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Walking the Cow (1983)

Oh, he’s a petulant one alright!

When I first heard DECLAN O’ROURKE’s ‘It’s a Big, Bad Beautiful World’, it seemed as though the singer had somehow smashed open my skull, extracted my inimitable brand of jaded romanticism and physically pounded it into song format. So when tickets for ‘An Evening With Declan O’Rourke’ went on sale then, I was naturally first in the queue brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s closing time on Monday night and Aidan and I are sitting in front of at a pair of empty glasses.

For the last five minutes or so, he has been engaged in a freewheeling mobile phone conversation. I’m not quite sure with who.

“Ah, not a lot now” he’s saying. “Myself and Butler are finishin’ a pint in Grogans. Just scratching our balls to be honest. Probably head home after and see if herself is feeling frisky…”

Then person on the other end says something and Aidan makes a face.

“Sorry, who am I speaking to?” he inquires. Read the rest of this article here.

To the person who slipped me this fake two euro coin…

You win this round, sir. Enjoy the two-and-a-small-bit packets of Tayto you’ve earned at my expense. That’s one half-of-a-pre-made-Spar-sandwich I’ll never see again etc. etc.

The single biggest ‘Inception’ plot hole as I see it…

As previously mentioned here, I saw Christopher Nolan’s Inception during the week (in a professional capacity) and wasn’t impressed. The film is being hyped as a rare ‘intelligent’ action film, but as far as I’m concerned, for every highfalutin concept the audience is asked to get it’s head around, there are at least ten precepts of basic common sense it must studiously ignore.

How does one person get into another person’s dreams? With a piece of wire. Of course, how ingenious! The Slumberland A-Team don’t wake up when their people carrier is careering through densely packed city streets and being riddled with bullets. But drop one of them backwards into a bath and – BAM! – they’re back in the land of the living. It just makes sense!

But even taken on its own terms, which I am really loathe to do (as I find the entire sci-fi/fantasy genre cringe-some in the extreme), there seem to me to be a couple of major plot holes. And this, to my mind, is the biggest… WARNING: ***MASSIVE SPOILERS*** Read the rest of this entry »

‘A German audience will stare at you stony-faced for the entire gig and then buy every T-shirt you have’

My wife likes to make a show of me by getting me to list the weirdest jobs I’ve had. When I was a kid I worked in Dunnes Stores in town. There was a strike on and I was supposed to be on strike duty. But I got a little nixer on the side, guarding a giant inflatable can of 7Up in the car park outside The Square in Tallaght. There were legions of kids harrassing me “What is it, mister?” “Can I kick it, mister?” “Can I burn it?”Read the rest of this article here.

Tightrope (2010)

Isn’t this just the coolest video ever?

“Christ, if Ireland had just beaten England 4-1 in the World Cup, there’d be bodies strewn in the ditches today…”

The internet was aflame last week with rumours that Tuesday (or was it Wednesday? or Thursday?) was the exact date Michael J. Fox travelled forward to in Back to the Future II. The story was a hoax, of course. The actual date the DeLorean transported to in the film was October 21st 2015.

Insofar as anyone in 1985 would have understood it though, the future already is upon us today. No, we haven’t developed hoverboard technology yet. (Who gives a shit? How many of us even know how to skateboard?) But we have perfected a slew of technologies that would most likely make Dr. Emmett Brown smack his forehead and exclaim “Great snakes, Marty!” Read the rest of this entry »

Guantanamera (1967)

With this song I am single handedly willing the sun to shine this weekend…

Summer blockbuster movies: it’s not them, it’s me

I happened to catch a preview screening of Christopher Nolan’s Inception last night. Now I’ll admit, I’ve never really been a fan of the action/sci-fi genre. So asking me for a completely unbiased opinion about the film would be like asking a vegetarian for an honest appraisal of a steak dinner. But even making allowance for any prejudices I may have, this film really is an awful pile of horse manure. Read the rest of this entry »