I Hate Myself And I Wanna Die Hard

I know that this isn’t a statement that will send shockwaves through the internet, or cause the nine people reading this to spit out any beverage they might currently be consuming in shock, but it must be said: Die Hard is the best, you guys. A surprise success in 1988, Die Hard is widely regarded today as one of the greatest action movies of all-time. It launched Bruce Willis into stardom, created a lucrative franchise and served as the go-to action movie to rip off until The Matrix took over towards the end of the 90s. For an entire decade, a standard movie-pitch would include the phrase “like Die Hard, but on a ____________!” with a multitude of examples including Die Hard on a Bus (Speed), Die Hard On a Plane (Air Force One) and Die Hard on a Plane But With Nicholas Cage (Con Air) until, as the story goes somebody tried pitching Die Hard in an Office Building, apparently unaware that the original movie took place in one. Needless to say, it deservedly had a big influence on Hollywood, which is why the franchise is still being run into the ground to this day.

Although it is always difficult to say what exactly it is about any given form of entertainment that causes it to capture the imagination (and cash) of audiences, the original Die Hard deserves to be lauded for its quality, having far more going for it than being just a mindless, explosion-fueled blockbuster. It has a perfectly crafted screenplay containing witty dialogue, set pieces that are entertaining but remain logical, entertaining characters, snappy pacing and serves as a textbook example of using the most basic elements of storytelling. The creator of Community, Dan Harmon, uses the story of Die Hard to help aspiring filmmakers who need help constructing a story themselves on the Chanel 101 website.

John McTiernan, a director with definite action pedigree (he also did Predator and The Hunt For Red October) helps the strong screenplay work on screen, with action scenes that are both visceral and clear. Contrary to many modern action films, it is always easy to know what is happening and to who and the violence has a weight behind it. He also gets great performances out of the actors involved. Most obviously this means Bruce Willis on one of the pleasing occasions when he’s in Give A Fuck Mode and the Shakespearean class of Alan Rickman. It also includes the smaller roles like Hart Bochner as quintessential 80’s sleazebag Ellis, the late Paul Gleason as the blowhard deputy chief of police and that one Asian dude from every 80s movie:

 

 And of course there’s Reginald VelJohnson as Al Powell, the lovable cop who goes through a touching journey by falling in love with John McClane, putting the fact that he shot a child (!?) behind him and in the end, learning the joy of killing people all over again. Have I mentioned how Die Hard is the best?  I know it seems like I’m giving the movie too much credit in a rush to stroke the ego* of Bruce Willis or whatever, but since Die Hard is used in film schools and university courses worldwide as an example of great filmmaking, including a Perspectives of Film module in UCD, fuck you, I have academic credibility to back me up.  With all this in mind, it’s easier to see why Die Hard became a popular franchise, which leads me finally to my point: stop making more of them, for crying out loud.

Now I do not have any major problems with the first couple of sequels to Die Hard. They’re not masterpieces but they both have some good stuff in them and are a perfectly reasonable way to pass an afternoon.  When it comes to Die Hard sequels though, I’m going to count to three, there will not be a four. There certainly won’t be a five. As sequels tend to do, each sequel to Die Hard had to get bigger and bigger in scale, until they went past the point of ridiculousness and collapsed in on themselves. This month sees the release of A Good Day To Die Hard, although at this stage is might as well be called Die Hard: Another One. The movie stars Bruce Willis as John McClane as Bruce Willis and Australian actor Jai Courtney as a block of wood. Or his son or whatever. Although I have not and will not see the film, from the advertising I know that it features Russia, sexy ladies in catsuits and the promise of plenty of loud explosions to distract you from the dank hopelessness of your own existence.

 

What made the original film work was the fact that John McClane was just an ordinary cop surviving by the skin of his teeth, a man “in the wrong place at the wrong time” as they say. Sure he made jokes and committed crazy acts of violence, he’s an action hero. But he still came across like a real person with whom we can connect. He gets his feet cut up, he experiences fear, he realises he was a jerk to his wife and decides to change. He is a good character. Yet as the sequels kept going on he lost all of that. When I saw Die Hard 4 as a teenager, I liked it (teenagers don’t know anything) but looking back on it now, it is an experience completely void of tension. Once you’ve seen someone kill a helicopter with a car or walk on a fucking jet plane, your suspension of disbelief plummets quicker than Hans Gruber being dropped off the Nakatomi Plaza and you have no more reason to care about what you are seeing. Now in 2013 in Live and Let Die Hard, McClane is an invincible super hero, rolling his eyes with bemusement at yet another kerfuffle he’s managed to get into, firing off as many quips as bullets while he blows Russia to smithereens, a complete disconnect from reality with nothing at stake and no reason to care.

