The HORROR!

Could YOU live without the internet?

First of all, this isn't an admission on my behalf, or a presumption on yours, that we spend every waking moment on the net, or that our lives revolve around the clatter of keys and the gentle hum of a computer.

I know we don't. But dear God I LOVE the internet. Love it. When it comes to greatest inventions ever, I think the internet kicks that damned wheel into second place. No matter what you're into the internet can make it more enjoyable.

Everything I enjoy, everything I'm interested in has been made so much better thanks to the net.

Music? The day I got the internet I managed to track down a Placebo CD single that I just could not get anywhere else, and I had trawled stores, second hand stores and classified ads in newspapers for this record - and I got it from Amazon for the same price as a regular CD single. Then there's websites by and about the artists or bands you like - and buying tickets for gigs (one of my main hobbies) is no trouble at all, whereas in The Olden Days I used to have to travel into town for the one place that sold tickets - if they had any. Yes, the net has increased my music listening tenfold, and that's without getting into discovering new bands and (legal) downloads.

Films - Again, the net has made being into movies far more accessible and enjoyable. I have a literal WORLD of choice about what I can buy now, where it used to be just what the shops in town had. And getting the best version of a DVD (usually Region One, you lucky Americans) is simplicity, thanks to the websites dedicated to informing you of the best choice of disc. Then there's discussion groups, the IMDB, online trailers.. we really are spoiled.

Comic Books - As I've said before, I don't buy a million comics or anything like that, but the set half dozen I do buy I can now catch any issues I may have missed thanks to ebay. And then there's the websites dedicated to Marvel, DC etc and the fan art, screensavers, character databases and the chance to own some older rarer comics that you've have to go to specialist stores for.


I could go on - but you get the idea. The internet makes the important time of your life - your spare time, all the more sweet. You can talk to people who have the same interests as you, find out anything and everything, buy rare and long deleted items, book holidays, gigs, movies - hell, even find love.

The internet ain't perfect. For all it's qualities there's a whole seedy world that we all know about, where race hate, child abuse and God knows what else is bigger than it's ever been, not to mention the threatening domination of piracy which could snuff out pretty much every good thing I just mentioned.

But that's the negative side. As it stands - yeah, I COULD live without the internet but damn I'd miss it. I'm on the net for at least an hour a day and, seriously, I couldn't imagine life without it. Is that sad?

Thoughts?

Blogger Jogging!

Taking a stroll through Blogspot.com

Small history lesson: when I first started this site I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted to start a site where I could shoot my mouth off about anything and everything and have like-minded people join in the fun. So Blogspot came up on a search engine, it was free and pretty simple and - lo - the best kept secret of the Internet was born.

It's only recently I've actually began looking around at OTHER people's blogs (yeah, there are some out there believe it or not) and, as of today, began commenting on some of them. It's what I like to call Blogger Jogging, and its a sport that can open up whole new words of banality.

Seriously, you want to read some of this shit. Pointless anecdotes about people's lives (someone wrote about 1000 words on "the most hilarious day she's had in weeks" - when she was locked out of her house until she knocked on the window. A site dedicated to Mariah Carey ("everyone should go out and buy a Mariah Carey CD if you have one" - yup, I have NO idea what that means).

There are some gems, of course ("Vitriol For Dummies" looks pretty cool), but for the most part The Curmudgeon has been doing what The Curmudgeon does best - insult idiots.

So a quick heads up - you may well find the site has a few retaliation posts from these morons. If there are any "fuk U U fag" posts we'll know where they've came from.

If you have a quick Blog Jog yourself and find any tragic blogs, do let me know on here and I'll check them out for myself. And hey, if it spreads the good word of The Fortress in the meantime, that can't be a bad thing, right...?

Review 110: Celion Dion and Barbara Streisand - Tell Him

Two meglomaniacal harpies for the price of one - thanks for that

Now, normally I don't go on about a particular rubbish artist more than once. I make the odd exception if they're REALLY bad (The Darkness springs to mind) but I find that once is enough; it would get a bit tedious if I were to rate every single and album by a band or singer just to reiterate the fact they're atrocious. So I gave enormous necked super-bore Celine Dion a one star review in the past, which meant I wasn't going to focus on the rest of the musical bilge she polluted the charts with. But I decided to bend the rules for THIS monstrous single, a duet between the singing giraffe and Babs Streisand - surely a pairing the world doesn't deserve.

So what MADE me bend the rules to fit in this single? It's a sub-par snore, certainly no better or worse than anything Celine has put out before. Simple - the video. A teeth-grindingly irritating, hateful video which shows our two warblers singing together in a studio, as if they're the best of chums. It's been done before, certainly, but never as genuinely loathsome as this, the look of "surprise" on their faces as they hear how wonderful they are. Like "woah, way to hit that high note, girlfriend!" even though they're quite obviously miming over a pre-recorded song. Mechanecks bulging eyes lighting up as she "feels" the words she never wrote, Bab's nostrils flaring with every over-egged, preposterous vocal - it's one of the most dumb-foundingly awful things you'll ever see. Feelings of violence towards Celine Dion are nothing new, but this video brings out more maniacal urges than the Overlook Hotel.

