I swear, Wes Craven, he got it all wrong.
Fuck monsters, fuck claws, fuck the "mysteriously ajar door" and fuck "investigate the odd noise by walking in slow motion towards it with some music similar to the Jaws - Two Notes in the background". Wes Craven ain't got shit on a family holiday to me.
To compare my decision to go on holiday with my family to a "lapse in judgement" would be a bit like comparing a brain haemorrhage to what Curt Kobain looked like shortly after he took a shotgun to his face. Nevertheless I made said decision. Never, never, again.
It all seemed good on paper. A 3 week break to the south of France which included a 3 day to Paris, a city I've always intended to visit as well as a trip of Disneyland Europe, all of which was free for me. Including food and drinks, all paid for with the generosity of my parents. Fuck free. Now you couldn't pay me to go on another holiday family.
The first red flag should have been the fact that we were driving down to the south of France in a car. Just to make this clear that I live in Edinburgh, Scotland so this involves driving the length of the UK almost and almost the length of France as well. Pretty fucking big red flag 'int it? Moron that I am.
The first "highlight" of this nightmare excursion would have to be the SatNav device we were using dropping us off in the middle of nowhere in France roughly 60 miles from where we needed to be and just deciding to deny the existence of any road. Having to navigate your way to a place you don't know in a country you don't know on a route you don't know when you don't REALLY know where you are is a bit erm.... fun.
So after 4-5 hours on top of the trip (which was at this point clocking up an impressive 27 hours inside close quarters to my family). We arrive at our KeyCamp resort. I see another red flag, do you? Yes it's a fucking camping holiday. Mercy of mercies however it was a caravan and not an actual tent that we were staying in.
As I searched the vicinity for the essentials: The Bar (Scanning the spirits for label brands of which there were none, I note a lack of music, atmosphere, and customers as well) The pool (Not too bad really) and other facilities. It had none.
As the tour rep welcomed us and led us to our caravan I checked my phone and suddenly realise I have not enabled roaming before I came on Holidays, as it announces there is no network I die a little on the inside and say goodbye to the last tendril connecting me to a sane society where people aren't related to each other and expecting to co-habit based on this fact alone.
We enter the caravan and I immediately seek to distance myself from them giving that I've spent the last 27 hours with my sister all but sitting on my knee, listening to my dad shout at the disembodied voice of the SatNav as it asks him to "when possible make a U-Turn" on a motorway. Distance is somewhat difficult considering the caravan is barely bigger than our car.
Now at this point I'll just say that I feel I've dealt with this all pretty well however I do need a little help. I pour a double vodka just to hear the usual jibe from my dad that just because I'm not aching to watch some Ant & Dec drivel with them 24/7 I'm anti-family "Oh you need drink a whole bottle of vodka just to put up with your poor old family eh?".
I swallow the comment "There's not a bottle big enough pal" before it reaches my vocal chords.
The holiday contained many, many other "highlights", such as but not limited to;
What can loosely be referred to as a shower with mood swings worse than the fag hag on her monthly making the temperate randomly alternate between it's apparently only two settings. Death Ray and Antarctic. I have much fewer showers than I would be like.
Forgetting to buy books and having to buy a "bestseller" on the way down. Having such venerable sources as the Daily Mail tell me that "Chasing Harry Winston" is "Soooooo sex and the city". It would be if in any episode, the four characters decided to have no opinions, personality and did exactly nothing. Don't remember that episode, do you? The whole thing is an unmitigated literary disaster, I blacklist the author for life.
The continuing annoyance of not being able to make a full turn without bumping into 2 family members and at least 3 appliances proving that caravan holidays are a particularly vile and draining variant of the family holiday.
Travel that not even prescription sedatives can make less painful. The sedative appears to be useless when inside the car. However my niece seems to be on the brink of solving our power problems as within the same car she seems to have happened across a limitless source of energy (I searched the car, no epinephrine in sight). She begins a seemingly relentless assault on your sanity under the guise of code-names such as "I Spy with my little eye" "Snakes and Ladders" "Guess who" and pretty much every other mind numbing soul destroying game to exist. Ever.
Your relaxation at the pool is relatively gimped as you have to keep an eye out for where the child is and judge whether she falls into your "area of responsibility" whereby if she falls or something happens it becomes your fault and not the person who birthed them. Who says parent responsibility is diminishing these days?
Following on the above point you have to construct certain proximity sensors in your mind. Measuring the distance between your niece and certain objects and people and of course, the children you have red flagged as "wee cunts" making sure she does not stray too close to any of them. "Gently guiding" her away from them (picking her up and putting her somewhere else telling her your not interested in her reasons for wanting to go there).