When McClane said “yippee ki yay, motherfucker” in Die Hard, there was a reason, he was showing defiance to a threatening man who called him a cowboy by channelling his inner Roy Rogers. It was his way of standing up to the danger he was facing. In Come Die Hard With Me he says it because it’s a catchphrase. What’s more, he presumably doesn’t even say motherfucker, just as in Die Hard 4, as both movies are PG-13/15A in order to squeeze more people into those theatres so Bruce Willis and Hollywood executives can stick another butler made out of caviar into their solid-gold houses. At some point John McClane the person was killed and replaced with the DieHardotron 3000, an unbreakable machine whose only emotion is an apparent racial hatred of helicopters.

Scoff if you will, but to me Die Hard is great cinema. Like the early Alien or George Romero films, by serving as the pinnacle of their genres they are almost elevated above them (that’s the dash of pretension for this blog entry done). But, just like um...the later Alien or George Romero films, the Die Hard franchise is a dead horse of brand recognition being beaten for every last penny, long past the point of anyone being interested in making art, or even just solid entertainment. Right down to the cutesy “Yippee Ki Yay Mother Russia” on the poster, Once Bitten, Twice As Die Hard is a cynical exercise in rich people deciding to make money and poor people deciding that they have nothing better to do. It is ironic that it will be in cinemas around Valentine’s Day, as it is quite clearly a project completely void of passion or love from anyone involved. Do yourself a favour and do absolutely anything else other than disrespecting the memory of one of the iconic action movies by passively trudging into the cinema to watch a beige time-devourer like Oh God Why Won’t This Franchise Die Hard.

*penis

Chris Brown and the Things He Thinks

So, walking hate-machine Chris Brown got into a fight with Frank Ocean, then dealt with it by uploading a painting of Jesus to Instagram, with the caption "Painting the way I feel today. Focus on what matters!", presumably drawing a comparison between the suffering of Jesus and his own suffering or whatever. This is what I have to say about that:

 

Yeah, I don't really have much to say. The dude is a goon. I'm writing this to invite everybody on the planet except Chris Brown to a big party in the hopes that we all get so wasted that Chris Brown is permanently wiped from our memories. I'll bring the strongest bleach I can find.

Christmas: Why Bother?

Christmas is a ridiculous concept. It was a Pagan holiday that was seized upon and changed beyond recognition by Christians, which became a Christian holiday that was seized upon and changed beyond recognition by businessmen and advertisers. It’s a time of year where we talk even more about helping the less fortunate as we walk right past them and into the next high street clothing store. It’s easy to be cynical at this time of year because it would seem that we devote so much time, energy, effort and money on something that, ostensibly, doesn’t matter at all. But even though the central premise of this blog if for me to be mean-spirited and cynical, you’ll never see my complaining about this holiday. Christmas exists, and there is a reason.

Ritual is an important thing to humans. No matter how civilised we become, that doesn’t seem to change. There’s a tiny part of our brain, buried somewhere deep down, and it’s the part that makes us want to lump a pile of stones together in the middle of a field and dance naked around them or indeed, to lump a tree inside our homes and decorate it with trinkets and lights (naked dancing optional.) Huge numbers of non-Christians (both people of other faiths and people with no religion whatsoever) celebrate Christmas worldwide, and that’s because the real reason we have Christmas, or Hannukah or Yalda or Baldhi Day or whatever runs much deeper than babies in a manger or any other religious trappings. In a world without religion we would still be doing some goofy thing or another when the winter came around. Because if we’re celebrating a holiday at this time it means that we’re still here. We managed to survive for another twelve months and now it’s cold and dark and we need each other. It’s been wired into our lizard brains to get together with our friends and family, the people we love and even the people who irritate us beyond all belief and mark that time together in ritual form, because even if we don’t want to acknowledge it, they or we may not be there next year.

