The Rebirth of The Rom-Com

In the week that has passed since my last blog post, I've noticed romance everywhere. There are cute couples walking around the supermarket together, eating out at restaurants and making out relentlessly in McDonald's. This week we found out that even Andy Gray has been whispering sweet nothings into the ears of women he used to be able to call co-workers (more on that later in the week). This may be due to the impending ball ache that is Valentine's Day, and the fact that every outlet that can make some sort of money from it are not so subliminally punching romantic gestures towards my face.

It's not that I don't like romance, it's just that like most sensible people, I don't feel the need to set aside a day where I have to be more loving than usual. In fact, in the last couple of weeks I've watched three romantic comedy films, which brings my lifetime rom-com viewings to four. I've seen so many romantic gestures that if someone were to cut me open right now, cute little squirrels would climb out of my body clutching bouquets of roses. This by no means makes me a fan of the genre though.

For example, I watched Love and Other Drugs on Monday night, a film in which Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhall play two 'fun-loving' (i.e. sex crazed), but ultimately unlikeable characters who spent the first half of the film having sex. Then in the second half they stopped, and decided to have a relationship which was so terribly alien to both of them because they both really just liked having meaningless sex with people before. Pricks.

In fact, I'm so disillusioned by the whole genre, I'm going to take a step towards revolutionising it. So here are some of my ideas for romantic comedy films.

1. Tom's Untimely Discovery
Tom is a loving husband and father of two children in their early teens. His life is average, he earns a living and on some months he has some disposable income, depending on if he has worked any overtime. He sits down to dinner that his wife, Elaine has put together, as she made it home first. Tom takes four bites of his chicken and pasta dish and all of a sudden he drops his cutlery. After 12 years of marriage, Tom has just realised he is gay. From here, Tom can do nothing but leave his wife and kids, and he embarks on a courageous journey to find his male soul mate.

2. Andrew
Andrew is a well known broadcaster, he has been married in the past, but now he is happily single. All of a sudden his world is rocked when his eye is caught by Charlotte, an attractive young woman who is relatively new at his place of work. Unfortunately, it is from here that Andrew's life falls apart, when he is fired from his job after chatting up Charlotte with a line that would have worked in 1992. But despite this drawback, Andrew, with a little help from some friends, does all he can to win back the woman he quite fancies.

3. Left Hook Lisa (working title)
Lisa works behind a bar in a nightclub, she is very attractive, and quite often gets lewd offers from rowdy drunks. During one exasperatingly busy night, she snaps, and viciously assaults a man who says she looks pretty. Feeling slightly guilty, and at the same time trying to extinguish the possibility of a GBH charge, Lisa visits her poor victim in hospital. The victim is a gorgeous man, or at least he would be if it wasn't for the heavy bruising. Lisa instantly falls in love, but can Rafael, the man in hospital, ever forgive her for hurting both his physical appearance and his pride.

With any luck these films will be in theatres by Valentine's day 2013. 

30 Single (and possibly mentally unhinged) Ladies.

A public display of affection. Is there anything worse? I don't mean a cheeky little peck on the lips every now and again as you go round the supermarket, that's no problem at all, if anything it's a little bit cute. I can't stand people who seem to have absolutely no social boundaries whatsoever, and proceed to get as close as they can to mating their other half without being arrested.

I walked in to McDonald's the other day to pick up some food, and on my way to the counter, I couldn't help but be appalled by a couple in their 30s exploring each other's throats with their tongues. I didn't really feel hungry after that, so maybe the government could use that information to combat obesity.

Anyway, worse still than public displays of affection are people who are desperately single. If you are lucky enough to have never encountered one of these types, just watch Take Me Out on ITV1 next Saturday night.

If you haven't seen Take Me Out, think of it is as a 21st century re-imagining of Blind Date in which single men come out and try to win a date with one of a panel of 30 single (and possibly mentally unhinged) single ladies. All this is overseen by Paddy McGuiness, who has a seemingly endless list of metaphors to make the whole thing a little bit entertaining.

