http://dietpop.tumblr.com/

You could also follow me on twitter if you wish to partake in my inane ramblings -http://twitter.com/#!/joe__johnson__

Thanks guys and see you on the new and uncharted land that is Tumblr!

Over and out,

Joe.

This is inevitable.

Yes, they are talented, but not as talented as Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, The Netherlands, or seemingly, Algeria. They are also not talented enough to warrant the amount of media hype and the weight of expectation placed upon them. An interesting juxtaposition within the England furore is the simultaneous championing of the teams skill, along with an underlying desire to avoid strong teams en route to the final.

Surely if England were as good as is being professed then they would be able to beat historically successful South American and European sides. If they were to cruise to a soft victory then this would certainly be less of an achievement. This does not seem to matter to most, if we won the World Cup no one would mention it if England played badly. So why complain about it in the early stages? Why not just hope to scrape through, performing to the bare minimum?

This seems entirely likely looking at the current evidence. Not only are the team playing badly, as the camera pans laterally across the players before the game begins, displaying a close up of each of their faces, you get the feeling they couldn’t spell ‘England’ let alone win a game for their country. Have you ever stopped for a minute to think about the kind of people we are making the subjects of our adoration for the next month, nay two weeks. Here is a selection:

Glen Johnson: Pretty much comes across as brain dead as he stands there looking lustless while the national anthem plays out. Used the word ‘obviously’ over 900 times during a recent television interview

John Terry: Womanising ex-member of Lee Bowyers motley crew.

Emile Hesky: Overweight donkey.

Shaun Wright-Phillips: Sprightly young whippet, rapid and agile but is overpowered by a blade of dead grass

Robert Green: Unable to produce sufficient gripping force to clasp spherical objects. Goalkeeper.

Wayne Rooney: Temperamental council-estate scum. Shrek.

Fabio Capello: England Manager. Tasked with briefing the players on complex tactical manoeuvres. Can’t speak English.

'What would happen if you ate tar..?'

Don’t get me wrong I’m not flaming the tournament as a whole, I think the World Cup is a fascinating cultural melting pot that pits far-flung nations against each other in a show of athletic prowess and national pride.

Portugal’s brace against North Korea was a joy to behold as they slotted seven past the cagey, communist nation. A victory made all the more entertaining by the fact that the Korean would no doubt attempt to cover up the result. Watching England grind out a draw against Algeria however was not as pleasurable. It probably wouldn’t have been so bad had there not been months of patriotic headlines in the Sun pandering to the hopes and dreams of the man on the street.

As half time approached with the game still goalless I was almost looking forward to Lineker and his minions struggling to offer some sort of explanation for the farce. After all England’s lacklustre form is the medias fault, they assured us we were among the tournament favourites!

With the damp squib of a game ending 0-0, England’s final group clash against Slovenia was billed as a ‘must-win’ Hang on… It’s not a ‘must’ win, if England don’t win nothing bad will happen, people will just stop draping St. Georges out the windows of their council flats. That’s it. No one’s life will change in any way.

Yes, I did Google 'council estate' when searching for this picture

While I’m on the subject of England paraphernalia, what possible justification does anyone have to affixing a flag to their car. Most will retort with ‘it’s just a bit of fun’. No, fun is flying a F16 fighter jet on LSD with Katy Perry whispering sweet-nothings in your ear.

A pathetic nylon flag on your car provides no positive benefits. You may be signifying your support for England, but, just like when you post an attention-seeking Facebook status update, no one cares. Also, anyone that bares said flag on their car and complains about petrol prices is a f**king idiot, it only serves to increase drag and therefore fuel consumption, not to mention making you look a total prick.

• Since writing this England have defeated Slovenia, and go on to play Germany in the last sixteen. I am very much looking forward to this, mainly because I will see all my buddies at the pub, drink a lot of beer, which will give me a warm fuzzy feeling, and have a jolly good sing-song. If England progress to the quarter finals, fantastic, it’s another excuse to drink more beer. If not, it really doesn’t matter one jot, despite what you all think.