Twenty children and six adults were murdered needlessly yesterday in Newtown Connecticut. I tried to write something today that better fits the pattern of my output so far, but it feels incredibly petty to write a few hundred words complaining about little things when I have everything I actually need, and the people of Newtown have lost something that is actually important. The children who survived the violence should be thinking about the holidays and what presents they will be receiving, instead they have had their innocence emphatically taken away from them. They have been dragged into the adult world, where things don’t always make sense, where terrible things happen that can’t be easily fixed. I have no doubt that there are many people who believe that this tragedy puts the silliness of Christmas into perspective, because who could care that much about getting the gifts you wanted when the reality of how much legitimate suffering exists in the world is made so clear before us?

That is an easy view to understand, but I don’t see it that way. I believe that it underlines how fragile our lives are, how they can be taken away from us without warning because of something completely out of our control. There is nothing wrong with enjoying life with the people you care about and when you strip away the window dressing of carols, turkeys and fairy lights, that’s what Christmas really is. You and yours are still here. Enjoy that. For those who are gone, remember them. And if you have any time to spare someone else from that most horrible condition of loneliness, please do. End the year on a high. Normal, curmudgeonly status on the blog should resume early next year.

Watch Where You're Walking, Stupidity-Monger

An open letter to the four people who stepped on my feet in town today:

Dear utter shitheads,

Although the four of you just about avoided bruising my toes, unfortunately the same cannot be said for my feelings. Before today, I still retained some belief that humanity was not entirely filled with the urine-like dregs of thoughtless and selfish people, however all traces of that naivety were stamped out of me today and I have the four of you to thank for that. I now understand that the world is a terrible place, and that I was the idiot for thinking that I could get away with trying to do some Christmas shopping without being attacked by a quartet of bastard-shaped fools who don’t know how to walk through town properly. I’m sure you were in too much of a rush to avoid causing mild pain to my toes, presumably there were some rocks at the bottom of a pond somewhere that you had to suck on.

 I hate you. I hate you more than I hate junkies on the bus, people who think Batman should kill, the dog that lives next door that’s always barking and Indiana Jones 4. I hope that you are beset by a series of inconveniences, hopefully ending in your spontaneous combustion. Maybe that would teach you all a lesson about watching where you are going.

I hope the bus always pulls away just as you arrive at the stop. I hope that you accidentally bite down on a fork a minimum of eleven times in your life. I hope that every man/woman/blow-up doll you encounter in life thinks that you are “such a good friend”. I hope that you are struck by a meteorite and by lightning at the same time. I hope that you can never find your keys. I hope that you lose your sense of smell. I hope that you win the lottery but when you go to reclaim the money, a pigeon steals your ticket and defecates on you as it departs. I hope that some inconsiderate arsehole steps on your toes whenever you try to shop. I hope that any prospective blog you try to write very quickly slips in terms of quality and readership. I hope that you quickly run out of things to write about for that blog and have to resort to spewing out less than 500 words of whinging about small slights. I hope that every occasion where you think you have found happiness and love turns out to be a pyramid scheme.

Let this be a warning to you. The next time you step on my feet when I’m trying to shop, there’s a chance that I won’t just say nothing and complain about it on the internet later. Although that is probably what will happen.

Bigger Than Jesus: The Beatles Vs. Christmas

Christmas is the greatest thing ever. This may seem like a surprising opinion coming from a guy who writes a blog stuffed to the brim with opinionated bile and negativity, but it is true. They way I see it, there are so many different things associated with the Christmas season that there is something to appeal to every type of person out there. Whether you love charity or materialism, religion or Die Hard, heartwarming moments with the family to remember forever or alcohol-fuelled work parties so horrific that you eagerly await the onset of Alzheimer’s to steal your memories of them forever, Christmas truly is the most wonderful time of the year, with something for everybody. Which is why I have to ask: Why do The Beatles hate it so much?

Christmas songs are notoriously hit and miss and with them being an easy way to make money for even the most talentless shysters, there are many more misses than hits. Their poor reputation is not helped by the fact that during the month of December you are guaranteed to hear every Christmas song ever recorded somewhere in the region of 357 times each, until by Christmas Eve even the songs you actually like become candy cane-coloureds drills boring a series of holes right through your skull. However, even within a musical subgenre that includes the date rapists anthem Baby It’s Cold Outside, Christmas songs by members of The Beatles have always stood out to me as being particularly terrible, especially given that The Beatles were such a considerable mix of musical talents. And Ringo Starr. I’m going to provide my thoughts on a crappy Yuletide recording from each member of the Fab Four, to show that even musical legends (and Ringo Starr) are capable of idiocy.

1. Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney



According to Forbes, this song earns Paul $400,000 a year, a fact that makes me so I angry I want to punch a baby in the face. This is a song with no rhythm to speak of whatsoever, with the same few notes plinking on the keyboard over and over again. The lyrics are that most hateful combination of impossible to sing along to and guaranteed to get stuck in your head. Plus, just look at the music video above.  A crowd of musicians are seen playing away on their instruments as they have a wonderful Christmastime, but listen to the song, there’s nothing there except that poxy keyboard and the ringing of some bells. It breaks my brain. This dorky effort is the exact type of thing John Lennon famously called “Paul’s granny music shit”.  Unfortunately Lennon’s attempt at a Christmas song is even worse.

2. Happy Xmas (War is Over) by John Lennon/The Plastic Ono Band and Harlem Community Choir

Ugh. Fuck you Lennon. This sanctimonious effort from Lennon, the Plastic Ono Band and the Harlem Community Choir of Irritatingly Adorably Children is inexplicably part of the top-tier of overplayed Christmas songs, despite the fact that it is miserable and has Yoko Ono singing in it, never a good sign. It’s appropriate that a song intended as a protest against the seemingly never-ending Vietnam War itself feels like it’s going to go on forever and the song's message doesn’t get much deeper than “War is bad, mmkay.” I'm sorry John, I'll never invade Vietnam again, I promise.

3. Ding Dong Ding Dong by George Harrison

Clearly George Harrison hated Christmas very much, because he never even bothered to write a song about it. The closest thing you can get is this song from his 1974 album Dark Horse , which is about ringing in the New Year.  Although not a classic, this song is actually not that bad as far as these things go, but as I said, it’s not actually about Christmas, because George Harrison is a wretched soul who must have hated Christmas, probably because he’s a Hare Krishna hippy bastard, so he can rot in hell. (I’m so sorry George, you’re really my favourite.)

4. I Wanna Be Santa Claus by Ringo Starr

 

Believe it or not, the third best drummer The Beatles ever had actually released a whole Christmas album in 1999, and this was the title track. It is...pretty sucky, but at least this one is bad in that endearing Ringo Starr way, so I can’t snark at it too much. I can also understand Ringo’s desire to be Santa Claus and ride in the sleigh, because he probably thinks that if he were Santa Claus, people would actually like him then. In writing a Christmas song that a) doesn’t make me want to chew my face off and b) is actually about Christmas, Ringo has actually come out on top in a discussion about The Beatles, possibly for the first time ever. Congratulations to you Ringo Starr, I’m sure my approval is the greatest Christmas gift of them all.



Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid, But Then Again He's Dead.

It is the winter of 2012. It is a grim time. Already a chill is coming over the land, a numb, biting cold which will provide a harsh challenge for survival among the poor, old and unfortunate. Turning to the television will provide no comfort, as you will continue to be greeted by a parade of newscasters with grim predictions for our financial future, individuals like Vincent Browne, his face a crude Play Doh sculpture of hopelessness and despair, wagging his finger and telling you that the drudgery of your life shows no signs of lightening up. Also, apparently the world is ending and we’re all going to die? Something to do with Mayans? To be honest it doesn’t seem so bad when the alternative is Vincent Browne.

Gaze into the face of fear.

Yes, you may have heard it mentioned one or two times over the past year, but the old Planet Earth is on its very last legs and unlike the numerous other occasions Armageddon has been predicted to occur throughout history which turned out to be complete gibbering nonsense, this time it is very definitely certainly possibly true.  Seeing as how there is only a month and a bit left in the year, time is running out, so you had better start racing through those bucket lists as fast as you can. A surprising number of the students I’ve taught this year have mentioned this and they don’t seem very reassured by my typical response of “no, of course the world isn’t going to end, get back to work.” It’s like they’ve all collectively decided that the 2012 End of World predictions are the truth and since the decisions of teenagers always turn out to be correct, I am now just the tiniest bit worried.

I tried to look into my impending doom some more but it has been a difficult process. I perused the television for some time but the only thing I could find related to the subject was this advert from the cheery sexists/shit deodorant peddlers at Lynx, in which beautiful women attempt to escape the apocalypse by marching resignedly into the sinister sex trade aboard a Love Boat built by a lone man with no obvious carpentry credentials:

 

Getting information off of the Internet was as much of a struggle as you might expect, with a wide variety of badly-made Youtube videos, forum arguments, attention-seeking blog posts (...) and “expert” journals. The effort of wading through this e-sludge had a similar effect as listening to the noise of a washing machine that’s been switched on with a cage full of budgies inside. I then attempted to find some books on the subject in the library but then I remembered that I don’t have a library card anymore and books are for old, useless people.

