September 2010 Archives

Football is the new rock 'n' roll.

For a while there was a lot of hype about comedy as joke-tellers were elevated into bigger tours & venues, but comedians tend to be a fairly dull bunch. Once Russell Brand was off-the-market they were no longer tabloid-fodder. Frankie Boyle may be offensive on-stage but you hardly expect to find him falling out of trendy-London-nightclubs, snorting cocaine and sleeping around.

The average comedian may well be a heavy-drinker and they may be making piles of cash - you do the math on an average arena tour - but they're generally smart enough to stay out of trouble. Comedy is not the new rock 'n' roll but football may well be.

A few weeks back I wrote of the reductive powers of football and how my partisan nature can lead me into great sorrow. I become less of a cultured, intelligent being (if I ever was) and more of a snarling subjective Neanderthal.

The nature of the season means that sorrows can either be quickly overcome or more severely etched, a week can change a lot and, as Saturday proved, even 45 minutes can make a significant difference.

Religion's a funny thing isn't it?

In all senses if we examined it rationally you'd have to wonder at how something so archaic can have survived for so long. I have no issue with it; I'm in the moderate agnostic camp, despite finding some of the Catholic Church's pronouncements to be repellent.

Had religion been invented today though you'd have to wonder if it would ever have caught on. Imagine that someone in the street tried to sell you a book that was apparently written thousands of years ago from the stories of people who believed they were following the earth-born-progeny of some greater ethereal power. You could buy the book but you'd have to take on its lessons and believe it to be the truth by beginning to worship the progeny and the ethereal though no proof exists of their being.

The summer is clearly over and the autumn TV schedule is upon us. You can recognise this moment from the sudden flurry of specials, one-off dramas and the onset or return of series that you actually have an interest in watching.

When even ITV have dramas that pique your interest it's clear that something has changed. Sadly - for ITV - it's probably not the quality of the shows themselves.