I am aware that I’m jumping on the bandwagon here and that this is by no means a new theory. Critics and artists were calling the death knells of the genre years ago with the advent of such ‘artists’ as Souja Boy and Flo-Rida. Both released a string of saccharine sweet gimmicky, club and radio friendly tracks complete with their own dance routines. They achieved commercial success amid accusations that they were masquerading under the trendy banner of Hip-Hop, inheriting its credibility whilst simultaneously destroying it from the inside out. Hip-Hop as a genre had ‘sold out’.

This is another instance where its true that Britain trails the US, though in the case of the emergence of Hip-Pop (a term which I think I’ll claim part of the credit for coining), this is very much a blessing in disguise. Inevitably however the UK now has spawned it’s own flock of artists purveying trashy throw-away hits. The pre-pubescent Chipmunk immediately comes to mind as a Hip-Pop pioneer with his heavy use of samples, collaborations and over-simplified, juvenile lyrics. The once critically acclaimed Dizzie Rascal who stormed onto the scene in 2003 after winning a Mercury Music Prize for his brilliant debut ‘Boy in the Corner’ has succumbed to the lucrative lure of the sound since hooking up with Calvin Harris for 2008’s ‘Dance Wiv Me’. A far cry in terms of the raw feel and lyrical richness of early hits such as ‘I Luv U’ and ‘Stand Up Tall’.

While Dizzie started out rapping about his upbringing and life of crime over stripped down, fresh sounding beats at breakneck speeds, the artist in his current guise is so far removed from his grassroots beginnings that his sound is almost unrecognisable. Before he would unrelentingly spit out verses like a high calibre machine gun, tackling controversial, relevant issues. Now, neutered by commercial pressures and aided by sub-par Calvin Harris production he successfully generates mass appeal by informing his target audience about how much he wants to go on holiday, or how he attempts to seduce an attractive young ladies at the discotheque by begging them to dance ‘wiv’ him. Uninspiring to say the least, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Hip-Pop is filtering down into the UK urban scene as a whole with artists turning to fluffy radio friendly chart fodder lacking in verve or innovation.

Calvin Harris: Single handedly turned Dizzee into a pop artist

The current UK number one single, ‘Pass Out’ by Tinie Tempah exhibits key Hip-Pop trends, while I can’t say that I despise this song with a burning passion, it does have some redeeming qualities such as the minimalist synth/drum n bass backing, the awful lyrics are indicative of a general downturn in the quality of UK urban music however. Let’s investigate.

Yeah yeah, I’m in charge now, Im a star and I bought my fucking cast out, I live a very very very wild lifestyle, Heidi and Audrina eat your heart out.

First of all, one ‘very’ would have been quite sufficient to convey his point, but as he clearly came up short of syllables he felt the need to take a shortcut and repeat it thrice. Very very very lazy. Also he seems to be comparing his wild lifestyle to two mystery characters named Heidi and Audrina, forgive me for being ignorant but I don’t believe there are any well known showbiz figures going by those names who are particularly renowned for their ‘wild’ lifestyles. He might have been better off name checking the likes of Richard Bacon or perhaps Chris Evans. Opportunity missed. He continues…

I used to listen to you don’t wanna bring arms house, I got so many clothes I keeps em in ma aunts house, Disturbing London baby we about to branch out, Soon ill be the king like Prince Charles Child, Yeah!

Whoa hang-on, you’re bragging about your wild lifestyle yet you confess to storing unused garments at your dear old aunties house! Surely that does not form a constituent part of a wild lifestyle. Let’s see if he can dig himself out of a hole…

Yeah, yeah and there ain’t nobody fresher Semester to semester, ravin with the freshers, 20 light bulbs around my table and my dresser, CLC Kompressor, just in case that don’t impress her

Mr Tempah has presented us with somewhat of a paradox here. He bragged previously about his wild lifestyle, surely if it were that wild he wouldn’t be trawling the grotty, snakebite stained SU bars of the UK raving with freshers would he!? If he is then presumably he doesn’t fit in too well if he has a dresser mirror surrounded by lightbulbs and a drives a Mercedes CLC considering most first year students live in dorm-style accommodation surviving off one Pot Noodle a week. Besides, unless ‘she’ knows nothing about cars (which is highly likely in all fairness), a C-Class hatchback will not impress her.

