I go ooh ooh, you go ah ah lalalalalalalala lalalalalalalala .
I wanna wanna wanna get get get what I want
Don’t stop
Give me give me give me what you got got
Cause I can’t wait wait wait any more more more more
Best opening lines award goes to ‘Untouched’ by The Veronicas
I’ve been devoting myself to you Monday to Monday and Friday to Friday
Not getting enough retribution or decent incentives to keep me at it
I’m starting to feel just a little abused like a coffee machine in an office
So I’m gonna go somewhere closer to get me a lover and tell you all about it
I had never thought of a coffee machine in an office being abused, but, dammit, the woman is right. ‘She Wolf’ by Shakira
There isn’t much that I feel I need:
a solid soul and the blood I bleed.
But with a little girl, and by my spouse
I only want a proper house.
‘My Girls’ by Animal Collective
I can remember days of sun, we knew our lives had just begun
We could do anything, we’re fearless when we’re young
Under the moon, address unknown, I can remember nights in Rome
I thought that love would last, a promise set in stone
‘The Way It Used To Be’ by Pet Shop Boys
"Have a baby by me!"
Have a baby by me, baby! Be a millionaire
Have a baby by me, baby! Be a millionaire
Have a baby by me, baby! Be a millionaire
Be a millionaire, be a, be a millionaire
At least he’s honest. ‘Baby By Me’ by 50 Cent feat. Ne Yo
Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah! Mum-mum-mum-mum-mah! GaGa-oo-la-la! Want your bad romance.
‘Bad Romance’ by Lady GaGa
I have done what you suggested
And the world has paid attention to my belief
But I’m still alone
So millions think I’m ugly now
But it’s the same old story
Until I sing the song
‘The Glare’ David McAlmont & Michael Nyman (the track is about Susan Boyle)
Don’t you know sometimes when it feels like someone put a hex on you?
Well I felt like that, I was blaming myself
I was cushioning my fall.
Hold my arms back when they beat me
Leave me in the ditch when they kick me
Sever my limbs and deceive me
Sometimes life isn’t easy
‘Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy’ by Mew
Well I’ve been thinking about,
And I’ve been breaking it down without an answer
I know I’m thinking aloud but if your love’s
Still around why do we suffer? Why do we suffer?
‘Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.)’ by Monsters of Folk
Bell x1: Just picking your knickers from your arse.
Still you’re the chocolate at the end of my Cornetto
I love the way your underwire bra
Always sets off that X-ray machine
‘The Great Defector’ by Bell X1
That’s what I read in that Sunday magazine
The anvil is falling, falling on your head
You’re just picking your knickers from your arse
Like you’re playing a one stringed harp
‘One Stringed Harp’ by Bell X1
We’re all bulimic
But keep forgetting to puke
‘One Stringed Harp’ by Bell X1 (again)
People hear me, who can know (who can know)
if our time on Earth’s the soundcheck or the show?
Ask a good man, and there’s no doubt
He’ll have too much on his mind to work it out.
‘Ride’ by Prefab Sprout
What’s that sound?
I like that sound.
I love that sound.
“It’s the sound of my shoes”
‘Shoes’ by Tiga
I understand if she know how to please you
Kid CuDi: Irresistable to women
I understand if she lovin’ and tease you
In my right mind I should probably leave you
Why can’t all three of us be peoples?
A paean to the menage-a-trois in ‘She Came Along’ by Sharam feat. Kid CuDi
So, what wordsmithery ticked your fancy or made you wish you were deaf this year?
Baffling non-hit of 2009. It’s got Robyn, it’s got violins, it’s got urgent futuristic synthy squiggles and lyrics about robots (see also Girls Aloud’s ‘beautiful robots dancing’ in Untouchable). Sometimes one despairs of the public…
09. Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth: Neko Case
(fan video)
Post Copenhagen anthem? I had never heard the Sparks original (or the Martin L Gore version [cheers Orn]), so I didn’t realise that this wasn’t a Case classic, so seamlessly does it fit on the Middle Cyclone album. Another fine showcase for her voice (and miles better than Sparks as it turn out).