Barbara Streisand, welcome to the Official Room 101 of Amazon.com. Celine - you're now a two-time veteran. Your rubbish music is one thing, but make another video like THIS abomination and you'll be hitting the hat-trick.

Review 109: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

I'd best don my flame-proof coat now..

Oh God, I just KNOW I'm going to get no end of abuse for this review. But hey, I gotta tell it like I see it - and I've seen Crouching Tiger and I gotta tell you - it sucks donkeys.

The Curmudgeon doesn't get sucked in by hype often, but I really was with this film. I read everywhere that it was basically the resurrection on film. So I bought it without ever seeing it. Last time I do that, then.

Now, OK - the fight sequences. This is all people EVER talk about in this film, so I guess I should give first mention to it. They are VERY impressive, without a hint of CGI rubbish or blue screen. They look fantastic - and it's a crying, pitiful shame they weren't in a movie of more worth.

Because let's face it - take away the jaw-dropping fighting scenes and what do you have? A dull, plodding tale of "honour" that's about as interesting as counting peas in a bag. And while we're on the subject, there was never any explanation as to WHY these fights were so spectacular. Ordinary village girl meets masked assassin guy, and suddenly they're running up trees and floating in the air. Did I miss something?

And how to say this without sounding racist? Hmmm.. tough call but I'll try - the director really SHOULD have tried to make the characters more distinctive. Watching "bald guy in pyjamas fighting other bald guy in pyjamas" can be a bit confusing. Not saying they all look the same or anything but hells bells - give one of them a hat or something.

Like I said, I know I'm going to catch it for this review, but it really is a perfect example of style over substance. Nice effects, but no story, character of anything else of merit make this one to see using scene select only.

Sigh - the e-mail address is at the bottom..

Review 108: Pussycat Dolls - Beep

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More music for simple-minded idiots.

Sigh. Sometimes you wonder why you really bother even switching on these damn music channels at all. See, I refuse to listen to the radio, so keeping up to date with current music means having to trawl through the utter crap that MTV and The Box etc bombard stupid kids with. But look on the bright side, without them I would never have heard of half of the things I've reviewed, and THEN where would we be?

Anyway - Pussycat Dolls. Or, to put it another way, The Tall, Attractive (In A "Could Be A Guy Way") Brunette And Her Pointless Partners, who strut and roll around and dance but DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE. Honestly, for those who thought Beyonce was the key wheel in Destiny's Child have seen nothing when it comes to this group. Talk about money for nothing. Unreal.

"Beep", then. So called because it has so many supposed "naughty" words that they felt the need to "Beep" it out before the radio does. Ha ha, isn't that hilarious? Nope, it sure ain't, especially when there's no rhyme on earth that could possibly work for "I don't give a (BEEP), keep looking at my (BEEP), It don't mean a thing if you're looking at my (BEEP) I'm gonna do my thing while you're playing with your (BEEP)".

It just doesn't work. You know, I just cut and pasted that from a website and I already feel the need to go out and kill children. Honestly, what kind of DRIVEL are people buying these days? Not to mention the "Hmm.. can't think of another rhyme there, so let's just put lots of HA HA HA HA HA HA" noises instead. Brilliant, eh? Maybe it's subliminal, and its the writers of the song (not these brain-dead bimbos, of course) laughing at the cross-eyed mouthbreathers who bought this junk. A sort of "ha ha, it's true, if we play this video on The Box often enough, you'll get brainwashed into buying it. And why's that? Because you're a MORON! HA HA HA HA HA!" It would score points with me if it were, anyway.

The Pussycat Dolls run of bad singles is on an impressive downward spiral, getting worse every time. "Dontcha" was rubbish, "Stickwitchu" was awful - this is borderline CRIMINAL. One can only shake their head at the people who buy this, who accept this as music. If you bought this you don't deserve to even own a computer to be reading this now. I wouldn't wipe my feet on you.

Review 107: Nelly - Grillz

Music for idiotz.

Hey, here's JUST what the bloated, boring hip-hop scene needs - yet another song about money and bling, exactly the same as every other piece of crap released by every other unoriginal idiot in the last ten years.

But this is different in one way at least - it's bragging about how much money, women etc they all have (funny how every one of them is so mirror-shatteringly ugly they would make The Elephant Man look like Brad Pitt - how DO they get all these beautiful girls to hang around them? You think they were paid models or something), but it's probably a great deal worse than any other cut and paste hip hop rubbish - because it's trying (and failing) to start another woeful rap trend that every dead-eyed, Follow The Leader kid will want to copy.

They have diamond encrusted mouth shields and braces. Oh, I'm sorry - that word isn't "gangsta" enough - these are Grillz. Not Grills, of course, because this is Nelly and all of his songs have to be spelled phonetically for absolutely no reason at all. So if you were ever worried that hip-hop had become an ugly parody of itself, insulting and forgetting the very purpose that the original artists had, there's always the likes of talentless chancers like Nelly to remind you that your worries were totally accurate. He brings in some of his equally witless friends to fill in the gaps, with some more tedious by-the-numbers rapping. Honestly, one day people will look back on this vapid, monotonous genre and LAUGH.