Yeah, They say hello, they say ola and they say bonjour, Im pissed I never got to fly on a concord, I bin Southampton but I’ve never bin to Scunthorpe, Im fucking crazy with the kicks, call me Jean Claude

It is obvious that Tinie is beginning to run out of ideas by this point. Instead of forming a coherent verse telling us something important he simply elects to veer off at wild tangents and every available opportunity. Fair enough, he expresses his disappointment at never flying Concorde, something most of us can relate to. Oddly he seems equally crestfallen that he’s never visited Scunthorpe, maybe he knows something about the place that we don’t. He rounds off the rhyming couplet nicely by letting us know that he can perform a flying kick. Excellent.

Tinie Tempah: This guy thinks he's the biz but he's never even been to Scunthorpe! What a loser

I’m going to stop here because I don’t want to subject you to any more of this diabolical wordplay. Now I am aware that in order to achieve any level of commercial success an artist must dumb down their material in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator but there are plenty of Rappers who have sold millions of records while maintaining their credibility and integrity, Jay-Z or Eminem anyone? As a matter of comparison and for some brief respite to the tedium of modern Hip-Pop, here is some ear candy for you, a true lyricist at work:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eCpxHB81TQ&feature=player_embedded

Remember this? No need to watch Sorority Row then

Cliches are apparent from the get-go, the university campus setting complete with the full stock set of painfully stereotypical characters (the geek, the jock, the slut, the bitch, the nice one, etc) harks back to, well, everything. It’s one saving grace is the initial event which triggers off the string of murders. A prank at sorority house party goes wrong when a group of unfeasibly hot collage chicks convince the token dweebish guy that he has killed one of their friends by spiking her drink. They all drive to a remote location where they plan to dump the body, understandably the nerd decides to finish her off with a wheel wrench to ‘get the air out of her lungs so she wont float’. This is not a seat of the pants moment but did leave me open mouthed as I witnessed a person pretending to be dead actually killed.

Unfortunately the rest of the film follows the formula whereby all involved in the prank, and a few other absurdly anomalous characters, are picked off by a mystery killer in a hooded graduation gown welding, yes, you guessed it, a ‘pimped’ out wheel wrench. Thus chaos ensues as you wince in discomfort, not at the sight of the killings, but at the atrocious lack of innovation regarding the methods of murder. What ground my gears more than this however was how the film insulted the audience by trying to identify with its assumed obsession with social networking. Incessant mentions of Facebook and unnecessary use of iPhone apps littered the action, failing to serve any purpose but interrupt the flaw-ridden plot.

The climax is laughable as the killer emerges to be someone totally unexpected, but not in a good way, in a way that has you questioning what possible motives he or she (I don’t want to spoil it for you, not that there’s much to spoil) had considering their ties to the trigger event were minimal at best. While the Horror genre is riddled with unoriginality, certain films can and have throughly spring-cleaned it’s dank, dusty corners. 28 Days Later invigorated the zombie flick, while 30 Days of Night breathed new life the vampire sub-genre. Considering the lazy concept behind Sorority Row which boarders on plagiarism, the execution could have been nothing but disappointing. A wheel wrench with a knife attached hardly turns the slasher on its head.

One of the many brief distractions from the totally lack of originality in this film

If you are an idiotic impressionable teenager, you will probably love this. I’m not even confident in that recommendation as I myself am an idiotic impressionable teenager at heart and I’d rather contract cat AIDS than sit through this drivel again. Kudos for the hot females and the first twenty minutes but aside from that you’d be better off spending your time watching Homes Under The Hammer. On sign Zone.

2/10

Take the male grooming industry as an example. This sector of the cosmetics market has experienced rapid growth over the past ten years or so. There are probably all sorts of social and cultural motivators behind this that media studies lecturers have tried to ram down your throat at one point or another, but these are both tedious and irrelevant to my argument, not to mention that I can’t for the life of me remember what they are. All that’s important is that the general consensus is, men are becoming gayer.

Yes thats right, it’s a fact that over 82% of men are now poofs. As recently as 1997, all men used to constantly stink of stale sweat, wear nothing but grubby Umbro tracksuits and eat pie for dinner everyday. In total contrast, the modern man of today enjoys mincing around in satin scarfs, intricately fashioning their coiffure into a variety of styles depending on their mood, and taking regular showers. This is of course a slight exaggeration but it does illustrate how attitudes towards personal appearance amongst males has changed in the 21st century.