08. Would’ve Been The One (Groove Police Club Mix): Solange
Solange’s original from 2008 was rather good in itself, but occasionally, an apparently straightforward Big Room mix can bring out a previously hidden seam of feeling. In a so-so year for funky house, Groove Police manage to nail it.
07. Everglade: Antony & The Johnsons
(fan video)
It was difficult for Antony to top the Mercury-award winning I Am A Bird Now, but follow up The Crying Light was every bit as strong (and possibly a little more cohesive with it’s focus away from the gender/identity stuff and towards the plight of the environment). This album closer has Antony at the centre of a breathlessly cinematic soaring maelstrom of emotion and beauty. Wowza.
06. London Girl: The Invisible
Mercury-nominated literary jazzy muso types in extremely groovy track shocker. Granted, it is the hookiest thing on their eponymous debut, but that means it works all the better when isolated from the surrounding tracks. Oh, alright, the album is very good too.
05. Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F.): Monsters of Folk
(fan competition video)
As equally wary of ’supergroups’ as I am in awe of M. Ward, I was pleasantly relieved to find the MOF album a highlight in a strong year. This slightly electro (and unrepresentative) opening track is testimony to the four-way creativity elevating MOF to something strangely greater than the sum of its parts.
04. Jailbird: M. Ward
My artist of the decade makes his best album in 2009. I hate him of course, as he is the same age as me and I’ll never be able to release enough albums to catch up with him, but that’s not important. Jailbird is classic M. Ward; it sounds trendily folky, it’s got superb guitar ‘picking’, some existential mumblings and just the right amount of strings. It’s immaculate headphone music.
03. Let There Be Music: Prefab Sprout
So, the tapes are resurrected from beneath Paddy McAloon’s staircase, and this should have been released back in 1993. They couldn’t do very much with these masters other than gloss ‘em up a bit, so maybe this ‘restriction’ has finally allowed us a glimpse of the real McAloon? The one who, like Black Eyed Peas 17 years later, wants to channel Prince. Who knew he was capable of such experimental funkiness? Note to Paddy: Listen to your friend Thomas Dolby; forget Sony, pull the finger out and release your stuff yourself online.
02. Candy: Paolo Nutini
I like when I’m taken by surprise. Like many others I’d dismissed Paolo Nutini as a James Morrison/James Blunt/etc type; pleasant if unmemorable. Then this growly Scots thing comes along pleading for some candy (which I presume is not of the confectionary variety) and then suddenly the track turns into a repeated, insistent cry that “I’ll be there waiting for you’. (He followed it up with Pencil Full of Lead, which, while admirably weird, was a step too skiffle for me.) It’s probably a bit odd to become a standard, but it deserves to.
01. The Way It Used To Be: Pet Shop Boys
I can’t imagine working with PSB at this stage of their career. They’ve done and seen it all and have rarely put a foot wrong critically so their choice of producers tend to just enhance their sound rather than stretch them. Richard X’s work on Fugitive was wasted as a b-side; Trevor Horn’s work on Fundamental looked backwards to fuller-sounding pomp, but their work with Girls Aloud hitmakers, Xenomania seemed to push them creatively as well as sonically. Love Etc was a bold, unusual and appropriate update of the PSB sound – something they would never have come up with by themselves at this stage. But the best results arrived with this track, an urgent, adult, contemporary and sophisticated song that sounds like a blend of every PSB track ever made and nothing like anything they’ve done at the same time. Not only the best track of 2009, but the best track PSB have ever put their names to. Seriously.
Ok, thanks for bearing with me through another year of Flip and frippery. Your reward is in the form of two ‘lightly-mixed’ compilations (handily CD-sized too) which feature many of the tracks from my Top 50 (and a few more for good measure). Right click (or whatever) on each to download a zip (tracklists in the comments).We’ll leave it up until Jan 6th. In the meantime, Happy New Year 2010!
Big thanks to JW, Orn and Robin for passing on goodies during the year.
Toodles then awkwardly-monikered ‘noughties’. Everyone’s giving up blogging as Facebook and Twitter make it easier to tell the world what you found on the way home from work. Air France are mourning losing my twice weekly custom in October after an exhausting year. I now know how to make flatbreads. And, oh, I now properly live in London. Other things happened too.
