Monscooch

Continuing on with the craze to advertise products in irrellavant ways, here comes the latest marketing phenomenon courtesty of Lotus. They’re faceless figures that have been popping up in slightly random places such as Elton John’s white tie ball, Harrods’ summer sale (as opened by Kim Cattrall of Mannequin fame) and a match of Wimbledon.

As I understand it, the idea is that normal people are faceless drones and can only get to acquire a personality as soon as you spend thousands on a Lotus. The official site is here. There’s a countdown to something and I have very little idea of what it could be. After 3 hours of brainstorming, I’ve come up the following theories:

• It’s a countdown to the day when everyone’s faces melt off. Not to the extent as that Nazi leader in Raiders Of The Lost Ark suffered but similar to those pictured above
• The exact moment every Lotus car on earth activate and transform into Decepticons.
• The amount of days left until The premier of The Dark Knight in Ireland.
• The second coming of Jesus Christ from heaven to earth (weather permitting)

Imagine, if you will, that you’re in a dark alleyway and there’s a choice between being chased by either Amy Winehouse (who likes to climb into random shiny cars) or a green werewolf-type monster (who has a serious case of conjunctivits):

Of the two, I would choose the latter. Not only is it more cuddly looking, it would mostly be because because those type of monsters always turn out to be lonley janitors who just crave attention whereas I know for a fact that there’s something living in Amy’s monstrous beehive hair. That’s why the wolfman wouldn’t mind going for a haircut if the opportunity arose, while when someone offers Amy Winehouse a hat, she goes mental with her own special version of The Rock’s trademark people’s elbow.

And that concludes my deeply personal post of the week. Regular lazy posting of mildly amusing YouTube video clips will resume post-haste.

The complete first season of Early Edition DVD came in the post today. It’s the coolest thing I’ve got in the post for an entire week (last week I got the first season of Star Trek on HD DVD combo disc for €32 delivered saving over €100- thanks Bargain Alerts!). I’ve been looking forward to this show’s release on DVD since… well, roughly the moment I found out DVDs existed.

I would consider this to be my absolute favourite TV show of all time and I don’t care what everyone else thinks. In fact, I care so little about it, I’m going to blog about it. Yeah, that’ll show you. I loved this show so much when growing up, I want to go to Chicago because of it.

Things I didn’t know about Early Edition before I started the research on this post:

• The DVD only came about due to fan pressure for it’s release.
• The show was created by Bob Brush. He was also heavily involved in with The Wonder Years and Ed which makes him an okay guy in my book.
• The show’s music composer W. G. Snuffy Walden also created my favourite theme tune ever The West Wing. If only for the fact that you can sing cast member’s names to the music as they appear on the credits (Richard Schiff is the best one). W. G. Snuffy Walden also has a silly name.
• The cat’s name was Panther The Cat which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is an awesome name.

I was going to post the show’s intro through the magic of an embeddable YouTube clip but, instead, I managed to find the complete first and second seasons in their entirity in playlist form here. I’m so happy right now.

The latest great viral advertising that’s about to do the rounds on the blogosphere are the Be Kanye tablets. Unlike the popping corn using a few mobile phones which turned out to be misleading viral advertising for some lame mobile phone accessories, this is a fake advertisement campaign for Absolut Vodka.

The Be Kanye tablets may cause: awesomeness, increased appeal, the cool factor, jaws to drop, heads to turn, heightened sense of style and rhythm, and your carpet turns red. Watch the super-retro infomercial now:

Check out the website here. It includes a brilliantly pointless quiz and an awesome image to show how animals weren’t tested. There’s a countdown which ends in 12 days and 8 hours from the moment I type this. That can only mean one thing- Yes, that’s right: Monday the 14th (updates as they happen).

