Every year at Eurovision we get together with a mixture fellow song contest geeks and bemused neighbours and friends who just like eating and drinking.
This year it was my turn to organise the sweepstake, so everyone has some sort of vested interest in every country, and I made these cards. I think they were meant to be like passports to start with, then I realised I wanted useful extras like facts about the artists (taken from the incredibly patchy biogs on the official Eurovision site). And I've made them to print on a home inkjet printer, without too much ink, so they don't look much like passports in the end.
Feel free to rip them off! (Print pages 1-13, then do page 14 on the back of each one, cut and fold...)
I have no idea about the politics of this, and I don't know who does. Sky News reporters seem fairly confident about presenting their opinions as facts, though, so I'm just going to go by what I can see on the TV.
Obviously this is serious and difficult stuff, especially as it's something hard to understand and spreading. There's a helicopter flying near my house in Bristol right now (and we had local riots earlier this year). It's in extreme events when I think about how ridiculous we've made the world sometimes.
1. Fires are a lot brighter on Sky News. The same blaze looks really dull on the BBC. Commercial TV usually has its colours a bit more saturated and poppy, but not much. This is a massive difference, like someone is really trying to make a statement... "we're more exciting!" v "we're more true to life", which probably reflects the management's idea of what they are doing. But it looks weird.
Sky News - brash and bold
BBC News - muted yet authoritative (this seems to have been enhanced for the website - it was much duller on air)
2. Looters offer fantastic market research insights into the disaffected youth of today who don't like doing surveys:
Carphone Warehouse - incredibly popular with da kids
Currys - also very popular, probably more for the iPods and 3DTVs than the washing machines. Police doing an excellent job guarding the Croydon branch's few remaining Xboxes, but they do appear to be taking satellite dishes for themselves.
Jessops - bad news for this seller of high tech, highly portable and valuable cameras and camcorders. They have no shutters on their shop, but the windows seem completely untouched. Has the smartphone killed the digital camera?
Carpet Right - the biggest surprise of all. What can anyone loot from Carpet Right? Are room sized remnants the latest street accessory, or did the guilty kids want to bring back something for mum? Surely the only carryable stuff in that shop is carpet shampoo? I don't get it. My best guess is that someone tried to text their mates "let's loot Carphone Warehouse" but it came out wrong. Damn you auto correct!
3. The kids clearly don't respect Nick Clegg as a (deputy) leader. But just wait until David Cameron gets back tomorrow, he'll sort you out.
4. In Birmingham, closing the Bull Ring early is enough to start a riot. That's how much else there is to do in Birmingham. (I used to live there. I know.)
5. 24 hour news channels can't get enough of this stuff. It's oddly compelling, enough that I have some favourite moments:
Sky's live run down and shots of which are the popular looted shops so far, and which still have opportunities waiting while stocks last. I keep expecting to see the product placement logo pop up around the breaks.
The fact that they run this stuff and still have breaks, featuring shops you just saw masked kiddies running out from.
The owner of the historic building in Croydon who spent 10 minutes sharing his sorrow and distress, then passed the phone to his brother for him to add his thoughts. I think he was expecting this to be a show of brotherly unity, but his bro's first words, live on Sky News, were a chipper "Hello! Who's that?", followed by a complete change of tone when he realised what was going on.
A live look into Boots to see what got robbed. Empty drug packets all over the floor, the reporter picks one up and tells us, deadpan... "Immodium".
Sky reporter, Clapham resident and "man's man" Mark Stone doing a remarkable job in his home area. He filmed some big smashing up close with his iPhone, then had to run as someone tried to mug him while he was filming.
His commentary on what happened after that is extraordinary as he's pumped with adrenaline and courage. He's putting his fingers all over the evidence of stolen goods in the streets, and telling us what's good and what's not in his street. "Why on earth would anyone want to loot Toni & Guy? There's nothing in here that anyone would want, nothing of any value at all." I don't think he's into "product."