Eventually however I was able to cobble together the indisputable facts. It seems that it was originally predicted that back in 2003, a rogue planet called Nibiru would crash into our own planet and destroy it. When that didn't happen (as far as I can remember) it was decided that this was mere margin of error and the real end was coming in 2012. Planet Nibiru, also known by the easier to spell and cooler sounding Planet X, is supposed to be coming on the 21st December 2012, just in time to ruin Christmas for everybody. The whole thing sounds very terrifying and plausible. Oh wait, no it doesn't.

It sounds like bollocks and if you believe it you should be placed on a special list and prevented from ever voting, reproducing or speaking too loudly ever again. The Mayan aspect comes in because the Mayans had a very specific hard-on for calendars and one of the many calendars they made happened to end this year. Of course, every calendar ever made ends at some point but this seems to qualify as conclusive evidence. Furthermore, Planet X does not exist and even if it did, it would have been visible to the naked eye for quite some time now...which it isn't.

To sum up, the world is not going to end, so shut up and go away.

Follow this link a good video explaining why the world isn’t going to end: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hzF3vkmY28&feature=plcp

Follow this link for a picture of an elephant wearing a hat: http://store.circusworldmuseum.com/images/CWi-657-1.jpg

 

 

Stupid Women Love Marilyn Monroe

This goes out to all the stupid women out there.

Now I want to stress right from the off that this isn’t some sort of woman-hating thing. Really it’s wrong to think of stupidity in gendered terms, you usually see the same traits in both waterhead men and braindead women; self-centredness, pride in ignorance, liking the Black Eyed Peas, etc. There is however, one thing that generally speaking, is seen in stupid women much more than in their male counterparts. The half-baked love of Marilyn Monroe.

Without watching or even being able to name any of her films, many young women like to associate themselves with Marilyn Monroe, because, you know, she’s famous and has a purrdy face and stuff. Monroe is right up there with Che Guevara  in terms of being an icon that people latch themselves onto in spite of knowing little to nothing about. Many seem to know little more about them than what their faces look like, which they see plastered all over shitty merchandise and love so much they decide to plaster all over their bodies in the form of shitty tattoos, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of ignorance. And shit. And plaster.

Now look. I don’t have a problem with Monroe herself. Marilyn Monroe was reasonably talented, not one of the all-time-greats but not terrible either. She had a definite screen-presence, something that many modern actors are sorely lacking, she could do comedy and roles like Cherie, an untalented but ambitious singer in Bus Stop show that she was more adept at ‘serious’ roles than one might think at first. As is fairly common knowledge these days, she was a pretty tragic individual marred by mental illness, physical and sexual violence throughout her life. This is not the Marilyn Monroe that is worshipped in Twitter and Facebook posts across the webland. That Monroe is a much more one-dimensional figure, personified by that one fucking quote. You know the one.

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”                               

 -Marilyn Monroe and Dickwits everywhere

This is horseshit for several reasons. First of all, it is an excuse to never try to improve, to become emotionally mature and at least try to work past faults (and they are faults) like selfishness and impatience, which we all share. Secondly, it suggests that in a relationship between Person A and Person B, Person A can behave as poorly as they like, all the time and the inevitable conflict that will ensue is all Person B’s fault. Shut it Person A, you are like Batista subplots in Dexter, you are terrible and boring and nobody cares about you. Thirdly...let’s be frank here. The best of Marilyn Monroe and the best of you, in all likelihood, do not compare. Ain’t no JFK gonna be doing the horizontal tango with you, because you are the worst. Also, he’s dead.

Marilyn Monroe

You

 

 

Ultimately Marilyn Monroe was just a fairly good actress with a lot of personal troubles. She did not, as far as my extensive research* showed, cure TB, sign any peace treaties or stop a burning bus full of chinchillas from driving off a cliff. If you want an old-timey glamorous Hollywood actress to worship, how about Hedy Lamarr, who helped to invent a form of radio frequency used to this day in wi-fi and cordless phones? Even being interested in Monroe wouldn’t be that bad, as long as you go deeper than asinine quotes and that one picture of her standing over a windy grate. Or maybe you could stop idolising famous people altogether, you fecking twit.

* not very extensive.