One for the lexicon

I've invented a new sub-section of dance music - it's called gymnasium house. It's the type of music that evokes vivid mental images of obese women on exercise bikes at spinning classes, huge arses wobbling and banging about while the instructor shouts in time to the music '1..2..3.. ready... and FAST, FAST, FAST, FAST' while enthusiastically pumping his/her arms in the air.

What's so wonderful about it is this: if music shops and websites pick up on it, I will never waste a single moment of my life looking at CDs by those artists whose music would be found in the gym house section. 

The archetypal gym house track is this one. Others include this shame and this shambles.

So there it is - Gym House, coming soon to all good music shops and websites...

F1 Palpitations

If you didn't see Lewis Hamilton become World Champion at the Brazilian Grand Prix yesterday, here are the last couple of laps. Since Formula 1 championships are sometimes over five or more races before the end of the season, and races can often be so boring, this was a particularly tense affair. Watching Ferrari celebrating oblivious to the knowledge that they'd lost the championship on the last corner gave the same sort of childish pleasure derived from watching opposing football fans celebrating a goal that's been disallowed.

Happy Halloween

An inordinate amount of attention has already been lavished on 'Sachsgate' so I'll try to keep this short in the interest of common sanity.

This, but for the media, wouldn't be a big deal. Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross crossed the line; they apologised. The end? Of course not. You could almost here the stampede as the politically correct brigade made for their keyboards in a state of almost frenetic sexual ecstasy. Some members of Comment is Free on the Guardian's website drew some inspired comparison's, like: 'I work in the NHS, another service paid for by the public, and if I made comments like this to someone I would lose my job.' Does it get any more irrelevant than that?

The vitriol and self-righteousness being drummed up by the Daily Mail and sanctimonious airheads alike is far more detestable than Brand and Ross egging each other on until they overstepped the mark and offended one old, unfunny slapstick comedian.

This is just another case of manufactured outrage, as pointed out by Peter Tatchell  and most annoyingly, it's another example of the increasing weight society gives the notion of something being 'offensive'. Brand's jokes were juvenile and embarrassing but claiming they offended you as an average Radio 2 listener is a little far fetched. Sachs may have been offended to hear his Satanic Slut granddaughter had got off with Brand, and at the manner in which he was told, but can anybody else really be offended by the whole thing? The fact that Gordon Brown felt the need to comment is laughable; I guess he'll be wanting to table a motion relating to Gordon Ramsay's treatment of others at the next G8 summit. Then there's boring know-it-alls like Paul Gambaccini; with men like him on the Radio 2 roster, they needn't worry about the ratings now Brand's left.

People love a witch-hunt and they love feeling indignant. Acting offended is one of the easiest routes to both these things. As Stephen Fry points out, if you hear someone say 'I'm a bit offended by that' often enough the response should be 'so fucking what?'.

Stella

As one of few amongst my peers who will readily welcome Stella into my fridge and body, I thought it was fitting that I should write a short entry on the revamped artwork. The new can seems a bit classier to me, I prefer it without the gold top and horizontal red pinstripes and like the echoing of the details from the official Stella 'chalice'. As the creative director in charge of the new design puts it, 'we have focused on the logo as the 'hero' of the packaging, reinforcing the premium cues and making it more modern, ownable and distinctive.' Quite.

Lager is particularly topical today, as I've been rendered largely incapacitated by the Peroni that accompanied Sheffield Wednesday beating Sheffield United yesterday. Can't do anything but read and watch a soothing John Martyn and Danny Thompson performance.

It's art Jim, but not as we know it.

To the immediate left are two pictures. On the left of the two, there's a lovely stone cottage at Sudborough Green Lodge in Northamptonshire. On the right, is the same stone cottage as it recently became an 'art' installation. 

Over to a spokesperson for Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, who were awarded £74,000 of National Lottery funding by Arts Council England, part of which was spent on commissioning the 'inspiring' Richard Woods for the project above: 'Artist Richard Woods has clad the cottages in a unique, candy-coloured faux stone cladding makeover that reinvigorates the rural landscape.'

• When has stone-cladding of this nature ever been aesthetically pleasing?
• It's not even real stone-cladding (so at least its less permanent) and using the word 'faux' doesn't make it alluring or artistic; 'fake' would have done just fine.
• It's not unique, it's from Hansel and Gretel.
• The reason for its uniqueness in the real world is self-explanatory.
• When was it decided that nature, particularly like the area of forestry that this cottage sits in, was in any need of 're-invigoration'? "Oooh this elephant's boring, can't we paint it loads of colours?" 

This project is just the sort of self-serving, self-indulgent, vacuous, pseudo-intellectual nonsense that gives 'contemporary art' a bad name. Handed the bitter pill of the artwork itself, you're not even allowed to wash it down with a refreshing gulp of humility, for example, an admission that 'it's just a bit of fun'. Instead, you have to read on websites and press releases about it being 'daring' and 'reinvigorating' i.e. the same ad infinitum brand of justification that those in modern art circles do so well, one that's based on nothing but lots of grandiose statements about ideas that have absolutely no relation to the real world. You don't have to be talented or visionary, all you have to be is willing to exploit the fact that there's no definition of what 'art' is; anything you say is art, just, well, is art. "To me, this bloody tampon hanging from a packet of digestive biscuits really represents how the female is often considered the other in our world of constant consumption and that in some way her monthly cycle is both a cry for help and an attempt to rid herself of a form of guilt manifest in all women." Hey presto! It's that easy. Easy and really, really lazy.

More photos of the breathtaking transformation at http://www.fermynwoods.co.uk/elsewhere/forestry.htm

Crimble Gig

Those who don't believe that a virgin can give birth to a child, that a man can walk on water or that there's a being in the sky that can read your mind (as well as everyone else's, naturally) and who gives a shit about what it is you're thinking, may or may not be interested in this show on at the Bloomsbury Theatre and then the Hammersmith Apollo in December.

I already have a pair of tickets for the now sold out show on the 18th *smug* but an extra date has been added on the 21st.

Dulcet-toned, genius biologist Richard Dawkins will be there, along with Ben Goldacre, whose Bad Science column in the Guardian is a textbook exercise in hilariously dry dissection and analysis.

As most other committed Ricky Gervais fans will notice, I saw that his good friend/victim Robin Ince tops the bill as host. My hopes and dreams were fulfiiled this morning when RG confirmed on his blog that he would be making an appearance as one of the Extra Special Guests.

Financial farce forces fuckers to focus

Never one to shy away from controversy, I shall dare to suggest that the issues dominating the news at present will have very little affect on the readership of this blog. Unless your landlord happens to be a latecomer to the buy-to-let fad, has mortgaged everything thrice, including his children at his local Bradford & Bingley branch, and has temporarily unsmothered himself from the duvet to insist on a 200% rent increase, you will probably have found the turmoil only shocking in regards to the cost of an aubergine ("a quid for a bloody aubergine?!").

The only real malaise (and I only refrain from using the word 'aggravation' or, indeed, 'outrage' because I've just had two glasses of a lovely, Tim Atkin recommended M&S Rosso di Puglia - try it, it's only £4.50 (pretentious, moi?)) I've experienced from the financial crisis has been because of the horribly hateful habit amongst the media to alliterate as much as seems possible, given the restraints of time or, in the case of the press, space.

'CREDIT CRUNCH' has swiftly and reasonably become an unwelcome piece of trite and vexatious phraseology in describing current events, but no sooner had it been quietly ushered out of public view like a ropey old tart flashing her arse in an upmarket wine bar, in wanders an equally abhorrent slapper - 'MARKET MELTDOWN'.