Not funny, but quite a tense audio account from another Sky reporter on how close people were getting to breaking into a bank. This was literally "blow by blow" as they kicked the doors in, the reporter counted down how long it would take them to get in, and the police cars became audible in tbe background as they were about to succeed. The police drove right past.
That's as much sense as I can make from all this. Sorry if this seems bad taste; as the saying goes, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye," and that seems perilously close. But somewhere else in the world there is an Al Queda cell watching this thinking "sod it, let's just let them burn themselves down."
I don't LOVE the Cher Lloyd debut single, but I do like it and it is stuck in my head. At least the chorus is, the verse is mostly forgettable and the song as a whole is so annoying that I want to shout at myself every time my brain wants to hum the chorus again, which it does a lot. It's a recipe for madness.
The weirdest thing is that none of this should be a surprise. "Swagger Jagger" sounds EXACTLY like you would expect Simon Cowell making an "urban" record would sound like. It pulls off the tricky task of sounding right for Cher but at the same time useable for any number of Simon Cowell's past acts (I'm thinking Zig and Zag or Wrestlemania rather than Westlife).
It's a lot more "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" than "Hard Knock Life", and it makes me wonder if the Simco team actually get anything which isn't pop. What odds can I get on the next single being a cover of "Slap My Elbow", cos S.mouse is really big with the kids right now, right?
Despite all the musical nonsense, Cher herself actually comes over really well in interviews, although it's obvious that she's got very little control over what's happening around her. It annoys me because I think she's actually quite good, and has great musical ears - she did introduce the nation to a Mike Posner megahit. She needs to get on top of things and set the direction, otherwise they might as well forget trying to make her credible and give her a decent ytcracker song to cover instead.
UPDATE June 30: after realising we all felt the same way and that the song is growing on us, we've taken the plunge and added it to the radios. Aaaaaaaaagh!!!!! Simultaneous feelings of pleasure and dirtiness, excitement and guilt!!!!! What have we just done???!!!!
It can still have nice comfy seats and music, and be a good place for people to meet. It'll have the advantage that people always know where it is!
It will have an engine which may seem a bit pointless. The car will rarely need to be filled up with fuel - so rarely that people may argue over whether being filled up is something which only needed to happen once or needs to be done on a regular basis. People probably won't remember the last time you needed a refill unless you're running the lights, music and windscreen wipers an awful lot.
Come to think of it, there is probably quite a lot to do to keep a car without wheels ticking over and safe from people who might want to nick your stuff out of it. It could take up all the time we can spare to keep it clean, stocked with biscuits and coffee and attractive to people we'd like to try sitting in it. Funnily enough, despite all the efforts to attract visitors, they seem strangely reluctant to get in, however. Maybe it looks a bit weird to them. Maybe we need to educate people in how it all works.
Most of what a car is only makes sense when we understand its job is to make the wheels turn. Sure, there is a bit extra to keep the occupants safe and comfortable, but you don't buy a car because you want a place to sit. You get into a car because there is somewhere you need to go. Jesus sent us on mission. We need to get going.
Looking at my own life and our time together in church groups, I wonder how much we really get this, and how much we're content to idle in the car park with the music on.
We are putting a new programme together for church interns (and we may want to change that name to make it less "internal") to get us rolling and learn, from the experience of moving on mission with Jesus, what all the vital bits do. I think the experience of ongoing missional practice will change our view of what the vital things actually are. Quality of the seats and stereo looks paramount if the car never moves, but we'll become more concerned with whether we are being refilled with fuel and water, whether there is rust, dirt or other impurity blocking the smooth movement of the engine, and whether our structure can carry us where we need to go, not just shelter us from occasional rain.