Sinead O’Cochrane had an inspirational post I was reminded about recently of her collection of books that have yet be read with the idea of having them piled together in a neat pile as motivation to read them. My book inbox is missing some tutorial books on Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe After Effects CS3 and Final Cut Pro and whatnot but here are the main ones:

• The Complete Making of Indiana Jones - Laurent Bouzereau ; J.W. Rinzler
• My Boring-ass Life - The Uncensored Diary of Kevin Smith
• The Complete Making of Star Wars - J.W. Rinzler
• Batman: Dark Victory - Jeph Loeb ; Tim Sale
• Hiding The Elephant - Jim Steinmeyer
• Darkly Dreaming Dexter -Jeff Lindsay
• Dearly Devoted Dexter - Jeff Lindsay
• Devil May Care - Sebastian Faulks
• On The Edge- Richard Hammond
• I Am Legend - Richard Matheson
• My Booky Wook - Russell Brand
• The Art of Noir - Eddie Muller
• Up Till Now - William Shatner
• Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
• Slash - Slash

You might have noticed I’m very much into what’s popular now. I’m such a popculturephile. I’m an illiterate one at that who makes up words.

The Plan: Rick O’Shea had invited some lucky bloggers to join him for Jay-Z’s concert at the RDS and drinks before and after the gig. I especially wanted to go after buying three tickets to Jay’s previous gig in 2006 but unable to go. Had it not been for bad weather, I was going to look stuntastic in my retro Adidas gear like so.

The Journey: It was literally raining cats and dogs all the way from the moment I left the house in Galway at 11.30am until the moment I went into the pub across the RDS in Dublin to meet the gang at 6.30pm. I was shitting myself at the thought of meeting people whose work I’ve read (or listened to) so much so that I developed a headache from worry. That, plus the lack of food from 6am contributed somewhat. Meeting them was very surreal. If I’m talking to someone one on one, I’m hillaryarse. In a group of at least… two people, I become very shy.

The Bloggers: Rick O’Shea (a true gentleman and was incredibly encouraging of my work), Rapture Ponies (not her real name or hair colour, shockingly enough), Darren (easiest person ever to talk to) and Andrew (he has an impressive beard). Latecomers to the party were Rick’s friend Bngr (who made me dance for alcohol which is very admirable trait in a person) and Annie Rhannion who everyone absolutely adored.

The Concert: We were slightly late on purpose as 2.0 good songs is not worth 1.5 hours of Estelle especially when the other option is football. We missed Jay-Z’s intro to The Takeover but as soon as we got in he was performing 99 Problems crossed with AC/DC’s Back In Black which was awesome. The first three songs featured Memphis Bleek who was there because he’s got anything better to do. Jay flew through repitoire making sure that everyone heard their favorites including:

• “Show Me What You Got” had an incredible drum solo by his band’s drummer, Tony Royster Jr (famous since he was 12).
• Hard Knock Life (it’s impossible to sing but that didn’t stop anyone trying)
• Izzo (H.O.V.A.) mashed with Jackson 5’s I Want You Back
• Is That Your Chick mixed with some Prodigy in there just because Jay-Z can
• Jigga also gave his own rendition of American Boy, Rehab and Umbrella
• Rapped Minority Report acappella with an image of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath and George Bush. He let the audience voice their opinion before asking to change the picture to something better: cue Presidential candidate Barack Obama.

My only gripe would be that the encore came out of nowhere. Jay-Z finished Izzo, dissappeared quickly and before you know it Bono is conducting the audience in a chant to bring him back on stage when nobody knew he had left in the first place. As an encore he mixed Heart Of The City with U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday with the Irish tricolour in the background and then finishing with Encore, naturally enough.

My headache progressed to whole new level of pain when the concert had finished now that there was alcohol involved and I also had to shout to hear myself. The rest of the night went by very fast. The topics of conversations covered so much: A throwaway comment I made on asking if it’s alright to have a man crush on Torres led to Andrew and Rick judging Fabregas and Torres in terms of football skills and general prettiness. Also, we established that Atlantic 252 has reached mythical status and Rick’s real name is Dusty Rhodes but that was already taken, unfortunately. At least, I think that’s what happened… All I do know is that I’ve never felt so comfortable talking to strangers before and I’m really looking forward to the next event.