As well as entertaining though, the process is infuriating. It would seem that if a boy wants to land a date on Take Me Out, they have to be an over-masculine jock with a chin that could smash through a plank of wood, or rich. You can't live with your parents, you can't have any quirky hobbies that give you any sort of extra dimension to your personality, and you definitely can't have any bad habits. Unless you're Irish. For women who are so desperately single that they have to go on a TV show to find a date, they are unbelievably picky. That is except for Jo Jo, who would probably go on a date with a gorilla as long as it was wearing a mask of a human face, and even then the Gorilla would come to his senses and switch off her light.

Take Natalie for example, she's beautiful. Unfortunately for her, she thinks her height is a bit of an issue because she stands at around 6'8". As a result, she immediately turns down every man who isn't taller than her, and if he is of a similar height, then she will wait until the next round when she realises he has some interests that are slightly different to hers. There are just no guys out there for you are their Natalie? You poor, poor thing.

Then there's Peggy. Peggy could definitely have got herself a date with a nice man last night, unfortunately she started talking. She had already decided that he was perfect for her, he looked exactly like her ex, who for some reason decided to cheat on her, and oh my god, he was just perfect. Like...his body, his hair, his face, there was nothing bad about him. Oh my god, he was perfect. Shortly after all this, he switched her light off. Can't begin to think why.

Perhaps, the reason for my underlying rage is due to some sort of jealousy. If I'm honest, I would love to go on Take Me Out. However, I am convinced that as soon as I told the girls my name and where I'm from, they would all switch their lights off, apart from Jo Jo, who would be foaming at the mouth at the prospect of an actual date. At this point I would cry, and possibly rip some of my hair out. Then Jo Jo would turn her light off. Then I'd go back to the green room and cry while the jocks laugh at me, shortly before going out and getting dates. The pricks.

While Take Me Out is one of the trashiest, most ridiculous things on TV, it definitely serves a purpose. At least, no matter how single you are, you will never, ever want to go on such a show. So you can just laugh at everyone who appears on it and pretend you're better than them. If that's not Saturday night entertainment, then I have no idea what is.

77 Days

Almost as soon as I wrote last week's post about rock and roll not being dead, I received some news that completely backed up the drivel I had already typed. Now, being right about things is something that I quite enjoy, so to bask in that extra bit of glory, I'm going to tell you why rock and roll is awesome. The Kills are releasing a new album.

I'm excited beyond comprehension, which is both a rare feeling and an annoying one. As the link tells you, Blood Pressures is going to be released on 4 April in the UK. That's 77 days, or 1851 hours, or 111076 minutes depending on which way you want to look at it. That's going to feel like an aeon for me.

The roller-coaster of emotions that comes with having to wait for something is very similar to really needing to go to the toilet. There's the fear of survival, or social embarrassment, when you don't think you'll be able to wait any longer and might be about to do something catastrophically stupid in front of groups of people because of it. More often than not it dies down for a short period of time, you feel like you can manage the problem which is a great relief, 'it's not that long before I can buy it/go to the toilet' you say to yourself. Well it is. Within minutes it all comes flooding back and you've got the fear again. Then, after all the waiting, you can finally get excited about the impending release (whichever way you want to look at it).

Anyway, toilet talk over and done with, I might as well give you a bit of background on The Kills. They're a duo, consisting of Alison Mosshart, a woman who is very much after my heart, with her uber-coolness and her punky fashion sense and her long black hair (photo attached if you don't believe me); and Jamie Hince, who is better-known for being Kate Moss's boyfriend, so I don't need to tell you how cool he is. They both play guitar and sing, the drums for their songs are programmed by Hince for studio recordings and live performances, a pain staking process which is presumably why we have to wait so long for a new album.

If you're intrigued, I would suggest listening to Tape Song, Last Day of Magic, No Wow and Superpowerless. In fact, even if you're not intrigued I suggest you do. If you like what you hear, then you can have a listen to my Spotify playlist of some of their best songs. But while you sit there and enjoy it, spare a thought for me, agonising over the 111076 minutes that have got to elapse before I can feel right again.

Rock And Roll Is Not Dead

ROCK AND ROLL IS DEAD. At least that's what everyone has been saying over the last few days. According to an article from Music Week, Rock singles sales have fallen to their lowest tally in 50 years, with only three tracks making it into the top 100 singles of 2010. One of those singles was Journey's 'Don't Stop Believing', which was recorded in 1978, and another was 'Dog Days Are Over' by Florence + The Machine, which isn't rock at all. It might not be shiny, auto-tuned, electro-tinged pop, but it isn't rock.

