Deep seated urban decay, deep seated urban decay
I'd just like to make the following announcement:
I don't give a rat's arse what Kerry McFadden thinks of Brian and Delta.
And for the record, I couldn't care less about Brian's insights onto his new-found happiness and the breakdown of his marriage.
Alright?
Whilst we are on the subject, I'm not much interested in Brad and Jen either, nor do I care to hear them lie about how keen they are to remain as friends.
I'm not much enamoured with Paris Hilton either.
Or any of the rest of them.
Why do these people insist on trying to perpetuate their desperate celebrity by whoring out their personal tragedies for the entertainment of the dirty, white tracksuited masses?
Spare me.
---
Forgot to mention the CDs I bought this week:
Athlete - Tourist
Feeder - Pushing the Senses
I've talked about them somewhere else... so I won't repeat myself here.
---
I've also just watched Trainspotting for the first time in ages - and it's ace. It made me think of what a brilliant book it is.... I don't think I've ever read anything like it. You'd think it was unfilmable, but I reckon that they just about pulled it off. It has such a fantastic ensemble cast: Ewan McGregor, Ewan Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller.... Robert Carlyle in particular is terrifying as Begbie. Not at all what I imagined from the book, but no less frightening for that.
Nice bottle of wine, nice big slow cooked chili-con-carne and a decent film on the telly. My enjoyment would have been complete, if it hadn't been for the incessant adverts for magazines offering to tell me all the lurid details of someone else's marriage breakdown.... but that's where I came in.....
I don't give a rat's arse what Kerry McFadden thinks of Brian and Delta.
And for the record, I couldn't care less about Brian's insights onto his new-found happiness and the breakdown of his marriage.
Alright?
Whilst we are on the subject, I'm not much interested in Brad and Jen either, nor do I care to hear them lie about how keen they are to remain as friends.
I'm not much enamoured with Paris Hilton either.
Or any of the rest of them.
Why do these people insist on trying to perpetuate their desperate celebrity by whoring out their personal tragedies for the entertainment of the dirty, white tracksuited masses?
Spare me.
---
Forgot to mention the CDs I bought this week:
Athlete - Tourist
Feeder - Pushing the Senses
I've talked about them somewhere else... so I won't repeat myself here.
---
I've also just watched Trainspotting for the first time in ages - and it's ace. It made me think of what a brilliant book it is.... I don't think I've ever read anything like it. You'd think it was unfilmable, but I reckon that they just about pulled it off. It has such a fantastic ensemble cast: Ewan McGregor, Ewan Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller.... Robert Carlyle in particular is terrifying as Begbie. Not at all what I imagined from the book, but no less frightening for that.
Nice bottle of wine, nice big slow cooked chili-con-carne and a decent film on the telly. My enjoyment would have been complete, if it hadn't been for the incessant adverts for magazines offering to tell me all the lurid details of someone else's marriage breakdown.... but that's where I came in.....
posted by swisslet @ 23:36
18 Comments:
At 12:30 am,
Aravis said…
While I don't doubt that there are some people out there who deliberately cash in on their crisis of the month, I do not agree with you overall. I'm sick and tired of the stalkarazzi's sleazy prying into people's private lives for their own financial gain. I cannot imagine how painful it must be to find out that your marriage has fallen apart, but to have the world analyzing why it happened and making up reasons for their own sad titillation would be unbearable. I don't know how people manage to live under those conditions.
As long as people are willing to buy or support the magazines and television shows that carry this rubbish, it will continue. More than once I have fantasized about stalking the paparazzi and publishing their dirty little secrets to see how they like it. And I have absolutely no patience left for those who claim that if you are a celebrity you have no right to privacy. That's crap. We all have a right to keep something of our lives to ourselves, no matter how famous we are. Recognizing a celebrity or identifying with their character is not the same as knowing or owning them.
/rant
At 8:43 am,
John McClure said…
(I think AA might be a famous person!!!!)