Don't get me wrong I love my niece, in fact I have designs on making her into my own personal mini-me and have been teaching her sarcasm from an early age. However on the holiday it's more of "admire from a distance" third person love.
The sun playing a fun game of Peek-a-boo behind the clouds each time it disappears you gauge the time depending on the cloud and surmise you could gnash back to the caravan and quickly cure cancer or world poverty before it re-appears. I abandon hope of a decent tan.
No matter how close you are to your family and how much you love them and how open your relationship with them is there will always be sides of you that you do not particularly wish to brandish in their presence, suppressing these sides does tend to leave you dying to shout "Cumshot!" "Cuntfucker!" or some other random expletive to re-assert your sense of self.
Being dragged to the beach despite the entire family knowing you hate it. I've never understood the fascination. After all it is quite literally where dirt and water meet. I also feel as if the sand somehow wants to enter me, to breach ever barrier. I leave the beach with stow-aways in every area of my body that I'll be washing out for days (it also means using the shower, see above). I've also yet to meet a pair of footwear that is not a sand sympathiser even sandals manage to carry them for days which boggles the mind.
All in all, if offered a family holiday, even if it is not a camping holiday. Say no, or if you find yourself wanting to say yes.
Seek professional help.
Thursday 10 July 2008
Sunday 22 July 2007
Spielberg and Bay Murder Childhood, Read all about it
Ok, I haven't posted on this in the last 7 months, decided it would be a nice distraction since I'm waiting to start a new job and have a lot of free time.
In this time I've chosen to watch some films coming out, including one which I had decided not to watch previously. Aka Transformers the action film.
I had many issues with it before it's release that I wasn't going to watch it. Key among them are the obvious things like; They snubbed the voice actor of Megatron because he didn't "fit in with the new Megatron" which is of course bullshit, The lame "all spark" story, the revisionist bullshit, the plain as day in your face advertising, the needless romance story I could see in the commercial, the fact that none of the new CGI transformers seemed to bear any resemblance to the original characters when in robot mode, and of course the bullshit blue/red flames on Optimus. Oh and one more tiny thing - Megatrons a gun and always has been. (Anything except G1 is unworthy of my time).
However the boredom the ensued after spending at least 50 hours a week on youtube soon overpowered all of these issues, and although the film was "enjoyable" in a purely watching way I really wished I hadn't seen it.
Although I was pleasantly surprised by the robot mode forms and some of the voice-overs there were just too many issues to deal with.
First of all the lack of recognisable characters, and the lack thereof of character development in the ones that were there. The autobots consist of the most recognisable; featuring Optimus Prime, Bumble Bee, Jazz, Ratchet, and Ironhide. The decepticons consist of; Megatron, Starscream, Barricade, Bonecrusher, Frenzy, Blackout, Scorponok, and Devastator.
Now I'll just point out how pathetic this is. The film (which is about the transformers) has almost no transformers in it, infact the cast of robots vs humans is won by humies almost 5:1. Not only that but the last 4 decepticons have no lines. Yes that's right - half the decepticons have minor roles and no lines at all.
Starscream is barely in the film at all, same for bonecrusher. Barricade has like - one line.
This film is all about the nobility of humans helping the transformers and has a needless romance story between the two "main" charecters (I know you might be confused but yes in the movie the two main charecters are infact - human.) Which takes up so much screen time with their lame attempts at humour and the bad acting and unbelievable chararecter of Sam that there's almost no room for the Autobots to portray any kind of personality.
All of the autobots except Optimus have very few lines. To begin with bumble-bee can only communicate by using lyrics from songs on the radio, which makes understanding what he says for almost the entire film impossible.
That's not to mention the fact that the battles are too "WOW factor" with no actual pause for thought about what's happening or important moments which are completely lost in the blur of action. That and sometimes because of the robotic over-chrome effect makes it sometimes hard to figure out what's going on, as well as them handling somethings horribly, because of this several key moments are totally ruined. For example Bumble bee is critically injured.
However have not one but TWO slow motion and dramatically enhanced 30 second long scenes of the two main chars touching hands, but the death of Jazz happens in about 2 seconds and is completely glazed over and actually quite hard to see since it's zoomed out and small.
We all know that they will turn this into a trilogy and that's why none of the original notable characters are in it :/
Oh yeh and while we're on the subject of revisionist bullshit, apparently Megatron and Optimus are brothers like Abel and Cain in the greek tragedy. Unfortunately this is not greek and the only tragedy is that spielber has murdered another classic.
Go watch the original animated movie it owns the live action one to fking hell.
