themaninblack

BBC commentator Guy Mowbray mentioned Borgonovo 8 minutes into the Italy vs Spain match...

Jesus, he took forever! Looks like I'm accidentally having a half-decent year in the DDP. Well, the GB team won golds in the London Olympics didn't they?

He is just trolling us at this point Could this go on for months is that possible? I remember john paul the 2nd that saga only went on for about a week. George Best was the one that really made my teeth itch...

BREAKING NEWS: NELSON MANDELA IS....a bit better today!

Yeah, been trying to think of something based around "Truth and Reconciliation" for five minutes, I got nothing. It's a toughie, isn't it? I've already used up the "short walk to the crematorium" one in the Drop 40 notes. The angles are oddly difficult: his name, his other name (Madiba), Robben Island, ANC, "Free Nelson Mandela" (The Special AKO?) Apartheid, I'm Soweto-ing on this, I don't mind telling you...

I kinda think that this interminable waiting for the inevitable is taking away the impact of it a little. Credit to Thatch, when she died, she just fucking died and that's that. Saying that, Mandela's condition does give me (and DeathList) time to come up with a suitable pun, which I have to say has not been as easy compared to Thatcher...

What are your thoughts on the Gillard/Rudd switcheroo, Davey?

Power of the Daleks would be my choice. Troughton's debut story as the first "new" Doctor...

Or unlucky 117 in DDP terms...

Yes I think it does...

Typical. I put up the updated DDP pages saying Han Hass is a lostie and then the Telegraph post an obit. Harumph!

Probably shocked by Tony Robinson's knighthood!

"He's the gaffer..."

This Confederations Cup has been the most enjoyable football tournament I have seen for a long time...

Yes, they blew that out of proportion. I hadn't come across that shock jock before but he was trying too hard to be funny and it fell flat. His biggest problem was that he then kept on going with it but the whole thing was coming after Gillard's "misogyny" speech and the restaurant menu that conveniently surfaced the following day. Good on you! Yes, I think Australian society has changed a lot in the last few decades. At the risk of sounding like an old man, Generation Y represents this over-privileged culture. I know of similar examples but I won't cite them now. Interesting. I didn't know you were a teacher. When I was talking about one party's ideology dominating the curriculum in Canberra was in control of all schooling, I was thinking about a few specific cases besides the black armband debates: one was when Julie Bishop was education minister and she wanted everyone to follow Harold Bloom's theories. Another is the bloody frightening, nationalistic emphasis that has been placed on Anzac Day since Howard first came to power. Some people feel that the Libs use Anzac Day as a kind of Australian nationalistic origins myth in the same way that the ALP use Eureka and the Shearers' Strikes. On a more personal note, I really enjoyed history at school but I find it disgusts me now to learn about the constant cycle of wars. We should be progressing as a society but we aren't. I am more sceptical about moral relativism. My views on the subject are still evolving and maturing though. Yes Fox News is poison. Thank goodness we still have cross-media ownership laws here which is probably the one good thing about the media landscape in this country. Having said that about the populist media, Universities are just as bad. Commerce/business departments are awash with Harvard-trained hardcore capitalists and the Humanities world at certain unis still have a lot of old Marxist cultural theorists. I think as life progresses, most of us grow to discern the bullshit from the things of value though. I'd very much like to see a few changes to our universities: one thing would be a lot more accountability to give students more rights via an independent body that can handle complaints. (At the moment, the only options are to complain to the head of school and they will almost always side with their lecturer or to the student union, which is useless.) Julia was actually flagging an independent body like this three or four years ago but I haven't heard anything more of it. Secondly, I would like to see uni positions be for fixed terms only, after which a lecturer must leave the job and return to work in the real world for a while. That would stop them becoming so bloody insular and means they would have to check their pet theories against what is happening out there in the actual workforce. Yes, it would mean they would have to leave research projects half way through if they weren't finished and another team would have to take over but it would be worth it to overcome a lot of the problems and politics and corruption I have seen in Australian tertiary education. /end rant 2. This is very interesting. Particularly the focus on the USA as the biggest influence. Where does this leave the Republican tendancy in Australia after the whole referendum is being part of the commonwealth now staus quo. Would the introduction of a presidential figure make things better or worse for the electorate? I'm against the republican idea, Its one of the few things I'm actually I'm actually conservative about - I simply don't trust the pollies enough to change anything, I'd image it would be like letting prisoners change the legal system. P.S. Jeffrey Smart has died..any chance of a uk obit? Yup...

It says Bernard hunt 1930 -1913 . he was -17 when he died . I know old people regress into childhood when they get old but that is ridiculous. I would have thought -17 for a golfer would be brilliant. Well under par...

Took the thought right out of my brain, Spade. The Hollywood Possibilities thread veered straight into different territory and needs the appropriate thread. I would have went with the title Amoral Bastards/Douchebags and the moderators can retrospectively start off with the Guardian's version of Elvis carking it...

