? =]
Are you sure it was Popcorn? What (you know) happened?
Those who know me well enough are quite aware that i throughly hate this. i love my mother dearly, but nothing pisses me off more than to be interrupted while masturbating or summoning a particularly powerful spirit to do my bidding by my mother throwing my door open to say "LUCY! Charlie Chaplin is fiiking a goat on BBC2!!!"
Posted by
WarHead, 14th March 2007:
I also hate it when that happens.
my parents took me to see popcorn at the theatre.. I think I remember someone getting shot but that's all my brain wanted to retain.
Posted by
WarHead, 15th March 2007:
1) They should have just bought you some popcorn from the soopermarket.
2) Didn't someone getting shot spoil your trip to the theatre? Another good reason for eating popcorn at home.
Which theatre was it? Ford's?
who knows, i've erased most of the experience from my memory.
True mister warhead, imagine if blood had gotten into the popcorn, that wouldn't be very nice.
Damn you Sul for making the joke I was going to do, 5 hours before I read this thread.
"fiik!!" said alfie, 5 hours after he missed his chance