Dave's Negative Blogs

Well, that didn't last long did it! I said I would write on here every morning, and look how far I got. 2 mornings! Go me. But I do have a good reason. My reason was …

… I was in Brighton! That's right, me and my girlfriend went away for 3 days in lovely Brighton, and I don't use the word lovely lightly. It really was lovely. Such a great holiday. By far, the best holiday I have been on. It's funny … It doesn't matter how far you go or what weather conditions you have, If your with the right person and are in the right place at the right time it can be amazing. Only there for 3 days though, and boy did it go fast.

Brighton is a real strange place. Its like London … but it has a coastline and people are friendly there. How weird is that? Cars stop for you, people let you off on the change in shops and there isn't an over shadowing cloud of pure dread. Proof of this is that the whole time I was there I didn't even hear about this Swine Flu epidemic everyone is dying from. I was too busy trying to count rainbow flags (there were quite a few)

One morning I'm eating sausages on a disposable BBQ on Brighton beach and then the same evening I am being informed “WE ALL GONNA DIE!” by television ads imploring a state of emergency.

So yeah, sorry I have been away for a while, I do intent to carry on blogging daily, but I really just needed a general break from life. I really was in another world these past 3 days and it was amazing. No television, no internet and no problems.

Back now though …

at least I have a “Lady Boys of Bangkok” leaflet for memories though

oh and 300 pictures

I have been trying to get back into writing. If you check the little calendar widget below, you will probably see the gap between my last 2 posts was almost a month. But what do you write about when you're completely uninspired? Well nothing I would say. But I feel like I need to keep doing it. Not for any reason other than personal need. I'm trying to do that thing where you write something or do something creative in the morning just to get your brain in gear for the day regardless of if I have anything good to say or not, so I'm a bit worried by recent blogs are going to be nonsense-d pieces of shit.

Luckily yesterday morning, when I decided to start doing this, I heard some fresh news (about 3 hours old) about a certain musical being made about a certain recently deceased celebrity. Well that outraged me enough to have something good to write about but this morning I discovered we are having a slow news day. We must be because one of the main web articles was about South Park taking the piss out of Gordon Brown (And yes I did visit the BBC News website in utter desperation for something to write about)

Well that will do for today. I cant say my brain is particularly active at the moment. I always feel dirty coming on the computer before midday anyway. Like an alcoholic drinking in the morning. I don't want do … I just do.

See you tomorrow

This isn't a joke. I have just found out there Jade's family are indeed planning a musical based on the life of “the people princess” Jade Goody who died this year of cervical cancer.

Now I don't want to sound harsh here …

(Its good to always start off taboo subjects with that line to help show that your intentions aren't of the “harsh” variety)

… but I feel enough is enough. I think there's only so much shameless exploitation of a death I can handle. Don't get me wrong, no one is insinuating Jade's family didn't care about her. But I think what the media doesn't seem to realise is, that I don't. Now that may sound pretty horrible to some people but I think its a lot worse to lie. To jump on the old bandwagon to sympathy-ville. I'm not a heartless monster. I can appreciate the horrible disease Jade got and I can relate to the sadness of her family, but to be quite honest I have other things to worry about. You know? Like personal problems within my own family and life?

“Well Dave, just don't read the papers” Bit hard to avoid really. You cant walk into a newsagents without seeing a line of Jades. You cant turn on the TV without finding a montage of Jades “amazing” life.

It's not all the media's fault though. I suppose they are trying to shift units, and obviously for some reason Jade is the public's number one concern. I think though, that her family have not dealt with it well. You can make up all the excuses in the world for the things they do to exploit her death but at the end of the day its for money. The whole story about Jade selling the rights to her funeral and her death to the papers so she can get money to help her sons is a bit thin. The last time I checked, Jade had more than enough money … you know, Big Brother prize money, the publicity, a perfume, the publicity, a few books, the publicity. Sure extra money for your kids is always a benefit but this couldn't have had anything to do with making sure you were remembered could it?

Even if all the money this musical makes ends up going to charity, it still shouldn't exist. I mean, a play would be bad enough but a fully fledged musical? What are some of the songs going to be? “The house is alive, with the sound of Jade”, “Lets get naked”, “Ignorance is bliss”, “Poppadom Rumble” , “Interlude : Jade flees angry mob” , “Bad news” , “Finale: another Martyr”

I don't want to be the one who comes On-line to slate Jade. I didn't hate her. I don't now. I don't hate her family and I certainly don't think she's an evil racist who deserves to be dead (as a few internet bloggers seem to) But I have purposely avoided this subject for a long time now, but the musical was kind of the last straw.

So I will end by saying :

Jade … I'm sorry your gone. But now that you are gone, can you stay gone? Because it's not natural to have someone who died in such a dragged out and horrible way like you did to be everywhere afterward reminding the people who did love you that you're gone. As for the people that didn't love you, you seem only to alienate them.

And that's the last I will Blog about Jade Goody.

CGI is my mortal enemy. We really don't get on. When I see it in movies, it makes me feel uncomfortable. Don't get me wrong, I am a massive Pixar fan. That's different. That is entirely CGI based creativity. What I have the biggest beef with is live action mixed with CGI. Yes, George Lucas is partly to blame, but then again he has a lot to answer for. The thing is when I see it interacting with real people I cant help but notice that it isn't really there. The animation could look amazing, but in the back of my mind...its not really there. I love puppets. I really do. I think animatronics and puppetry are dying arts nowadays. They aren't completely lost but they are harder to find than CGI. CGI is to animatroinics what the CD was to the tape and its not fair I tell you. When I see puppets, even if they don't look highly realistic they are actually there interacting with the characters and surroundings...

...but the I saw “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button” A movie that I will admit I didn't particularly love. Its pace drained me by not keeping me interested in the way Forrest Gump succeeded to do. However that's not important. What's important is I left the cinema thinking I had seen a rather boring movie with really amazing make up effects. Oh how wrong I was. The other day I was looking at videos on the internet and came across one entitled “the effects of Benjamin Button” and curiosity got the better of me. What a curious case this was indeed! If you don't know already, the movie is about a boy who ages backwards. Born old and eventually dying young. Well throughout most of this movie Brad Pitt is made to look old and in one amazing scene is made to look about 19 or 20. Now old is achievable, but younger? Surely not possible and believe it or not one thing the movie did achieve was to suspend my disbelief enough to make my brain not even question what I was seeing. I was lost in a piece of media and it takes a lot to do that sometimes. Well this video basically informed me that through a lot of this movie Brad Pitt is only in it in face form. His face has been filmed and synced up using state of the art CGI to age it and paste it on other bodies and things. I felt genuinely abused. Mind fucked. Brain raped as it were. Duped for the first time by CGI. I was computer generated animations bitch. I also read a recent interview with one of the leading animators using this technology who stated that soon they will be able to bring back dead actors to movies (image wise not vocally obviously) Now i'm not really up for THAT however I do embrace this subtle looking CGI. Its a trip. Definitely.

Its things like this that make me question my own existence. Could I be the computer rendering of some intergalactic space students!?

Time to watch some stop motion I think. Rest my mind.