Well it was here anyway. I've only caught a couple of moments and it was usually at dead o'clock in the morning on Channel 4. But the media reaction to it was out of proportion to it's audience. It was a niche show. Now that isn't to suggest that 'The X-Factor' is better because it had more viewers. far from it. But the thing that put me off watching it (and other supposedly greatest shows ever like 'The West Wing') was this constant carping about how great it was, how it was "as good as Shakespeare" and this general sense of the media elite thinking they know what's good for us and forcing down our throats with the bare implication that if you didn't tune in, you were some sort of potato-headed philistine. So I never watched it. Nor have I watched 'Arrested Development' or '24' or 'Homeland'. I saw the first series of 'Mad Men', which I thought was very good but I didn't watch the rest of it. And then there's the latest piece of box-set wankery, 'Justified'... I read a blog about it and the comments were all "oh why is it on a shitty channel, this should be watched by like, everyone" and the teeth-grinding "oh, I forced persuaded my poor sap girlfriend/boyfriend/partner to watch the entire series in one evening, she/he likes it now". Ugh! Makes me vomit... /rant over With you on most of that, but The West Wing was a ten out of ten show for me. Now I like to watch American tv and I've a strong interest in politics, but that show was not only well written but acted with aplomb. What made it even better than that was the realisation that Americans very rearly get a president that is so in command as Martin Sheen's Jeb Bartlett. Think Teddy Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter rolled together with few foybals and only the best bits on show. The core team of actors were all top knotch and able to bring home the seriousness of the major issues and cap that with the light hearted times where friendships counted for more than passing interest. Please don't lump The West Wing in with these other shows. Hunt out "the big block of cheese day". Or find the double header when John Goodman guests, and... just kick back a bit. A chocolate box liberal fantasy. All that "he's a good man, but has to make make tough decisions" malarky. That kinda grinds when you had the likes of Bush Jnr and now Drone Alone Obama reading our emails. No President is ever going to be like Josiah Bartlett and we know it. But that's the thing with these TV shows, they're as much fantasy as any Transformers film, in their own way. Take 'The Wire' for example. Just poor porn for middle-class sofites. In Mexico, there are people out there taking part in the drug wars that would make the Baltimore lot piss in their lace panties. Here's Mr Lawson paying tribute and ticking every box! Yes TV can have a broad canvas and it seems the "talent" seems to be working there these days rather than in cinema. I'm not knocking them as well-made TV programmes, which they surely are. 'The West Wing' has good looking actors saying witty lines, as did Six Feet Under and Arrested Development etc etc etc. But it was always thus. 'Hill Street Blues', 'Lou Grant', 'Soap', you name it. Grass is always greener of the other side of the Atlantic, but they've got money and bags of writers so that's not a surprise that can produce programmes that can hit every button for your modern, sophisticated consumer aesthetes, which is why the likes of the Grauniad love them so much. I just wish they'd stop fucking going on about it. I've read the phrase "best TV programme ever" applied to 'The Sopranos' and 'The West Wing' when they were on at the bloody same time! Make up your fucking minds, you media whores. This has also been applied to 'The Wire', 'The Simpsons' and 'Arrested Development'. EDIT: See the comments on that St Paul's letter to the Romans tribute to understand what I'm talking about...

"Amoral Bastards" features a lawyer who strives for justice but is not always successful. In the cases he loses when only he knows the truth, he takes out brutal revenge on those he considers unpunished, because hey, what's justice if it can't be carried out to the letter? Of course every man has a weakness and his is for fucking nuns up the arse. Those nuns are procured by Bishop O'Leary who is in league with the local mob boss (somewhere dank and Marylandy). The mob boss also rigs juries to let off his henchmen, who are of course getting knocked off by this mysterious vigilante. The mob boss of course has his own issues, most notably of his cherished eldest son and heir to "the business" who is in the process of changing gender... Now if that doesn't get Mark Lawson and co excited, nothing will...

Well it was here anyway. I've only caught a couple of moments and it was usually at dead o'clock in the morning on Channel 4. But the media reaction to it was out of proportion to it's audience. It was a niche show. Now that isn't to suggest that 'The X-Factor' is better because it had more viewers. far from it. But the thing that put me off watching it (and other supposedly greatest shows ever like 'The West Wing') was this constant carping about how great it was, how it was "as good as Shakespeare" and this general sense of the media elite thinking they know what's good for us and forcing down our throats with the bare implication that if you didn't tune in, you were some sort of potato-headed philistine. So I never watched it. Nor have I watched 'Arrested Development' or '24' or 'Homeland'. I saw the first series of 'Mad Men', which I thought was very good but I didn't watch the rest of it. And then there's the latest piece of box-set wankery, 'Justified'... I read a blog about it and the comments were all "oh why is it on a shitty channel, this should be watched by like, everyone" and the teeth-grinding "oh, I forced persuaded my poor sap girlfriend/boyfriend/partner to watch the entire series in one evening, she/he likes it now". Ugh! Makes me vomit... /rant over

How to remove McAfee software. By John McAfee...

I've never seen the series so I feel absolutely nothing about this. I imagine he means a lot to the microscopic amount of media ponces people who have seen this this and rate 'The Sopranos' as the greatest thing since creation (see also 'The Wire', 'Breaking Bad' and HBO's forthcoming series "Amoral Bastards") but to me, he's just an actor in something who died albeit at a tragically young age for an actor...

The Guardian will be in mourning then...

He may still have a full magazine but I bet he still fires rapidly...

He was declared dead by Wikipedia (wrongly) a couple of years ago.