The classic run of the mill beer swilling geezer might even have a cheeky moisturise while no one’s looking. Alas, herein lies the problem, he doesn’t want anyone to know. Use of male grooming products is quite clearly widespread in this day and age, but there is still an unspoken stigma surrounding their use. Any bloke so much as venturing within a five meter radius of the mens section in Boots is immediately branded as a raving homosexual. Again, a minor exaggeration, but you see my point.

The idea that anyone who might want maintain their skin hydration must also spend his weekends gyrating to pumping hardcore techno-house until 4am in a sweaty central-Brighton sin bin is absurd. The reason we use these products is quite obviously so hot women will like us, well at least until they discover some of us elect to spend our free time ranting about these things on internet blogs… Surely this is by definition the least gay thing anyone could do, but apparently not, and I continue to be perplexed as to why. What I do understand however is how those clever marketeers try to dodge this stigma.

Take this innocent container of Nivea for Men aftershave balm, a good enough product I’m sure, but look at the delicately shaped white container…

Gay.

Does it remind you of something, subconsciously communicating an air of femininity? Perhaps it looks like something your dear mother might use….

Don't get caught using anything that looks remotely like this!

Oh look at that! It is ever so similar in appearance to Olay, that iconic feminine beauty brand. You wouldn’t want to be seen dead buying or using that, doing so would only serve to put your well established wideboy persona at risk. If only there were something available which better suited your painstakingly contrived image. Wait, what’s this?

That's much more me

Bulldog, well that’s more like it. Just look at the bold capitalized typeface, the spikes around the letter ‘o’, and the stencil font, it’s almost military-esque, and most importantly, definitely won’t make you look gay. The bulldog is a vicious and unrelenting creature, it connotes power and masculinity, if you buy this you will undoubtedly be imbued with these values instead of being ridiculed for your proposed skin-care regime. Hang on, no you won’t, you easily-led moron, the contents are identical to those of that inconspicuous Nivea  bottle.

Here is yet another example of tactical marketing, the makers of Bulldog have cornered off the market for insecure young males who want to tentatively dip their toes into the sea of male grooming whilst minimising the risk of accusations from their mates that they enjoy a bit of bum fun. Bulldog finally offers a range of male beauty products to slack jawed, Henley’s wearing, WKD drinking pond-life, and they will probably make lots of money. Bravo.

Special mention must also go to Lynx. For over a decade they have been convincing emaciated acne riddled teenagers that their range of deodorants and body sprays will actually make them appealing to the opposite sex. Convinced by brilliant advertising campaigns the flock blindly in their droves to purchase the latest fragrance, totally disregarding the fact that smelling like an ‘arctic blast’ only satisfies one of the five senses. Not giving off an odor like a cesspit during a heatwave is very much a one of the minimum requirements when trying to impress someone, but Lynx will have you believe otherwise.

The Lynx Effect: May make you smell nice but you have a bit more work to do to get to this point!

What Lynx do do so well however is build a lifestyle brand that young consumers wish to emulate. Let us focus on their ‘Recover’ shower gel. When an impressionable young tyke picks this up, glances at the back of bottle and see the the product description ‘brings you back to life no matter how big the night was’ he immediately thinks ‘hey, I go on big nights out, this was made just for me!’ He also believes he should go on more big nights out, because Lynx say it’s cool, and probably decides it’s wise to stock up on lots of ‘Recover’ so he can ‘recover’ from all these nights out. The fool.

This just slots right into my current lifestyle!

Next time you decide to patronise your local pharmacist please be aware that when buying moisturiser, a big angry dog on the bottle will not make you many more of a man. Nor will Lynx products allow you to seduce women or ‘recover’ from nights out any more effectively than anything else on the market. Remember, real men eat pies, disregard their personal hygiene, and certainly don’t use don’t use cosmetics.

Don't think about Avatar too much. Unless you're a film studies student. In which case go and shoot yourself.