I’ve not given up blogging and, as well as reposting pictures of LOLcats and ranting at the Church, I’ve always posted my fave musical choices of the year. It’s been a rather good year for music crowned with a 17-year-old angry rap-metal track kicking the X Factor snore-fest to the kerb. I notice that my impatience with mainstream pop continues to grow much as my gravitation towards the US-centred older hipster music gets stronger annually. None of my Top Ten have troubled the Top Ten; Bad Romance is good, but it’s not that good.
A top FIFTY! Yes, and I could have conceivably gone to 100 (but at that stage I’d have been seriously considering Pitbull). Also, writing about music is like dancing about architecture, as someone once said, so there only so many ways one say ‘I really like this’ before it gets super tedious (for you). Only two rules:
an act gets one entry only (Sorry about that PSB’s Love Etc – a genuinely fantastic pop single) and
the track should, to be best of my knowledge, be from 2009.
Fifty to eleven now, the big Top Ten tomorrow.
I’ve also put together a selection of tracks as a couple of ‘lightly mixed’ compilations which you can burn to CD or put straight into your media player. One is kinda fast and is called ‘Motion’; the other starts slow and gets completely glacial and is called ‘Rest’. You can download ‘em tomorrow too (but only for a limited time as the blog is now a target for the Kopyright peeps…)
11.Shoes: Tiga
Does he know that we know of Kelly’s ‘Shoes’? If he does, does that mean that a single point of uber-archness may be responsible for pop-culture folding inwards on itself to a far more devastating end than the Large Hadron Collider could ever achieve?
12.After The Rain: Shirley Bassey
Having learned nothing from the ridicule that Sirben Kingsly provoked, Dameshirley insisted on ‘Dame’ being used on her new album. She says she was unsure about the songs given to her by a host of contemporary types such as Rufus, Manic Street Preachers, Gary Barlow and the Pets; after all, these songs generally didn’t require her to BELT. This song by Richard Hawley is restrained, emotional and beautiful. Dameshirley has rarely sounded less of an ass.
13.We Are All Connected: Symphony of Science
It’s trendy to (neologism alert) hate on Autotune, but in the right hands, it’s another way of adding to already bewildering variety of ways technology has been harnessed in the pursuit of artistic expression. Here a music graduate samples various 70s/80sTV scientists and Autotunes them to ’sing’. The rather spacey subject matter is entirely appropriate too. We are a made of star stuff – we are a way for the cosmos to know itself. Blub!
14.A Horse Is Not A Home: Miike Snow
I’ve no idea what they’re on about (or indeed why there are two ‘i’s in ‘Miike’). I just play along with air drums and get caught up with the punchy angst of it all.
15.Tonight’s Today; Jack Peñate
One of the (annoying) wave of Estuary English types, Jack ditched the affectation and came back with a blissed out Afrobeat, Balearic spaced out thing. The critics, but not the public, loved it.
16.Wolfgang’s 5th Symphony: Wolfgang Gartner
This filled the dancefloor in my head while clearing a real one at the pool party in Barcelona. “Can you put on some Freemasons?” they pleaded. “No”, said I, as I mentally conducted the demonic techno orchestra of this Mozart sampling madness.
17.She Came Along: Sharam feat. Kid CuDi
So your girlfriend leaves you for another woman. You take it on the chin and propose a threesome. Not sure if Kid CuDi is coming off as cheeky or a bit sad, but the spectral presence of Patsy Cline suggests the latter.
18.Untouched: The Veronicas
And for 4 minutes, you too can be a petulant American semi-goth teen girl as you wig out in your room with a hairbrush* in front of a poster of Robert Pattinson. (What? Like you haven’t…) * I’m aware that I have no need to possess a hairbrush. Work with me.
19.I’m Not Alone: Calvin Harris
And it’s 1996 again. Roll out the strobes. I also have a soft spot for most recent single, Flashback, as it has a most odd structure. But this is the huger choon.
20.New York: Paloma Faith
I’m not buying the whole big hair/kooky dame thing, but dammit if the heart doesn’t flutter a little when the choir kicks in.
