Thursday, October 16, 2008
Debate
The most astonishing moments from last night's final presidential debate:
1. Fran-Cain-Stein blames Obama for HIS OWN negative campaigning. This man is actually delusional.
2. He then tries to link Obama to ACORN, accusing the group of performing "one of the greatest frauds in voter history" and for "maybe destroying the fabric of democracy." That's rich indeed coming from the Republican party.
3. Obama doesn't beat around the bush and challenges MuckCain on the fact that cries of "Kill him" were shouted - and not disputed - in relation to Obama at McCain/Palin rallies. It was electric viewing, and to hear the words come so calmly from Obama's mouth simultaneously crystallized how more presidential Obama is, and how disgraceful and vile McCain's campaign has become. The old fool was left speechless - because there was nothing he could say.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Name game
A proud day for the global clan Cashin on The Daily Show the other day. Skip to 1.37 mins in...
Sounds like a Leap of shite Amy!
Cyndi, dear, you're still No 1
My interview with Cyndi Lauper in today's IndependentCyndi Lauper has the strongest 'Noo Yawk' accent I've ever heard, so it was probably not the best idea to volunteer to teach her some Irish during the course of a transatlantic phone call that had a five-second delay due to being relayed through a London agency. Continue here.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Politics is bullshit...
Mysterious Skin and Third Rock from the Sun actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets all political in the run-up to the election.
Always nice to know you're being read...
Delightful thread started over on Irish-Nationalism.net about my feature on the gay prom in the Independent last week.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Alternative plans
Get your skates - and skirts, fake boobs, prosthetic penis' and wigs - on if you want to take part in next year's Alternative Miss Ireland. Click on the poster for all the details.
Google and gay marriage
Google adopts a rare political position and comes out (so to speak) against California's Proposition 8 proposal on next month's ballot seeking to amend the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage.
Recount
This weekend, in absence of any real life, I watched Recount, a fantastic HBO TV movie about the farcical 2000 US presidential election, and the chaos that ensued in Florida over hanging and dimple chad (the plural of chad is chad, as we find out) and the various efforts on both the Republican and Democratic sides to swing the election for their guy. A brilliant cast - Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, Tom Wilkinson, Ed Begley Jnr, and Laura Dern - truly unnerving as the bizarre Katherine Harris, Florida's overly-made-up Secretary of State - Recount is essential viewing for any politico-heads out there, and is especially topical this year where the election could come down to a close vote-off in many key swing states.
Have you heard about the bird?
Damn you Peter Griffin! This song (and, if I'm honest, dance) has been in my head all weekend. It's a recurring 'earworm' gag from episode 2 of Season 7 of the show, and I almost cried laughing at it. B-b-b-bird, bird is the word...
Movie posters
50 beautiful movie posters. Though it leaves out The Truman Show, one of the best (and most copied) posters ever.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
All the Presidents' movies
My feature from today's Review in the Independent
The 2008 presidential contest between Barack Obama and John McCain has been t he most thrilling and dramatic race in modern American history, and it’s sure to make a hell of a movie some day.
All the elements are there for a great Hollywood epic: generational conflict, cliff hangers, intrigue, bitch fights, glamorous leading ladies (as well as the odd femme fatale), and a spectacular plot twist in the third act in the form of vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, a candidate and a character that even the most imaginative screenwriter would surely struggle to create.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Gay high school for Windy City
Chicago could get its own gay-friendly high school, similar to the Harvey Milk school in New York.
Republicans are putting Obama in physical danger
Andrew Sullivan gets to the heart of MuckCain and Palin's outrageous character attacks on Obama in recent days: that fomenting the prejudices, ignorance and rage of elements of the Republican base could put Obama in actual physical danger.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
MuckCain and Palin's Faithful League of Uninformed Voters
Probably the saddest and most terrifying thing you'll see all year.
More of it here. How can these people be so fucking stupid? These idiots should be identified and barred from voting for life.
UK gets mo-seum
Britain is to get its first museum of homosexual history. From today's London Independent...
Will it be Roth this year?