I find your outburst ironic, given the recent revelations that Brad and Jen split up because he caught her reading your website.
At 9:51 am,
swisslet said…
Aravis - I think that it is undeniable that the paparazzi intrude on people's privacy. If they can drive someone as mild-mannered as Chris Martin into punching them and smashing up their cars, then they must be irritants indeed.
However:
I think that a kind of privacy is there for the uber-celebrity if they want it. The people that I am talking about are the ones who do everything that they can to keep themselves in the public eye by selling every little detail of their lives to magazines like "Hello" or "OK" or "Heat" or whatever. I have very little sympathy when these same people then moan about their privacy being invaded when something they *don't* want to have revealed is also dragged across the press.
David and Victoria Beckham are a good example. They are the most unbelievable publicity seekers. They sold exclulsive access to their wedding to "OK" magazine for a vast sum of money. We get to learn every tiny detail of their lives from some magazine or other. The we find out that David has been having it away with the au-pair and they have that dragged out across the tabloids.
Am I sympathetic ? No. Not really. You live by the sword....
Even then Victoria played the part of the wronged wife and set up photo-calls and the like so the world could see how hurt she was by the accusations.
Ridiculous.
She's rich and famous beyond her wildest dreams and far, far beyond her talent... but it's not enough.
The whole Brian / Delta / Kerry thing is ridiculous. Who the hell are they? Exactly.... and yet they are currently playing their various relationship traumas out across the press. A different revelation from a different side in a different rag each week. They have kids. What the hell are their kids supposed to think of it all?
Where's their dignity?
They are selling it for cash.
Oh - and Brian and Delta have a single coming out.
You can keep the lot of them. Posh and Becks, Brian and Delta, Brad and Jen, Jordan and Peter.
It makes me sick.
You don't see Chris Martin talking about his love for Gwynneth. You don't read George Michael talking about his happiness. You don't see Bono and his wife showing us around their lovely home. Or Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. The press are interested in them, for sure, but they aren't out courting the attention.
I think there is a big difference.
At 1:07 am,
Mark said…
I saw U2 about three months ago. The paps were obscene there, deliberately obstructing the views of fans who'd waited to see them - just so they could get a couple of nice closeups to sell. They're scum, and, frankly, so are the lifeless fools who buy their papers.
In the end the fans forcibly removed them from their vantage point obscuring the view of the people.
At 5:14 am,
Aravis said…
John- You caught me. Brad simply couldn't compete with Jen's fascination with my wit and charm. ;0)
ST- the type of celebs you mention are the types that I also have no patience with, those who are only trying to cash in. I agree with you absolutely about them. My problem is when celebs who aren't seeking extra publicity are stalked and harassed, their lives laid bare for dissection. And I get really hot when their kids get dragged into the mess, whether by the celeb trying to cash in or by the paparazzi acting on its own.
Sorry if I wasn't clear in my last post.
At 9:44 am,
Damo said…
I can't stand the whole celebrity culture. I don't mean 'stars' - stars are good - I mean celebrities. Who is buying these magazines? Heat used to advertise itself by saying it was a guilty pleasure - you didn't really intend to read it but couldn't help yourself. Well, thanks to the joys of a cafe that provides reading material, I got to look inside one. It was horrible. It made me feel angry and upset in equal measure. Whose lives could possibly be so devoid of joy that they could find any need for this?
At 12:49 pm,
LB said…
hold on a minute.
I think this is like weeing in the shower (to return to a previous post). It's very easy to say how horrible the whole thing is when in reality (at least some of the time) we will all admit to doing it. I don't believe anyone who wasn't at least a bit interested in what was going on with Beckham and Rebecca Loos. I defy anyone to take the moral high ground and say that they didnt express some interest in thst story because they were somehow above all that tittle-tattle.
