The Weekly Hat – Number Three
Welcome, all, to the third Weekly Hat. This week has, sadly, not been the most exciting one ever in terms of obvious news I can mock, but thanks to the release of the Digital Britain, I can cover up for the lack of news with a lengthy lead feature about, yes, the internet.
Whereas the newspapers did a pretty cruddy job of covering the lack of news. On Wednesday, the Daily Mail devoted their entire front page to Britain’s outrage at having three wheelie bins in their gardens. No, seriously, it was the stupidest thing I’d seen in a while. The Sun, that day, decided to dig up the Baby P storyline, in the belief that they could flog that dead toddler horse a tiny bit longer.
But never mind, I hear we may find out the identity of the Stig on Top Gear tonight. I considered delaying publication so I could cover this, then realised that was stupid.
Contents?
- Main feature: The government loves the internet. The internet hates the government. The entertainment industry hates them both. How can this love triangle be resolved?
- And now sports: Hateful, apathetic coverage of Formula 1, in advance of today’s British Grand Prix.
- Bit of a Blur: In a genuine dream-come-true moment, I attended a Blur secret gig in London this week. Did it live up to my hopes? Could it ever?
- Media and stuff: The movie of Coraline! The corpse of Captain America! The death of Primeval! The presses are stopped!
- Behatted Photo Of The Week: Already, celebrities are lining up not to mention this feature anywhere.
- Next week: Predictions so accurate, you’ll wonder how I do it without a time machine or magic 8-ball.
A Weekly Hat so packed, I actually wrote something and then cut it out. (Read on to find out what!) And don’t worry, Twitter users, the whole Iran thing is mentioned… at least twice.
Digital Britain: The love/hate of our lives
This week, the British political establishment stood up as one and announced that they had noticed the existence of the internet. Not only was there the Digital Britain report, but the far more amusing prospect of Gordon Brown being so impressed with Twitter’s role in helping information flow in Iran that he declared it could have prevented previous Rwandan genocide.
I feel suddenly that my use of Twitter might not be worthy enough. After all, I haven’t stopped a single genocide, just further flooded the internet with banal garbage, allegedly amusing links and shameless plugging of my websites. Luckily, I am middle class in an industrialised Western nation, which provides me with an excuse: the most interesting thing I can expose is the possibility that an MP might have spent more on furniture than I consider acceptable.
Because, while the government were praising the internet to the high heavens this week, the newspapers were using it to stick the boot in. The Guardian decided, insanely, to put the expense files of Parliament onto the worldwide internet in their entirety and invite browsers to trawl through them looking for stuff that they judge to be unsuitable. Half of me thinks this is a terrifying indictment of the pettiness of modern society, the other half thinks that the Guardian have come up with an ingenious way to avoid having to pay their own people to read the damn things.
(Oh, and if you’re not down with the internet, I believe the Telegraph gave away the complete expense files as a 68 page magazine supplement yesterday. Just imagine, you could sit on the toilet, taking an enormous dump, whilst crusading for social justice against the political fatcats. Could anything be better?)
Unfortunately, whilst the internet is a valuable tool for heroic prevention of genocide and stupid brave citizen journalism, it also has a more unsavoury side. No, I’m not talking about porn (although there’s a lot of that), but the dread spectre of illegal downloading. There’s always illegally downloaded porn, I suppose.
The Digital Britain report did attempt to address the illegal downloading, by giving ISPs and Ofcom the right the pass the names of offenders to copyright holders, so they can be sued, publically beaten and crushed beneath the wheel of horse-drawn carts, and then, if that doesn’t dissuade them, their internet access could be cut off. I’m at least impressed that they understand the nerd mentality sufficiently to realise that no amount of lawsuits or torture will hurt us as much as disconnecting our broadband. We’d be alone, isolated, stuck in a pit, cut off from the world, seeing visions of the black dog… yeah.