So a song about wearing gum shredding expensive braces. And people bought it and it was a bit hit. Do you sometimes think it would be better if a comet stuck the earth and killed every single one of us?

Review 106: Chico - It's Chico Time

Guaranteed child molester hits number one. Oh the humanity.

This years X Factor, not that I watched it, of course, provided us with quite simply the worst "talent" to pollute the charts to date. Of course we get bland no-mark Shayne Ward hitting number one with his boyband B-side, and the other trolls are soon to come out of from under the bridge of ghastliness, each more adonyne and pointless than the last.

Now, maybe I'm making some kind of error - isn't it just the WINNER that has the "X Factor" and so only the WINNER should release records? Did I miss something? I mean, what else could all the money they fleece out of the poor, stupid morons voting be for? Ah yes - to line the companies pockets to fund yet more dreck like X Factor. I forgot.

Now let's move on to Chico, the running joke of X Factor. He could barely sing, and was only in it because, uh, he had a comedy foreign accent, a silly name and stupid dances. Right. So he HAS to have a record deal, right? And, because the people who WATCH X Factor are mindless cretins, it HAS to get to number one because there are so MANY mindless cretins who watch it. It's crushing, it really is.

So, the song is a children's style party song. If in doubt, check the video where he dances with kids. This is probably an attempt to rid all memory of the fact he used to be a Chippendale, so instead of a sexy singer they instead have a sexless, Peter Pan style loveable fool. Just a pity it's not so much "Peter Pan" as "Neverland" - the Michael Jackson version. Still, this tosh is guaranteed to be bought by the funny-tied office buffoon who thinks "it's just fun", to be bought by stupid kids who don't know any better and basically anyone who doesn't have one single quality record in their entire collection, merely consisting of compilation albums and more reality television spawned atrocities.

I notice on the B-side that Chico covers "Kiss" by Prince, which now means I can publicly offer $1,000,000 to anyone who brings me his head on a stick. That this song is sung by this creepy, bug-eyed no-doubt kiddie fiddler is perhaps the greatest crime of all. Crush, kill, destroy.

Fortress Of Solitude Safety Warning!

Public Opinion can be bad for your health!

For those of you who joined The Curmudgeon after reading some of his Amazon reviews, you may well be familiar with THIS:

“Everyone is entitled to an opinion."

Ever heard that phrase? Well, trust me, after reading a few of the "reviews" on this website, you'll agree with The Curmudgeon - no, they are not.”

I believe that when I first started writing my reviews and, more than ever, I believe it now. Now, The Curmudgeon doesn’t include the loyal Fortress Dwellers among that lot; the passionate, clever and witty opinions of you guys are what keep The Fortress alive. That and me writing it, of course.

No, the public opinion I am talking about is that of the clueless, easily pleased masses, the sort of masses that vote in all these End Of Year polls, along with The Best Song Ever and Best Album Ever polls. You know the sort of thing I mean. The Curmudgeon used to love watching and reading these things, but lately its just something I’ve had to force myself to keep away from for the good of my own health. I can feel the blood pulsing in my eyeballs when I read some of these things now.

And why is that? Well, according to The Public..

1. In a list of Most Influential Artists, Bez (the famously talentless “dancer” from The Happy Mondays, who didn’t write any songs, who didn’t sing any songs and who didn’t play any instruments, only danced like a drug addict on stage), was higher up the list of Influential Artists than Prince.

2. Will Young, a Pop Idol winner who had just released his first solo single, was voted number ONE in Best Male Artist Of All Time.

3. The Best Single Of All Time was recently won by Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars”, which was released about two months ago.

4. In The Top Ten Movies Of All Time, The Lord of The Rings trilogy takes up three entries (with “Fellowship” being number one).

5. In the (now much derided) Record Of The Year, the boyband Westlife scooped the award with their by-the-books cover of the Barry Manilow song “Mandy”, which was number one about a month before the award.

6. In the Greatest Artist Of All Time, just ahead of Leonardo Da Vinci at number one was...... Rolf Harris.


This is just a small example of the knuckle-chewing howlers the idiotic public are responsible for. It seems that these polls are filled in by morons who seem to think the last thing they listened to is the Best Thing Ever. And we, as genuine and passionate fans of music and movies, have to yell at the TV or tear up the magazine that these abominations are published in.

The only opinion polls of any worth are written by critics or experts of the genre. In the end you may not agree with what wins or loses, but you can accept it as a learned opinion from someone who actually has a clue what they’re talking about, not the “what did I buy last” gibberish from the great unwashed.

So this is a public safety announcement from The Fortress Of Solitude; the next time you see another Best Of All Time list or TV show – be careful. Find out who’s casting the votes. If it says “As Voted For By YOU” – rest assured it is not by “you” or anyone even remotely like you. Run away, far away - you may well live longer.