21.My Girls: Animal Collective
This year’s critical avant-pop darlings left me rather cold at first. It all sounded just too smugly clever and sexless. I didn’t delete it off the iPod though and gradually this track in particular made it through my barriers. Highpoint: the particularly euphoric-yet-girly “woo!” that begins in the final third.
22.Poker Face: Lady GaGa
Hurrah! We have found a Proper Pop Star at last. The GaGa has a way with a choon, wears broken teapots and is a bit unhinged. This is proper popstardom See also Bad Romance, Just Dance and Paparazzi (but not LoveGame). Still can’t listen to the album though, but that’s what shuffle was invented for.
23.The Glare: McAlmont & Nyman
It’s about Susan Boyle, you know. I’m not entirely sure how David McAlmont managed to swing this one, but he’s written songs about contemporary phenomenon over some existing Nyman tracks. Kicking myself that I missed their performance at Islington’s Union Chapel.
24.Awake: Donkeyboy
I thought this was a duet between a gent and an older woman, but it turns out it’s the same young Scandinavian man. Delightfully melodic power pop.
25.Remedy; Little Boots
Dancing is my remedy, remedy, oh. Indeed it is. Giddy-making dance pop.
26.The Spell: Alphabeat
More giddy-making dance pop. Another act that can’t seem to cross over to being universally loved.
27.Feelings Gone: Basement Jaxx feat. Sam Sparro
Dodgy punctuation aside, a welcome return for Sam Sparro with possibly the best singles band of the last 10 years.
28.Dorothy Gale: David Turpin
Dublin gay boy channels Matthew Herbert and Roisin Murphy with a smidgeon of Madonna’s Like A Prayer (no, come back…).
29.Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy: Mew
I would have cried if the album was shit, but it so, so wasn’t. There’s a lighter touch in evidence and this typically weirdly-structured track visits calypso and a choir and five different choruses and angular guitars and weedy boy vocals. Loves it.
More indieblog darlings. The original is just dandy, but as is not exactly unusual, a bit of a ravey dance makeover makes skinny guitar boys sound rather better.
31.Lullaby: We Plants Are Happy Plants
Blog-friendly neo-hippie stuff that makes everyone happy.
32.M.A.G.I.C: The Sound Of Arrows
Blog-friendly neo-hippie stuff that makes everyone happy (part II).
33.House of Cards: The Foreign Exchange feat. Musinah
The type of mathematical jazz-infused soul that makes me feel more intelligent just by liking it. (Thanks JW)
34.Meet Me Halfway: Black Eyed Peas
We may as well be frank. BEP are a very calculating pop machine and it’s this cynicism that stops me truly loving anything they produce. That said, Meet Me Halfway manages the rare feat of squeezing some very contemporary sonic ideas through a filter of Little Red Corvette via Like A Virgin. That alone (and a memory of doing the splits with a tall American girl) gets it a slot in here.
35.Pon De Floor: Major Lazer feat. VYBZ Cartel & Afrojack
Utterly *utterly* deranged. Too deranged perhaps for this year, it will be re-released next year and will be Top 5. Check the video for some amazing acrobatic dancehall dry humping.
36.Underage: The Hidden Cameras
Yet another great album from the Canadian gay-church-pop collective, and this is a jolly swingorilliant ode to underage love. Let’s dedicate this to the Catholic Church.
37.If The Stars Were Mine (Orchestral Version): Melody Gardot
When I open a boutique hotel in Rio, this shall play in the lobby at 1 am. (Good call, naming your child ‘Melody’ btw Mr & Mrs Gardot.)
38.December Song (I Dreamed Of Christmas): George Michael
Doesn’t he sound like Prefab Sprout? A not-terrible original Christmas song *and* it mentions ‘sugar from Jesus’ for some reason.
39.The Strangers: St Vincent
More arty avant-pop stuff. Very knowing and brainy, but this track isn’t painfully so.
40.Don’t Bring Flowers: Erik Hassle vs MPHO
Don’t bring flowers after I’m dead. ‘The postmillennial love sing is somewhat dark’. Discuss.