Ok, now we have that out of the way we can move onto the cool blue Aliens! In all seriousness the visual effects in Avatar are spellbinding. Totally disregarding the 3D aspect of the visuals for a moment, the computer generated environment and characters are flawless. The alien race, the ‘Na’vi’, are beautifully rendered ten foot tall bipedal human-like creatures that traverse their rain forrest like world with style and grace as they leap from tree to tree. The real achievement is making the entire community of Na’vi look consistent with each other while at the same time giving them unique facial and bodily features. This is most noticeable when the main character, marine Jake Sully has his own Avatar generated. Staggeringly his face is easily recognizable when super-imposed onto the head of one of these towering blue creatures.

In some ways the three dimensional dimension of this film is not revolutionary in the slightest, the 3D cinema experience is now well established, but in the way Avatar uses this technology is totally different from anything that has come before it. Take ‘The Final Destination’ or ‘My Bloody Valentine 3D’ both overblown horror films that use 3D to dazzle the viewer, launching objects towards them from the screen. Fun for five minutes but a very invasive experience that only serves to distract the viewer from the fact that both of these films are in actual fact devoid of any appeal aside from the visuals.

The wonderful thing about Avatar is that staggers and amazes in every department, it uses the 3D technology to good effect but rather than dominating the film it is used unobtrusively in a way that allows the brilliant narrative thread and characterization to shine through. The story centers around Jake Sully, a wheelchair bound marine sent to explore the planet Pandora, a possible new home for Humans as Earth is creaks under the pressure of climate change. In order to infiltrate Pandora Jake must assume an Avatar and become a fully functioning member of the Na’vi. Jake approaches his task with gusto as he wades through Pandora’s dense jungle landscape with his colleagues by his side, at least until he is confronted by a hulking puma like creature that gives chase until Jake is forced to take a heart-stopping plummet from a cliff into raging waters below.

This sets the tone for the film, just one of its countless eye-wateringly spectacular set pieces littered amongst a rich, engaging storyline. Jakes adventure unfolds as he encounters a Na’vi tribe who are initially hostile towards him, suspicious of his sudden and unannounced arrival. As he slowly learns their culture and practices alongside his female Na’vi companion, Neytiri, who takes him under her wing, Jake wins acceptance from the tribe and, in time, earns their respect. Predictably Jake becomes emotionally attached to the Na’vi race through his avatar as he builds relationships with the tribe, particularly Naytiri who emerges as the token love interest.

Blue aliens rock!

Frictions arise between Jake and is commander arise when the human army declares war on Panadora in order to secure the land as its own. Jake makes it clear to his commander that he is opposed to this and, in avatar form, sets about preparing the Na’vi for the impending onslaught. In doing so he blows his cover as an impostor. He is branded a traitor and rejected by his community. What follows is an epic battle between the humans and the Na’vi, initially the humans overpower their alien counterparts with superior numbers and heavy weaponry. Jack wins back the trust of his tribe by helping them effectively battle the humans.

This is a very brief summary of the plot, it is truly multi-faceted and packs more depth than an olympic diving pool, if I were to continue I’d be in danger of occupying the worlds supply of internet bandwidth. Where Avatar excels however is not so much the vast narrative but the way it gently nudges the viewer into changing their allegiances from the humans to the Na’vi as the story unfolds. With Jake we warm to their simple, organic lifestyle and admire the way they interact with their environment, living in harmony with nature. By the time the  humans turn up in their gun ships and helicopters, razing the utopian landscape to the ground with napalm and heat seeking missiles, they are very much positioned as the enemy. We find ourselves clenching our fists in glee as the Na’vi strategically dismantle the human armies.

This final battle has vast scope and is reminiscent of one of the many conflicts in the Lord of the Rings series in terms of numbers of on screen combatants and the way in which the Na’vi draught in other species that inhabit the land to aid their efforts. It is made all the more visceral by the the 3D effects but not to the extent that stray gunfire and brightly colored flying leviathans detract from the emotions of terror and anger experienced by the Na’vi. The climax is suitably dramatic and rounds off what will no doubt be regarded as modern classic by people that know more films than me.