These two moments in the original own the hell out of the ENTIRE new film:
The only decent thing in the film is that they retained the original voice actor for Prime, but used a new digitiser. It's also negated by the fact they snubbed the actor for Megatron and Starscream has almost no lines.
In this time I've chosen to watch some films coming out, including one which I had decided not to watch previously. Aka Transformers the action film.
I had many issues with it before it's release that I wasn't going to watch it. Key among them are the obvious things like; They snubbed the voice actor of Megatron because he didn't "fit in with the new Megatron" which is of course bullshit, The lame "all spark" story, the revisionist bullshit, the plain as day in your face advertising, the needless romance story I could see in the commercial, the fact that none of the new CGI transformers seemed to bear any resemblance to the original characters when in robot mode, and of course the bullshit blue/red flames on Optimus. Oh and one more tiny thing - Megatrons a gun and always has been. (Anything except G1 is unworthy of my time).
However the boredom the ensued after spending at least 50 hours a week on youtube soon overpowered all of these issues, and although the film was "enjoyable" in a purely watching way I really wished I hadn't seen it.
Although I was pleasantly surprised by the robot mode forms and some of the voice-overs there were just too many issues to deal with.
First of all the lack of recognisable characters, and the lack thereof of character development in the ones that were there. The autobots consist of the most recognisable; featuring Optimus Prime, Bumble Bee, Jazz, Ratchet, and Ironhide. The decepticons consist of; Megatron, Starscream, Barricade, Bonecrusher, Frenzy, Blackout, Scorponok, and Devastator.
Now I'll just point out how pathetic this is. The film (which is about the transformers) has almost no transformers in it, infact the cast of robots vs humans is won by humies almost 5:1. Not only that but the last 4 decepticons have no lines. Yes that's right - half the decepticons have minor roles and no lines at all.
Starscream is barely in the film at all, same for bonecrusher. Barricade has like - one line.
This film is all about the nobility of humans helping the transformers and has a needless romance story between the two "main" charecters (I know you might be confused but yes in the movie the two main charecters are infact - human.) Which takes up so much screen time with their lame attempts at humour and the bad acting and unbelievable chararecter of Sam that there's almost no room for the Autobots to portray any kind of personality.
All of the autobots except Optimus have very few lines. To begin with bumble-bee can only communicate by using lyrics from songs on the radio, which makes understanding what he says for almost the entire film impossible.
That's not to mention the fact that the battles are too "WOW factor" with no actual pause for thought about what's happening or important moments which are completely lost in the blur of action. That and sometimes because of the robotic over-chrome effect makes it sometimes hard to figure out what's going on, as well as them handling somethings horribly, because of this several key moments are totally ruined. For example Bumble bee is critically injured.
However have not one but TWO slow motion and dramatically enhanced 30 second long scenes of the two main chars touching hands, but the death of Jazz happens in about 2 seconds and is completely glazed over and actually quite hard to see since it's zoomed out and small.
We all know that they will turn this into a trilogy and that's why none of the original notable characters are in it :/
Oh yeh and while we're on the subject of revisionist bullshit, apparently Megatron and Optimus are brothers like Abel and Cain in the greek tragedy. Unfortunately this is not greek and the only tragedy is that spielber has murdered another classic.
Go watch the original animated movie it owns the live action one to fking hell.
These two moments in the original own the hell out of the ENTIRE new film:
The only decent thing in the film is that they retained the original voice actor for Prime, but used a new digitiser. It's also negated by the fact they snubbed the actor for Megatron and Starscream has almost no lines.
Wednesday 3 January 2007
The Start of Something New.
It's the new year, we've all got suitably drunk on new years eve. The freak winds have managed to derail half my garden and we all have a lot of regrets to start the new year with.
However I have come to the shocking conclusion that my previous mantra of "it's just another night out on the town" is infact fundamentally flawed. It is not infact just another night.
It's a night on the town where the junkie:upstanding gentleman is skewed considerably in favour of junkies. Also transportation costs rocket to the point where walking becomes the only reasonable option, followed shortly by cycling. When cycling becomes your second most appropriate option on a night you are more than likely going to be totally sozzled chances are there's mitigating circumstances.
But oh no, the differences, somewhat wonderfully don't end there! Oh dear lord no. New Years Eve (hereafter it may be reffered to as Ground Zero). It is of course, a night that knows no end! Gone are the days of reasonable licensing laws! Oh no, pubs, clubs and other establishments can now have 24 hour licensing! So that drunk fuckwit who happens to be in your group of friends (there's one in every group it's obligatory but as previusly mentioned ratio's are somewhat skewed on Ground Zero Night so you may find yourself awash in drunken reasoning of why you should go to a 24 hour club) will of course suggest you go there!