Despite their best efforts, though, the recording industry is ungrateful. Not enough has been done, they say. Illegal downloaders will keep on trucking. Without a clear plan, preferably involving immediate permanent disconnection, prison sentencing, hefty fines and waterboarding, nothing will have any effect. Personally, I think illegal downloading is better deterred by finding ways to deliver content which legitimately compete with it, although I’m aware that just giving stuff away is notoriously hard to do commercially. (Except in the highly desirable fields of healthcare and unwanted religious texts.)
There’s the BBC iPlayer, and the many clones other channels have subsequently introduced, which have done a lot to convince me I don’t need to bother downloading television, not to mention the fact that DVDs are now as cheap as hell. And over in the music industry, where they seem to whine about illegal downloading the most, there’s the immortal loveliness of Spotify, which allows users to stream as much music as they like, in exchange for a the occasional advert shoved between songs. It’s a great thing, although I have noticed that the advertising has been becoming increasingly irritating and abrasive, involving shrill members of the public shrieking into a voicemail, or the bonechilling lameness of the Suitopia advert, which has helpfully been made available for download by the company. I recommend listening to it NOW.
Anyway, my point, laboured as it was, is that illegal downloading will almost certainly persist unless companies focus on finding alternatives rather than spanking people. I’m sure the next big peer-to-peer download innovation that makes it that little bit harder for users to be identified is only just around the corner anyway.
Oh, and that the internet is awesome, obviously. Where else could I do this?
And now sports
As this is the day of the British Grand Prix, it seems a good day to talk about Formula 1, the sport which manages to make driving around a circuit in an incredibly fast super-car seem… faintly dull and buzzy. I used to watch whole Formula 1 races fairly regularly, before I realised that I could glean the salient points by watching the first couple of laps, the last lap and the podium.
But my petty feelings aside, Britain as a whole has cared about F1 a little more of late, because suddenly we had British chaps who seemed to be doing well. Seriously, it’s amazing the ridiculous sports we’ll start enthusing about when we realise that there’s a UK contestant who might stand a chance of winning. Rowing, during last year’s Olympics? That surreal period where the nation tuned en masse to curling (Olympic-level sweeping, basically), in desperate hope of victory?
Unfortunately, Lewis Hamilton annoys me. A lot. It’s partly the obnoxious licensing of his face to sell almost anything, it’s partly the way you can easily read massive arrogance into every public statement he makes, it’s partly his odd relationship with his father. Regardless, my pleasure in watching him lose this season has been borderline sadistic. So much so that I may almost consider watching a whole race again, whilst supporting Jenson Button, a chap who used to also annoy me a little, until Hamilton came along and forced me into a rock/hard place situation.
It has to be said though, the sudden transformation of Button from mid-level averagosity to crushing fascist championship domination, triggered by a new team/car, does support the argument that F1 is more about the quality of the car than the skill of the driver. Not to suggest that any muppet could do it, I myself would die in seconds (but would at least supply an awesome first-corner pile-up for the folks at home), but it does seem that as long as you have a reasonably competent driver, and as long as Michael Schumacher remains retired, the car is the star.
Oh, and apparently the major F1 teams might be forming a “break-away” championship because they don’t like the idea of a budget cap. This sounds a lot like a negotiating tactic to me, along the lines of “Give us all the money we want and we won’t leave you!” (Apologies if that sentence reminds any readers of their marriages.) But I’ll mock it properly when it actually happens.
Bit Of A Blur
On Monday, a mere two days after their first reunited live appearance in Essex, Blur played a “secret gig” in London. These are becoming increasingly popular because, in culture, much like in food, it’s becoming trendy to try and recreate the appearance of nature and spontaneity, even if there was months of behind-the-scenes planning involved.
And, as luck would have it, the wristbands to get into this event were being given out across the road from my office, and since Blur are the first band I ever truly loved, you’d have had to pin me down with a bayonet to stop me. I went, I got, I waited, I sweated, I turned up fifteen minutes early and got a place only three or four folk away from the front.