Sending out all my best vibes for Philip Roth to win this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, to be announced later today - despite the comments from the Nobel committee member Horace Engdahl last week.
Read an extensive interview with Roth in The Observer from a few weeks back.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
No wire hangers. Or questions about cups of urine.
Yikes. My friend David just put me onto this car crash interview with Faye Dunaway in yesterday's Guardian. Every journalist's worst 'mare.
Coming out to play
The school Debs can be a hit-and-miss affair, but it still remains a rites-of-passage for most Irish students, marking as it does (or should, at any rate) the end of those awkward, hormonal formative years, and the dawn of those even more awkward and hormonal adult ones.
But if you’re a gay teenager, the Debs can be a meaningless, even painful experience because, more often than not, you cannot openly and comfortably attend with a same sex partner.
Continue here.
Obama and the wreck-onomy
The town hall debate is mid-way through: every question has been on the American wreckonomy so far, which has all been to Obama's advantage. Keep 'em coming baby!
Meanwhile, McCain hits a new low while addressing Obama - or, should I say, "that one". Astonishing.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Obama hits back
The Obama campaign's fightback against MuckCain's smears - a video detailing his involvement with Charles Keating and the murky savings and loans scandal. The low road to high office, eh?
Meanwhile, today's Gallup polls have Obama leading by 51% to 42% for McCain, while Americans' general satisfaction rate slumps to an all-time low of just 9%. As long as Obama puts in an even competent performance in tonight's second debate, then this election could be decided by the end of this week
Bird takes Washington...
Mediacontact.ie has just gotten word that Charlie Bird has been appointed as RTE's new Washington Correspondent, replacing Robert Shortt.
Summer Lovin'
I've spent the last few evenings howling and weeping - nothing new there, I guess - but this time, my wailing was induced by watching Summer Heights High, a mockumentary series set in an Australian public school, written by and starring Chris Lilley, who plays three parts in the show: Ja'mie King, a racist, snobby, bitchy private school exchange student; Jonah Takalua, a 13-year-old ADHD-afflicted, special ed Tongan bully; and, my favourite, Mr G, a petty, mincing, self-centered drama teacher - sorry, Director of Performing Arts - who is determined to stage a lavish school musical based on a Summer Heights High student who died from an Ecstasy overdose.
Crass, tasteless, offensive, racist - and all the better for it - SHH is like Mean Girls meets Home and Away meets The Office meets Nighty Night. It's absolutely brilliant television. Dig it up somwhere - you'll thank me later. *dick* tation
Monday, October 06, 2008
The poor Brians had to pull an all-nighter. Let's generously compensate them somehow.
In all the coverage of the Irish government's plan to underwrite the deposits of the six main Irish banks, did you notice how many reports referred, almost heroically and reverentially, to the fact that the Taoiseach and Finance Minister had to work all through the night to secure the deal, and how exhausted they must have been the next day?
So what? When was the last time (if ever) they had to work this hard on anything on our behalf - other than their own re-election, of course?
But maybe I'm being churlish. As a reward for their diligence, I think we should pay them a six figure salary that's anything between 7 and 10 times the average industrial wage, as well as give them generous expense claims, massive pension entitlements, and the equivalent of six months off a year, including lengthy breaks during the summer and at Christmas to recuperate.
Oh wait...
Grill-iant blog post
I implore you to break out your best Biblical puns and contribute to a thread that gets my vote for blog post of the month over at UnaRocks.
Obama wins youth vote
Not so shocking news: Obama holds a commanding lead over McCain in a USA Today/MTV poll of young voters aged 18-29. Read here...
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Tina as Scarah: Strike 3
SNL last night - obviously - had Tina Fey as Scarah Feylin during the VP debate with Joe Biden. Fantastic stuff. "I believe marriage to be a sacred institution between two unwilling teenagers."
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Morning gory
My guest column from today's Weekend magazine in the Independent
I read recently that Barack Obama’s wife Michelle wakes up at 4.30 every morning to work out on a treadmill before making breakfast for their two young daughters and getting them out to school.
She then heads off to her mega-salaried job on the board of the University of Chicago Hospitals, as well as cramming in time to help her husband in the not-inconsiderable task of becoming the 44th US president. And all before 9am by the sounds of it.