For an idea of how great the Jay-Z concert was check out his performance at Glastonbury here except imagine it being better. He had a less random setlist at the RDS and he seemed to connect to the crowd more. For a great interview of his with Jonathon Ross, Rick has it here. Some photos of the RDS concert are after the break: Continue reading ‘He Came, He Saw, He Conquered…’

Bono Estente. Falia hela falia heli wank lin perry tightyface Chris Waddle, ton cieylen gizmo. Methethethetheth, hethethetheth, pethethethetheth Fernando Torres, Sminky Pinky… Scorchio!

Lakremos esputa e fallio “Ming!” de pucco pocco wic ja wik patandra milio Patagonia. Acnopu dopra filla uiskers fulla meeti gudnes. Obrigado tip assé Foghorn Leghorn: Assé, assé, assé boy! Mentalé! Resulté: El Spain: 1 … Borishia Munchen Munchen Munchen Burger: 0.

Boutros-Boutros Ghali.

Today is the happiest day of the year. Well, that’s according to some psychologist who has nothing better to do. Dr Cliff Arnall was commissioned by Ice Cream maker Walls to establish what day of the year would be the happiest for most people and found that today, June 20th, is indeed the day. The equation is O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He. O stands for being outdoors and outdoor activity, N for nature, S for social interaction, Cpm for childhood summers and positive memories, T for temperature and He for holidays and looking forward to time off. My alternative derision of that formula would have O standing for O’Jays music, N for Nudity, S for Scarlett Johansson, Cpm for Captain Pedro Monscooch, T for Teacups and He for Helium.

I think that the equation for happiness should include the following video. It’s the sequel to the Where The Hell Is Matt? video. This one is better: It features Ireland this time and some great moves in India. Awesome:

I hope to make a regular feature on equations of the week. It probably won’t work out though. In fact, to summarize how likely I am to do a regular feature on this, I present to you the following equation: L/ (Rw + W) + (P x E). That translates into: Laziness/(Real World + Work) + (Pointless x Equations) = No Posts On Equations Q.E.D.

There’s controversy in internet-land this week. No, not that shitstorm in a teacup thing, it’s much more shocking than that. Everything I thought I knew has been turned upside down:

According to a creepy guy with a ridiculous pedophile mustache, a tongue with a mind of it’s own, horrible glittery T-shirt and no dancing abilities- a melody of his has been stolen by “coldplay + itunes”. Those bastards. He claims Chris Martin was at a gig of his and “seemed pretty into it… Maybe TOO into it?”. Too into it? Did he take off his pants and start dancing on the tables or something?

Sure, they’re “STRIKINGLY SIMILAR” but there is a key difference: Viva La Vida doesn’t suck. The official story is that the song was written and demoed back in March 2007 seven months before the Creaky version. It’s also been proved that some unlucky so and so looks exactly like Chris Martin because he was recording in London at the time he was spotted in a crowd in New York.

At least global superstars Creaky Boards were nice enough to wish Coldplay the best of luck in the future. After all, Chris Martin is only married to a Hollywood A-lister, has sold 300,000 album copies in three days and has a record deal - something Creaky Boards are so desperate to achieve the resort to claiming plagiarism.

Bonus: I’ve just found a blog entry by Creaky Boards singer/ songwriter Andrew Hoepfner. He says he too stole the song’s melody from The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time soundtrack. Click here to hear it.

Other more plausible cases of plagiarism:

• Coldplay stole from Joe Satriani
• Timbaland stole from Abd El Halim and other Arabic superstars
• Timbaland stole from some Finnish musician
• Timbaland stole from… himself
• Pachebel stole from Coolio
• Something I’ve just noticed: The Tings Tings’ new single “Shut Up And Let Me Go” sounds an awful lot like Indeep’s “Last Night A D.J. Saved My Life“. Time for Indeep’s Michael Cleveland to don a creepy moustache and make a stupid viral video methinks. Wait, he already has a beard? Damn. It’s back to drawing board for me, then.

I was going through old post drafts of mine and found these sketches for alternative monsters to that thing you barely see in the Cloverfield movie. Since the DVD has just been released last week, I’ve scanned some sketches from my A4 refill pad I’ve drawn with a pencil and a pen (I know -only the best art supplies for me). These pictures are very high quality for some reason, so feel free to click to embiggen (hmmm… for some reason WordPress doesn’t seem to think that “embiggen” isn’t a perfectly cromulent word).