Having told us all in their furtive email that the band would be on at “7PM sharp”, the boys proceeded to stroll on stage at around eight minutes past, but quickly dispelled any annoyance by being awesome. We got 13 songs, pretty good for free, and I even allowed myself a bit of push-shove-mosh for the occasion.
(I was doing rather well for most of the show, my glasses somehow remaining attached to my head, and then they ripped out the explosive three-hit combo of Popscene, Song 2 and Parklife. I nearly got beaten to a pulp, then trampled, then trampolined. It was fucking brilliant. Due to a combination of said violence and sweating, not to mention Damon Albarn hurling water into the audience, I staggered home afterwards looking like a man who had just stumbled out of the shower, only to be punched in the stomach by a masked intruder.)
The amount of punky, shouty energy on that stage during the faster songs was amazing, and they did all the material with barely a pause, as if they were still touring after the release. Loved it, hope they keep it up when I see them in Hyde Park in July. Apologies for the length and fanboy gushing of this article, but… yeah. It was excellent. And considering it had the weight of my boyhood dreams to contend with, that’s quite impressive.
Media and stuff
The whole Weekly Hat is somewhat media/stuff dominated this week, I confess. Even with the Blur piece promoted to its own section, there’s a decent amount to cover here…
- I saw Coraline! A film based upon a children’s novella by Neil Gaiman, and directed by Henry Selick, the film-maker behind The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s an excellent piece, I’m happy to say. The basics are quite familiar if you’ve read many stories for young people (young girl gets forced to move to middle of nowhere, oddness and escapism occurs), but that’s probably less of a problem for actual young people (which, happily, were present at my screening). The rest of us can just admire Gaiman’s cool ideas and the unique stop-motion stylings of Selick. Lots of fun. Only wish my cinema had the 3D version available.
- Captain America not dead! Marvel Comics announce that the most prominent flag-waver amongst superheroes will be returning after two years of restful Resting In Peace. Comic fans, like myself, are unsurprised, as superhero death is about as reliable as an Iranian election result. (Owch, topical.) Still, Ed Brubaker, who wrote a very good story for the death, is staying on for the Christ-like resurrection. So even if it is predictable, it should at least be readable.
- Primeval cancelled! I never watched it, so I have little meaningful to add, but I was surprised by this news, as it still seemed relatively popular. But I suspect a show with regular appearances by HUGE CGI DINOSAURS probably has to get pretty good viewing figures to justify its existence in our post-apocalyptic recessionary landscape. Good job Doctor Who’s on a huge wave of popularity, really, or it might have been in danger.
- Late addition: (I actually wrote most of this on Friday) I saw a set by a comedian called Brendon Burns last night, among others, and he was very, very funny. You can probably find some snippets of his work on Youtube or something. He managed to give me a headache with his constant yelling into the microphone, but I was honestly laughing so hard that I didn’t care.
Behatted Photo Of The Week
To wish him well in his hopeful defeat of Lewis Hamilton, today’s lucky Behatted soul is Jenson Button (human) and Ratson (hat), chosen because it sounds a bit like “Jenson”. Obviously.
(Please ignore the fact that technically he was already wearing a hat.)
The Small Print: Original photo nicked from ktpupp on Flickr and used under some kind of crazy Creative Commons licence. Rock.
Next week
What will happen this week. No, seriously, it will, I mean it this time…
- After a week of internet users trawling through MP expense records, the results are published. The Daily Mail chooses to run with ‘ROFLMAO’ as their headline, marking a new low even for them.
- Sales of the Little Boots album ‘Hands’ go into the toilet after The Weekly Hat pull their review of it for reasons of length. (It’s quite good in a bouncy, electro-pop way. Like a fractionally less populist version of Kylie.)
- Technology is upgraded to such an extent that whenever someone sends a message on Twitter (no matter how banal), a life in Iran is saved.
- A bid by Saddam Hussein to become Speaker of the House of Commons survives several damaging expenses revelations about his spending on terracotta pots and genocide, only to be scuppered by the fact that he is not an MP, nor is he presently alive.
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