I find all of that pre-dawn hustle and bustle bizarre and, quite frankly, terrifying. Mrs Obama is clearly a morning person, and, while I myself can be called many things, “morning person” certainly isn’t one of them.
You’ve heard of getting up on “the wrong side of the bed”? Well, my bed is perpetually surrounded by wrong sides, complete with matching duvet and pillows from the trendy ‘Wrong Side’ design label.
We all know people who are sprightly, chatty, upbeat and productive first thing, but to my mind, I could imagine those same people jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch declaring their love for a brain-washed former star of a hit teen angst TV show: it’s just not normal behaviour.
Morning time for me is otherwise known as my daily Seven Dwarves period: I’m simultaneously Sleepy, Grumpy, Dopey and sometimes even a little Sneezy. I’m also Bashful (as in I’ll bash anyone who comes near me), Happy (momentarily, when I get my coffee) and finally Doc (when I pump myself full of enough vitamin B and C to shock my system into action).
Those who know me, and particularly the saints who have lived with me, know not to speak to me before midday. Of course, that hasn’t stopped some of those individuals from deriving pleasure from my pain over the years.
When I was in school, my sadistic older brother used to barge into my bedroom at 7.45 every morning, pull of my duvet, throw open the curtains and open the window, all while singing, “Off to school, off to school, we’re all going off to school.” He would then be forcibly cheerful over breakfast, just to annoy me. Siblings can be so cruel.
These days, my morning-itis has been no doubt exacerbated by my job. There’s no real 9-5 structure to it. Believe it or not, I used to contribute to a breakfast radio show, which required being in the studio for 5.30am and having a stack of newspapers digested and ready to discuss on air by 6.30. Just how that station wasn’t served with hundreds of libel writs during my tenure is anyone’s guess.
I then spent two years working evening shifts on a newspaper, which really solidified the vampire-like existence I live today. My brain learned that it only had to come to life from 2pm onwards, and though I’ve since left that job, the hard-wiring remains.
Now I work from home, where I desperately try to enforce regular work hours on myself. The problem is that, no matter how much I try to transform from an owl into a lark, I find I’m still basically catatonic until lunchtime.
I always get up for work for 9am, but at that time of the day, it’s not uncommon for me to use shampoo as toothpaste, pour orange juice over my cereal or go to the shop wearing just my socks. I’m actually a danger to myself and others in that condition.
Suddenly, mysteriously, my whole demeanour changes once the afternoon dawns. It’s like I’m a Gremlin and I’ve just been fed after midnight. I could work the whole evening through until the early hours if I needed to, which of course has ramifications for my already-just-hanging-in-there social life, but that’s the price that has to be paid when your chronotype is firmly set to the PM dial.
Having said that, I’ve heard that there are hypnosis CDs that might be able to re-wire my body clock to turn me into an Obama-esque, early morning power broker. Anything that can liberate me from my morning comas has to be worth a shot. Until then, the News at 1 will continue to be my Morning Ireland. And in case you’re wondering, I finished writing this article at 1am. Naturally.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Homer tries to vote for Obama...
Love it!
Speaking of, another classic Simpsons presidential campaign episode... "Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others"
How much is enough?
My feature from today's Independent
Recession, credit crunch, banking meltdowns – it’s impossible to avoid the topic of money and finances right now. For that reason, now is the perfect time to publish a book focusing on the role of money in our lives and how much we really need to live a happy, fulfilling life.
Continue here.
Biden vs Scarah smackdown
VP debate tonight between Biden and Palin. Should be mesmerising television.
However, I have a theory about Palin that I've been working on: in the eerily prophetic final season of The West Wing, the Democratic Veep candidate Leo McGarry did appallingly bad in the debate prep, and rehearsal videos of the prep leaked to the media.
Things were so bad that Leo's own campaign team tuned into watch with hands over their eyes. But then Leo came to life on camera, and wiped the floor with his opponent. It turns out that Leo had deliberately "sandbagged" and leaked the videos to lower expectations, which turned out to be a brilliant, cunning strategy. Perhaps Scarah and the Republicans are doing something similar? Because she surely couldn't be this moronic? Surely?