1. Gojira would have been the obvious choice from watching the initial Cloverfield teaser trailer for the first time. We all knew that it couldn’t be Gojira due to copyright reasons but we can dream. Especially for a film where the soundtrack isn’t better than the movie itself. Here’s the trailer- as someone points out in the comment section: ” Thank god godzilla isnt real that would suck if he was”. Indeed, good sir.

2. The oddest of my suggestions: Verne Troyer. There’s not much of a reason for this. The image of Mini-Me biting Austin Powers by the gonads is just a haunting one to me and I can easily imagine New York city citizens running for their lives from this fate.

3. It’s The Blob! According to it’s awesome poster, it’s “Indescribable! Indestructible! (which counts as a description my book) Nothing can stop it! (Except a teenage Steeve McQueen)”. A giant amorphous creature from outer space that terrorized a small Pennsylvanian town and would’ve succeeded if it wasn’t for Steve McQueen’s quick wits. It soon died after being frozen by carbon dioxide. The end. Or is it?

4. What’s scarier than a horrible human consuming jelly-like substance? Why, Mr Blobby, of course. That jiggly-eyed obese humanoid scared the bejeesus out of Noel Edmonds every Saturday Night. I mean, Noel was only trying to host weekly house parties. That mean chubby pink bastard…

5 & 6. It’s The Hulk and another Hulk! One has freaky looking muscles, the other has… One has silly hair and clothes, the other has… Alright there are some subtle differences: Hulk Hogan has a belt, he isn’t green and he doesn’t say “Hulk Smash”. He does, however, think that a coma is God’s way of telling you to slow down.

7. Lost’s Smokey Goes To The City! When the amazing teaser trailer for the Cloverfield movie was released before screenings of Transformers almost a year ago, people didn’t know what to make of it. It was exciting but you knew nothing about it. All people knew that it was a J.J. Abrahms project, it had a monster, and it was shot in a first person view. People were speculating about what kind of monster this was going to include or whether or not it was movie at all. It could’ve been a viral video for the fourth season of Lost which was due to start around the films release date (01-18-08, a possible film title at the time) and from the previous season’s finale, we knew that the Lost characters were back in the real world.

8. It’s King Kong! And he looks lost and confused because I can’t draw for shit! I always thought that Peter Jackson’s King Kong didn’t spend enough of his 3-hour screen time terrorizing people in New York.

9. Like my favourite scene from Ghostbusters II, she’s gonna squeeze some New York juice from the Big Apple while rockin’ out to some Howard Huntsberry. We all know that’s one heavy dame and could do a lot of damage. Sure, she may be slow but “don’t worry, she’s tough. She’s a harbour chick.”

10. The Power Rangers Megazord robot. In the unlikely event that you don’t know, Megazord is a robot assembled from all the Power Rangers Zords- these colossal mechanical or bio-mechanical robotic vehicles that the Power Rangers used to fight monsters. Usually, a Megazord would fight a dinosaur or mythical creature at the end of every episode and these fights would destroy a whole load of skyscrapers. This must’ve led to a huge amount of lives lost off screen. That would’ve lead to people hating the power rangers. That then would lead to Power Rangers having kick collective asses of the New York public. That concludes our history lesson of the great Zords Rampages of the 1990’s.

11. A Rancor monster from Star Wars. Jabba The Hutt’s pet is able to tear people apart as seen in 1983 documentary Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi- Rest in peace Oola nad Jubnuk. As long as this 5 meter tall carnivore avoids getting crushed by a simple portcullis, he would be unstoppable.

12. The Imperial AT-AT Walker as seen terrorizing the rebel troops in the Battle Of Hoth. We lost a lot of good men that day. I really don’t want to talk about it…

13. Here’s a monster my 3-year old cousin made up on the spot. I’ve just fine-tuned it and gave it weird pulsing ear bubble type things. It’s white and looks like an elongated version of the monster from The Host. They both originate as mutations from chemical spills in the ocean and aren’t that fond of people.

14. The Cookie Monster. Oh, he’s a dirty bastard.