Realistically though, all this means is that rock music isn't being bought in massive numbers. There are a number of reasons why this doesn't matter though. Firstly, selling units is not what rock and roll is about (at least I hope it isn't, otherwise it may destroy most of the morals and ethics that I possess), it's about an artist making something that they want to make, something that will make them proud of what they've done. It's certainly not about taking orders from a producer or record company about how they should sound.

The second reason for the low sales in 2010 is quite simply because 2010 was quite a quiet year. Sure, we had Kings of Leon, who are a shadow of the band they were five years ago, we had The Courteeners, who couldn't make an album as good as their first, and we had Gorillaz. Damon Albarn is still just as handsome as he was in 1997, but Justin Bieber just seems like a better option for youngsters now. That's about the best Rock and Roll could muster for singles sales last year.

2011 already looks like a better year. In terms of bands who have the potential to impact on the charts, we can expect new albums from Coldplay, U2, Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian and The Strokes. As well as these legends, there will be an album for hotly-tipped four-piece The Vaccines. If you can't look forward to any of those then you have no soul. Rock and Roll? Dead? You must be having a laugh.

2011: Resolutions

As inevitable as the regret that comes to you on New Years Day, as you realise you've spent £100 on an incredibly lacklustre, overly busy, overly expensive night out that has given you the biggest hangover of the year, come new year's resolutions.

2011 will be the 21st year of my life, and I still don't really get the big deal with resolutions, or more to the point, I don't understand people who come up with outlandish ones. For example, 2 years ago I decided I was going to learn Italian. Why? Well, I still don't really know. I wasn't going to visit Italy, I had absolutely no need to learn a new language, but deep down I think it was because I've watched too many films where the handsome leading character can talk to anyone in a foreign tongue with ease.

Anyway, rather than learn 10 musical instruments, or work out to the point where I look like Sylvester Stallone, this year I've decided to keep things simple. I want to get a degree, I want to go abroad, and I want to preserve as of my dignity as I possibly can. That way I think it's possible to get much more done.

But this is a music blog, so obviously I've got to come up with some music-based resolutions. So here are a few things that I have promised myself to do or not do in 2011:

1. I will not get too excited over Beady Eye

Because it will only result in disappointment. Oasis were a great band, and although they probably should have split up in 1997, they have an excellent back catalogue. Beady Eye scare me a little bit, Liam did write some good songs for Oasis ('Songbird', 'I'm Outta Time' etc.), but a whole album is another matter entirely. I won't mind if I grow to love the album, but I'm not going to let myself be disappointed if it's the audio equivalent of milk that's been left out for three months.

2. I will make it to a festival
A good one as well, not one of those crappy ones in North Devon that makes you question your very existence for a whole rainy weekend in June while you watch a middle-aged band play 'Sweet Child O'Mine' and many other uninteresting songs. No, this year I want to go to a big one, which may be a problem seeing as camping fills me with unadultered rage. But you have to suffer for your art, right? Anyway, Bennicassim looks amazing this year, with The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Primal Scream and Arcade Fire all set to play. Plus it would tick off the 'go abroad' resolution.

3. I will never buy a Glee CD

This resolution may as well stay with me for the rest of my life. The fact that heavily auto-tuned cover versions on a TV show will be compiled into an album that will make it to number one in the charts makes me utterly irate. I hope 2011 will become the year that popular culture implodes and everyone in Britain wakes up and starts listening to music again. I'm not holding out much hope though, so I'm just going to leave it at not buying a Glee CD, and my next resolution, which is:

4. I'm might hibernate when Lady GaGa's next album comes out

Because it is heavily likely to destroy my soul. She gets coverage in the tabloids every day when she hasn't released a single for nearly 8 months. I dread to think how many column inches she'll get by the time Born This Way gets released in May. Either way, I want to take as little involvement in the whole charade as I possibly can.



I think it's best to make a small amount of attainable resolutions, which is why I'm going to stop now. I can't see any of them falling down, but I'll let you know if they do (unless I'm too utterly, utterly ashamed to admit I've got Glee: The Music on repeat). Happy new year!