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Tina sparks bidding war with first book
Great news!
30 Rock creator Tina Fey looks set to cash in on her recent Emmy triumph - she's reportedly been offered a whopping $6 million to publish her first book.
The comedienne/writer picked up top honours for the hit TV show at the Primetime Emmy Awards last month, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actress.
Her big win ignited a bidding war among publishers, and now they are all vying for Fey to sign on the dotted line to seal a deal to release a tome, according to the New York Post.
However, the book will not be a memoir - the publication claims it's been pitched as "non-fiction humour, more in the style of author, screenwriter and film director Nora Ephron".
Scarah and the gays
Dear God. Scarah Palin talks about her views on homosexuality. Yep folks, being gay is a choice according to the most disastrously, comically unqualified vice presidential candidate in American history. But don't worry, because, like all of the most insidious homophobes out there, her views are qualified because one of her best friends just happens to be gay...by choice, of course.
Meanwhile, Bill Maher slaughters Palin on The View - "If Joe Biden had made some of the comments to Katie Couric that Palin made, we'd think he had brain damage."
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Anne takes on Ray
Anne Doyle is on Ray D'arcy's show right now! She sounds like a right laugh: Anne for the Late Late Show we say!
Ireland's secret royal crush?
Feature from today's Independent.
There is a long and bloody relationship betweenIreland and the British crown, blighted in the popular imagination as it is by colonialism, the Famine, the republican War of Independence, a civil war fought over an oath to the King, and the tragedy of Northern Ireland.
But a new documentary that airs tonight on RTE 1 dares to ask if the Irish people deep down have a secret love of the British royal family. Continue here.
Dumb and Dumber
The comedy just gets better. McCrazy and Scarah make a joint appearance on Katie Couric to try back-peddle on her disastrous interviews last week. "Gotcha journalism", "she didn't hear the question properly over the noise" - this pair of clowns should be defeated in a landslide in November.
Monday, September 29, 2008
The Living Room Candidate
The Museum of the Moving Image has a brilliant online repository of all the presidential commercials going back to Eisenhower v Stephenson's presidential race in 1952.
Amy rocks. Actually, make that 'raps'
Have you seen Ben Affleck's grim thriller Gone Baby, Gone? Remember Amy Ryan, who was Oscar nominated (and should have won) for her electrifying portrayal of the grubby mother from hell? Well check her out having some rapping fun with Steve Carell in the new series of the US version of The Office. That's versatility baby.
Here and now
My review of You Are Here in today's Irish Daily Mail
You Are Here (Daytime and Night-time),
And shadow we most certainly do: standing viewers literally become flies on the wall, observing the action right up close, themselves becoming nosy, ghostly presences in a dwelling already haunted by the lives of its current and former occupants, an apartment where even the furniture, appliances and plants offer up character details and musings by way of voiceover and other sound effects.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Some good viewin'
Friday afternoon and night, I caught performances of the highly original and innovative You Are Here, one of the highlights of the Dublin Theatre Festival. See here, or tomorrow's Irish Daily Mail, for my review.
After that, I hightailed it up to the IFI for Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens, the closing documentary of the Stranger than Fiction festival. Leibovitz is a fascinating woman who has had an amazing life and career, and this certainly was a welcome insight into her methods, but, seeing as it is made by her sister, it is perhaps too soft focus, and irritatingly didn't feature any captions to explain who the various contributors were: all pretty ironic, considering that it's a film about a photographer! Leibovitz deserves a more in-depth biography than this- here's hoping it will come some day.
This week, I'm sooooo looking forward to seeing The Year of Magical Thinking on Thursday afternoon - I'll be sure to post my thoughts afterwards.
Tina as Scarah: Strike 2
Tina Fey strikes again on SNL - this time doing Palin during that excruciating Katie Couric interview. With these two SNL performances alone, I think it's fair to say that Fey has destroyed Palin's credibility, and underlined her unsuitability for major office, more than any debate with Joe Biden ever could. Go Tina!
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