I wholeheartedly agree that those people who court publicity only to complain about it when their lives go t*ts up (hello again to you, Beckhams) haven't a leg to stand on - they should have thought about that before letting people photograph their kids and interior design.
although for those people who do want to keep themselves to themselves it must be horrific. As I have mentioned before, even taking a blonde haired baby to Egypt we were asked for photos on so many occasions and twice during the week we even had a queue develop for pictures. When you just want to go about your business it is extremely annoying, and the reaction of those you are denying (they look at you like you are a piece of doggy doo) really doesnt help.
At 7:55 pm,
Damo said…
>I don't believe anyone who wasn't at least a bit interested in what was going on with Beckham and Rebecca Loos.
No. No no no no no no no. NO. I am not IN THE SLIGHTEST BIT interested and I get angry when I see stuff about it. When I see, for instance, Rebecca Loos peering from the front of some lad mag this month (trust me, if you're in a newsagent, you don't have blinkers). Now she has a showbiz CAREER?
I hate it. Hate is not too strong a word. I don't want to know who is doing what to who. The whole showbiz treadmill makes me utterly, UTTERLY sick.
Have I convinced anyone yet?
At 8:16 pm,
Anonymous said…
I believe you Damo.
To be honest, when I'm in a newsagent I like to have a look at the subeditor's art as displayed on the front of the jazz mags. Never fails to have me in stitches. Who said the art of the pun was dead.
You don't need to buy them, or even take them off the shelf... just have a quick look at the big print headline they have on the front page.
Genius.
Someone's paid to write that, you know.
At 8:17 pm,
swisslet said…
ahem. I had a window of opportunity there when that post came up as "anonymous". I could have pretended I knew nothing about it - just a reader passing through.
Sadly though, it was me.
And I'm claiming it.
At 9:31 pm,
Aravis said…
I believe you too, Damo. Couldn't care less.
Could it be that I have found a reason to be glad I live in the USA right now? Though I know who the Beckhams are, the majority of the people here do not, leaving me marvelously Beckham scandal-free. *G* Of course, we have plenty of our own scandals to make up for it. :0P
At 10:29 pm,
Damo said…
... and you have the National Enquirer.
Mind you, I've seen Men In Black so I know it's all true...
At 12:19 am,
Aravis said…
*LOL*
At 6:20 pm,
Erika said…
If I can promise you that I've never spent a penny on perpetuating the paparrazzipalooza, will you forgive me if I use eonline as my brainbreak site? What if I were to throw in that I work in the arts and therefore regularly, it seems, as though it were a part of my job (which it's not), find myself in discussions on who's in the closet and who's a talentless twit and who's enjoying watching the steep and steady decline from pop princess to Louisiana trailor trash? No? Still abhorrant? Yes, well, maybe. But I also own a Hanson album and know every word to "Ice Ice Baby," so maybe let's chalk it up to "no accounting for some taste" and be on our way, shall we?
I'll admit it. I do pay attention to the celebrity crap, in the same half-assed, can't be bothered to make an effort way that I do so much of my life. That probably still smears a little coal dust on my pristine cultural soul, though.
It's just so much easier to digest than always bitching about W. and Iraq and Sudan and Kyoto Accords and missile defence systems. Twinkies news. Goes down easily but not much to it.
At 12:14 am,
Damo said…
>It's just so much easier to digest than always bitching about W. and Iraq and Sudan and Kyoto Accords and missile defence systems. Twinkies news. Goes down easily but not much to it.
Can't you find something somewhere in the middle? If I spent my life worrying about world affairs, I'd be too much of a state to ever help anyone, let alone myself. But that doesn't mean reading about pointless slebs would make me feel any better. Discover music! And the great outdoors! Take up swimming! All of these things are good.
At 4:49 pm,
Erika said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
At 4:51 pm,
Erika said…
I'm sure you didn't mean it, but I'm a tad put out by the insinuation that the occasional visit to a cheezy website means that I'm so insular as to not listen to music or leave the house. I mean, really, come on.
At 11:25 pm,
Anonymous said…
Ka - no one who reads your blog would ever think that of you. I'm sure he didn't mean it.
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