41.Lost: Susanna and the Magical Orchestra
Um, it might be a little bleak…., ScandiBleak…
42.Love In July: Sally Shapiro
…as opposed to ScandiDelightPop from SS.
43.Stay: Julie Feeney
Album no. 2 for Galway prodigy, and again she’s just fizzing with ideas and not afraid to show off her skills. At times this sort of talent can be a little like a grown up Billie Barry kid, but mostly, as with this track, the results are accomplished and potent.
44.Not Fair: Lily Allen
Just to show I’ve no hard feelings towards Lily for her ill-advised foray into the downloading debate. She has a good way with a single and the faux-country jamboree video was a joy.
45.Come Back To Me (Seamus Haji Mix): Utada
She’s keeps trying to make it in the English-speaking world, and despite the characteristically meaty Haji production, we’re just not biting. Shame.
46.Heartbreaker (WaWa Club Mix): MSTRKRFT feat. John Legend
WaWa continue to nudge into the melodic Big Room space previously occupied by Freemasons. Here they take the spikes off MSTRKRFT and allow John Legend plenty of room to impress.
47.Million Dollar Bill: Whitney Houston
It was good to see (some of) Whitney make it back this year. This delicious slice of 70s soul production suited Whitney’s, um, more mature (who said ‘ravaged’?) vocals.
48.Sweet Disposition: The Temper Trap
Dreamy alt-rock from Oz used in dreamy alt-movie from US. Emos make pretty sound.
49.Cosmic Love: Florence + The Machine
Pretty much as the title says.
50.Release Me: Agnes
The type of summer one-hit wonder we use up, spit out and forget by November. Yum.
Four ‘astounding and practically flawless’ albums in the last 10 years. Hey, I’m picky. My criteria?
1. Is it sonically mesmerising? The Avalanches’s album consists of over 3,500 samples. Mew and The Sleepy Jackson’s efforts feel like they might collapse inwards with the hugeness of the production. Paddy McAloon’s piece can’t even be classified. None of these would be 15% as good ‘unplugged’.
2. Does it bear repeat listening? Over and over and over again. And generally listened to as a complete album rather than iPod-inspired cherry-picking.
3. Does it grasp at the sublime? Each of these albums reaches to express something that other artforms can’t quite manage. There is something somehow transcendent going on. The Avalanches and Paddy McAloon albums make me tear up with sadness and burst with joy within their 40-odd minutes.
4. There isn’t a duff track. These are all killer/no filler albums.
5. You can tell that a shitload of effort went into them. Even the packaging is stunning in each case (yes, even Mew).
Here’s the chart (click to enlarge).
Frequent followers may be surprised at the lack of Pet Shop Boys. The problem is that the PSB albums in the last decade have been inconsistent. I believe that they have made some of their best music this decade, but the albums themselves are uneven.
We welcomed the complicated noughties properly in October 2002.
You will probably remember Aserejé by Spanish sisters Las Ketchup as one of those odd novelty records that people hear on holiday and then purchase on their return. And so it was in 2002 when the Spanglish version (rebranded as The Ketchup Song) hit no. 1 around the world.
Aserejé arrived at the tail-end of Latin fever that launched the English-language careers of rather durable popsters such as Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin and Shakira. Unlike these forward-looking acts whose music was a successful blend of globalised power pop, Aserejé was a faintly ridiculous cheesy throwback with comedy dancing and apparently nonsensical lyrics. More Macarena than Bailamos, more Y Viva España than Livin’ La Vida Loca.
Let’s start with the name: The Ketchup Song by Las Ketchup. The three sisters (a fourth joined later when they represented Spain in the Eurovision) are the daughters of highly-regarded flamenco guitarist, José Fernández Torres, or ‘Tomatito‘ as he was better known. There’s Las Ketchup at least. Cute.
But what of ‘Aserejé’? It’s not a Spanish word; it’s not a word at all, so no doubt it made sense for Sony to rebrand it as ‘The Ketchup Song’ and introduce some English bits to make it a little easier for Anglophones to get their tongues around. But what people might not know is that the chorus, the ‘nonsense’ part may be an example of a mondegreen, or a new interpretation of a misheard lyric.