Avatars greatest achievement is that it is all things to all people. Three dimensional is not only a way to describe how it is viewed, but also how it will appeal to its audiences. Everyone will be able to find a reason to like it. The seasoned film buff will no doubt have a field day with the previously mentioned ‘hidden’ political messages, the casual cinema goer will revel in the perfectly interwoven package of visual effects and narrative while the younger viewer and working class people will simply enjoy watching blue aliens and stuff blowing up. For me the most poignant and memorable moment of the film was when the humans are being exiled from Pandora by the Na’vi and are described as ‘aliens’. This strikes a chord, throughout the film we have thought of the Na’vi in this way. Being referred to as aliens finally brings to light that niggling but elusive feeling that’s been pestering you throughout the film, perhaps humans are the bad guys. Unmissable.

9/10

Pretentious chips

This infuriates me to the nth degree. This box of ‘Frites’ encapsulates the kind of sickeningly pretentious food marketing churned out by Marks and Spencer and the like. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the brainstorming session for this particular package design. I imagine it would have gone something like this:

Ad Exec A: How can we make this simple, essentially staple foodstuff loved by many and known universally as ‘chips’ appeal to a the lower middle class audience who want to indulge in what they consider as a guilty pleasure without having to suffer the rigmarole of consuming such a generic form of sustenance?

Ad Exec B: Why don’t we just say they were grown and cooked by a pagan artisan living in isolation in the outer Hebrides?

Ad Exec C: Hey, let’s not give them our usual schpiel about twenty one days matured in a Suffolk nunnery, they must be sick of that

Ad Exec D: Guys I’ve got it, just translate it into French…

Ad Exec C: What!?

Ad Exec D: Look, French people are obviously posh, they eat snails and shit, our conservative daily mail reading customers want to be posh so if we slap ‘Frites’ across the front they’ll feel a sense of exclusivity, even though its exactly the same product as you would find in a bag with ‘McCain’ on the front!

Ad Exec A: Jenkins you genius!

Ad Exec B: You know what else we could do, put them in a box instead of a bag, boxes are posh!

Ad Exec C: Or they could be individually wrapped and served on a three layered cardboard platter!

Ad Exec A: Shut up Wilkins…

I would in fact place a fairly large wager on that being exactly how Marks and Spencers Frites were conceived. Im not saying this is a clever piece of marketing, in doing this they have subverted the traditional perception of chips as a greasy fat laden snack eaten by builders in Fish bars across Britain, and instead presented them in a dainty box as something a fashion conscious Parisian waif might lunch on in an al fresco cafe.

This kind of over-indulgent narcissistic attitude towards it’s own food products is also demonstrated in Marks and Spencers television adverts. The suitably middle english voiceover groans: ‘This isn’t just any chocolate pudding, this is a quadruple dark belgian chocolate cocoa infused moist sponge base concealing a centre of molten saturated fat that will set you back a weeks wages and will have you well on your way to being an obesity statistic’ Or something to that effect. This genuinely angers me, thankfully not all the big four supermarkets take the same approach…

I must applaud Tesco for their recent television campaign to promote their ‘Finest’ range. Although this upmarket product range is most probably in the same price bracket and of equal quality to Marks and Spencers arrogant chips and chocolate puddings, they take a totally different and wholly refreshing approach to advertising it. In a brave act of self-parody Tesco create a juxtaposition between their fussily named ‘king prawns in crispy coconut breadcrumbs with a sweet mango and chili salsa’ and the situation in which they are being consumed. As three overweight pseudo cockney working class lads watch football, their ‘mate’ comes in with a tray of snacks and introduces them in the style above as if he is a waiter in a michelin stared eatery. They look at him in puzzlement, probably thinking he’s some kind of poof.

In a similar vain, a housewife offers a plumber in her kitchen a cup of tea and a slice of ‘tart au fromboise with classical butter pastry and tangy heritage raspberries’, his blank expression says ‘what the f*** are you talking about’ and confirms that the Tesco ad men are fully aware of this culture of overly descriptive food marketing. Unlike Marks and Spencer however they are able to get away with it by using ironically, and it works.

I would like to end on how I think food should be advertised. Morrisons have hit the nail on the head, no intricate wordy descriptions of their range of Honduran wines for them, just Denise Van Outen prancing around their supermarket with a trolley provocatively talking about cream buns. Now that is genius!

Hmm I fancy a couple of fresh buns...