At the risk of pushing this analogy to breaking point, I wonder if we actually think of mission as a car's wheels - totally essential to what it is? Or do we think it's more like the satnav - a useful extra which we want to get when we can afford it and have got our plans together? It strikes me that Jesus spent a long time navigating with his disciples, showing them bits of the road ahead but knowing they wouldn't understand until they got there. On the other hand, every follower of Jesus has to start by following, moving, changing, and the good news is that God makes this possible.
Apparently there used to be a joke at the BBC about how over funded everything was - "Where's the stapler?" "Sorry, it's his day off."
Now Radio 4 listeners have been treated to a lengthy explanation about why there were no pips at 5pm the other day. They're generated by a computer which failed. So did the backup computer. Engineers spent hours on the case and finally got everything back to normal by 8pm.
Does it say something about the BBC that no-one thought to avoid listener hassle and just use a recording of pips? I think I might have a BBC sound FX CD with them on somewhere. Or, hold on, there are at least a week's worth (168) successful past pippings available on the hugely expensive "listen again" machinery, if they're really stuck..???
No, our machine has died and those are the only official pips allowed, and we don't want any fake pips "pipsgate" scandals, so we'll interrupt the news to tell you about all this.
PS, sorry for not getting round to telling you that salad is potentially lethal until yesterday, we were really busy with stuff like this.
He's not mentioned as "linked to the show", but they should ask Dizzee Rascal to be a judge/mentor. He was amazingly good on Must Be The Music (R.I.P...) Or why not singer, dancer and uber-successful songwriter and Xenomania co-founder Miranda Cooper?
I know some people with very good taste in music and track records of predicting trends which shape the business, and I know lots of Eurovision fans (there's a very small crossover there...) but I don't know anyone who can gauge the taste of Europe and predict what will happen in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Is there any kind of useful work for people who can?!!
For what it's worth, here's how I rated stuff at our party tonight:
JUST ON THE SONG... Equal 1st: Azerbaijan, Slovenia Next best: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Hungary, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Austria
JUST ON THE PACKAGING & PERFORMANCE... 1st: Sweden Next best: Ukraine, Slovenia, Hungary, Estonia, France
OVERALL PACKAGE: Equal 1st: Slovenia, France Next best: Sweden, Hungary Closely followed by: Azerbaijan, Ireland, Austria
SONGS WE'RE LIKELY TO WANT TO PLAY ON THE RADIO: errrr.... none (but I'm sure this isn't the last we'll hear of Eric Saade)
Well done Azerbaijan, and good luck hosting next year's Eurovision. If you finish your "Death Star" Full Moon hotel, we may come...
We've just celebrated another record increase in audience share at Fire Radio, a station where I love picking the hits for the playlist.
The last time our share was as high as now, iPods looked like this. They only had black and white screens and couldn't play games.
Original XBox, Nintendo Gamecube and Gameboy Advance were state of the art.
This was the latest way to get email out and about...
(And the only way to do music, games and email on the move was to carry one of each.) You needed more for web browsing. The best Apple iBook weighed nearly 3kg and had less processing power and storage space than today's iPod Touch.
Facebook was called "Thefacebook" and you could only join if you were at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia or Yale.
No-one in the UK had seen "Lost", but in America they thought it would be the best show on TV.
Kate Thornton presented a new show called "The X Factor", but winner Steve Brookstein failed to get a Christmas number 1.
Keisha and Mutya were still in The Sugababes.
Brian McFadden had a number 1 hit and was still married to Kerry Katona.
IT WAS A DIFFERENT WORLD BACK THEN... Our listeners today can access 12.7 million Spotify songs, 140 million YouTube videos and 666 million people on Facebook, and over 10 billion apps have been downloaded using a 100g phone in their pocket. They don't listen to Fire Radio because they have to, only if they want to. And they chose to listen just as much this quarter.
Congratulations from Steve Jobs (and Bern) (PS - did you guess the year? It was 2004.)
Thank BoingBoing for this... slightly spoiled if you actually speak good French, but if you read the captions and just hear some serious sounding foreign stuff, it's ideal.