The track is ostensibly about a young chap called Diego who is something of a dude (‘afro-gipsy’) who enters a club at midnight. When the DJ spots him, he puts on Diego’s signature track which is reprised in the memorable, if seemingly nonsensical, refrain:
Aserejè ja de jè de jebe tu de jebere seibiunouva,
majavi an de bugui an de buididipi
Diego’s favorite track appears to be Rapper’s Delight by the Sugarhill Gang, one of the first hip hop tracks and one that was pivotal in popularising the genre.
Aserejé was originally credited to Manuel Ruiz, but is now also credited to Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, whose track Good Times was appropriated by the Sugarhill Gang for their track. While sampling created legal nightmares on a much larger scale later, here was one of the first instances of copyright infringement in hip hop being pursued. Rodgers and Edwards threatened legal action and were credited as writers on the track. Grandmaster Caz who actually wrote (but did not perform) the lyrics was never credited. It’s not clear at what point they were also credited as writers on Aserejé, but they are certainly there now (how come they never chased Queen?)
Here’s the opening verse of Rapper’s Delight paired with Aserejé.
I said a hip hop, the hippie, the hippie
Aserejé ja de jé de jebe
do the hip hip hop, a you don’t stop
tu de jebere sebiunouva
the rockin’ to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie
majabi an de bugui
to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
an de buididipí
So, what have we learned? A track put together from the emerging hip hop trend in late 70s New York towards African-American youth rhyming over pre-existing tracks such as Good Times set in motion a chain of events that highlight the tension between copyright and creativity, become one of the prevalent musical genres worldwide, and later inspire some Spanish sisters to get countless drunken holidaymakers to learn the Ketchup dance while attempting to sing along to a Spanish speakers attempt to interpret what a rastafarian gipsy is attempting to sing, while Nile Rodgers’ royalties go stratospheric.
And we drunken holidaymakers were delightfully oblivious to the whole headache-inducing intertexuality of it all.
Can’t resist! Have a listen to this elderly guest in 1998’s The Wedding Singer.
It’s almost Christmas and it actually snowed today. What better time to indulge in a little (oxymoron alert!) festive melancholy.
Here’s part 3 of my seasonal Scarves & Gloves series. The first two parts came out in 2007, and it takes a good two years for decent Christmas music to find its way onto my iPod.
So, put on the fire, your most ridiculous socks and bed down for some bittersweet Xmas vibes.
Sorry, I do this every year. Pure curiosity as to how many people start looking for this and when. And then to see how many legit copies are purchased. Apologies!
This is the process I usually go through when acquiring music.
Fig. 1
So, as you can clearly see in Fig 1, there can be quite a convoluted route to get me to part with my cash. We shall call this ‘Consumer-driven Filtration’ (CDF) (as opposed to to the very direct route favoured by record companies, which we can call ‘Leona’).
First he released his second album back in October. I heard nothing of him til Wednesday last.
He played a free show in Panti Bar in Dublin on Wednesday. I follow Panti on Facebook and she embedded the video for current ‘radio single’ Dorthy Gale on her profile. I clicked on it.
Track turned out to be a slick ditty reminiscent of Herbert, Kelley Polar or Roisín Murphy’s clever little gay brother. It also managed to get strings and massed vocals in and be a bit slyly epic.
I was sold. Straight on to iTunes and did a quick sweep of the 30-second previews of the other tracks on his ‘Haunted!’ album.
Reader, I purchased it. And it’s superb. Sometimes just having the musical goods is enough to make me part with the cash without the palaver.
We could say that these are searing critiques of commercialisation and embraces of the Absurd. We could.
My favourite reviews on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk:
Just Five Ingredients (Paperback)
by Ainsley Harriott (Author)
13 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
brave and courageous, 19 Aug 2009
By Dr. M von Vogelhausen
This is a movingly written account of one man’s battle to survive with limited resources at his disposal, as the title suggests. Like me, you may well be familiar with Mr. Harriott from the documentary “ready, steady, cook”, where chefs and members of the public are made to prepare meals while competing in a variety of track events. The hardship of that brutal series is as nothing, however, when compared to the travails described in this book.
Ainsley (I feel I can use his first name, having followed him this far) displays ingenuity and more than a little resolve when forced to make his five ingredients (pasta, potato waffles, loganberries, Tizer and ham oil) stretch for as many years. By the end, when the “recipes” are really just the scratchings in the sand of a mind pushed to its limits, I saw that it wasn’t really about food; it was about fear, anger, joy, and seasoning.
Perfection?, 23 Nov 2006
By Black Mask
Duets can be tough things to pull off, especially when you’re dealing with two magnificent and unique talents, but sometimes… sometimes they just work. Think of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. Think of Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry. Think of Freddie Mercury and Monserrat Caballe. And now forget all of them, because the new benchmark in duets has finally arrived. Here we have two people of such staggering talent, of such bewildering cultural importance, of such dizzying MAGIC that they just blow you away. Every song on this album should be the Christmas number one. Every song on this album is destined to be a classic. This album should be compulsory on Desert Island Discs, just like the Bible and the collected works of William Shakespeare. Everyone in the world should have the lyrics from this album tattooed on their soul and the album cover tattooed on their back. This is the greatest album of all time. If a better album is ever released again, EVER, I will eat this album. And then I’ll buy another copy to replace the one I ate and put it with the other fifty copies I keep in what used to be my record collection until I dumped the lot because this album was the only album I’d ever need again ever.
The Mountain Men’s Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee
16,838 of 16,992 people found the following review helpful:
Dual Function Design, November 10, 2008
By B. Govern “Bee-Dot-Govern”
This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.
I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.
Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.
Week after week, it’s a different cock in a frock rolled out to say something nasty about the gays, so it was with rolled eyes and resignation that I read the headline Gays ‘will never go to heaven’: cardinal. But then I stopped in my tracks. Let’s not tar this chap with the muppet brush too hastily…
Last week we learned all about the concept of ‘mental reservation‘ in the Catholic Church; a neat little trick that allows people such as the otherworldlyCardinal Desmond Connell to have a blemish-free conscience when allowing people to believe that which is not strictly true (kinda like when you were a kid and you believed that it was ok to tell porkies if you crossed your fingers behind your back).
This got me thinking. Surely Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan (me neither) couldn’t really believe that the GLBTs couldn’t get into Heaven? Surely a man of his education wouldn’t baldly state something like homosexuality is as a result of an ‘education issue’ or an identity disorder stemming from adolescence? I checked the calendar; it is indeed almost 2010 – so how can we explain his rather fruity statement?
Mental reservation of course! Let’s look more closely at his statement. The bits he certainly reserved mentally are in square brackets (more manly than those faggy roundy ones {and don’t get me started on the frankly outrageously camp squiggly brackets…}).
VATICAN CITY — Homosexuals and transsexuals “will never enter the kingdom of heaven [without a red carpet]“, a leading Roman Catholic cardinal said on Wednesday.
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said that while the Church regarded [outmoded notions of the wrongness of] homosexuality as an “insult to God”, this did not justify discrimination against gay and transsexual people.
“Transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter the kingdom of heaven [without a red carpet, paparazzi and some kind of Cirque du Soliel thing happening] and it is not me who says this, but Saint Paul [the Bible's very own prolific spambot] ,” the cardinal said, in comments reported by the Ansa news agency.
“People are not born [fabulously] homosexual, they become [beautiful, divatastically] homosexual, for different reasons: education [about grooming] issues or because they did not develop [unhealthy relationships with the handsy parish priest who obviously had some issues with] their own identity during adolescence. It may not be their fault, but acting against [their fierce beeatch] nature and the dignity of the human body is an insult to God [or 'Tyra' as we sometimes call Her],” he said.
There, I hope that clears it up. I think with this mental reservation concept, the Church will be able to get away with, well, just about anything now! Hurrah!
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Toodles then awkwardly-monikered ‘noughties’. Everyone’s giving up blogging as Facebook and Twitter make it easier to tell the world what you found on the way home from work. Air France are mourning losing my twice weekly custom in October after an exhausting year. I now know how to make flatbreads. And, oh, I now properly live in London. Other things happened too.
Sorry, I do this 
Week after week, it’s a different 