Now this sounds not too bad however you will more than likely have to navigate at least one a half main streets of your city. This is no small feat given the junkie:upstanding gentleman ratio. There will be shouting - it wont be nice and you will be pissed off enough to agrravate the local scumbags.
If you do manage to somehow get there in one piece, you will be bombarded with very merry people. Which we all know from previous experience tend to darken your own mood when you have been dragged somewhere against your will. No I don't want a stamp on my face, I'm fairly sure I don't want another drink. I think I will pass on coming into the toilet cubicle with you, and no - I'm sure you're a very nice junkie but I do not wish to have a "totally legit man honest" can from the back of your car.
So in my newfound wisdom I have compiled a list of things that seem to obligatory on a Ground Zero Night. They are as follows;
1 Random person who isn't coming out with you but drinks your drink anyway.
1 Overpriced taxi to the club. This may be seasoned with argueing about the price.
3 Dodge come on's in club of choice.
1 Decent come on.
1 Come on from someone you wanted only for them to leave early for no explainable reason.
1 Drunken couple split up. This may be lightly topped with having to play friend to both sides.
1 Conversation of why the girl of drunken split up shouldn't attempt to walk 20 miles to somewhwere when she has no idea how to get there and no one to go with her.
1 Emotional Goodbye to an ex-lover you've tried to befriend only to come back 20 mins later cos you need to stay at their bit.
5 Drunken kisses from said lover despite lover having lover who is physically superior.
1 45 minute arguement with ex-lovers drunken friend who is lying about where they are, and doing it badly.
1 Attempt at getting someone to not punch themselves in the face and calm them down.
1 Unprovoked attack by junkie standing near car who seems offended by you saying "the club is open" to your friends.
1 Watching ex-lover who has proclaimed love to you getting into someone else.
1 Getting felt up by ex-lovers new toy.
1 Speaking to new toys Mother, Sister and Brother in law assuring them that you will find out what has happened to their son/brother and why you have their bag /phone even though you don't really understand it yourself.
In short fun.
So I now wish I was part of somewhere fun and glossed over like High School Musical :(
However I have come to the shocking conclusion that my previous mantra of "it's just another night out on the town" is infact fundamentally flawed. It is not infact just another night.
It's a night on the town where the junkie:upstanding gentleman is skewed considerably in favour of junkies. Also transportation costs rocket to the point where walking becomes the only reasonable option, followed shortly by cycling. When cycling becomes your second most appropriate option on a night you are more than likely going to be totally sozzled chances are there's mitigating circumstances.
But oh no, the differences, somewhat wonderfully don't end there! Oh dear lord no. New Years Eve (hereafter it may be reffered to as Ground Zero). It is of course, a night that knows no end! Gone are the days of reasonable licensing laws! Oh no, pubs, clubs and other establishments can now have 24 hour licensing! So that drunk fuckwit who happens to be in your group of friends (there's one in every group it's obligatory but as previusly mentioned ratio's are somewhat skewed on Ground Zero Night so you may find yourself awash in drunken reasoning of why you should go to a 24 hour club) will of course suggest you go there!
Now this sounds not too bad however you will more than likely have to navigate at least one a half main streets of your city. This is no small feat given the junkie:upstanding gentleman ratio. There will be shouting - it wont be nice and you will be pissed off enough to agrravate the local scumbags.
If you do manage to somehow get there in one piece, you will be bombarded with very merry people. Which we all know from previous experience tend to darken your own mood when you have been dragged somewhere against your will. No I don't want a stamp on my face, I'm fairly sure I don't want another drink. I think I will pass on coming into the toilet cubicle with you, and no - I'm sure you're a very nice junkie but I do not wish to have a "totally legit man honest" can from the back of your car.
So in my newfound wisdom I have compiled a list of things that seem to obligatory on a Ground Zero Night. They are as follows;
1 Random person who isn't coming out with you but drinks your drink anyway.
1 Overpriced taxi to the club. This may be seasoned with argueing about the price.
3 Dodge come on's in club of choice.
1 Decent come on.
1 Come on from someone you wanted only for them to leave early for no explainable reason.
1 Drunken couple split up. This may be lightly topped with having to play friend to both sides.
1 Conversation of why the girl of drunken split up shouldn't attempt to walk 20 miles to somewhwere when she has no idea how to get there and no one to go with her.
1 Emotional Goodbye to an ex-lover you've tried to befriend only to come back 20 mins later cos you need to stay at their bit.
5 Drunken kisses from said lover despite lover having lover who is physically superior.
1 45 minute arguement with ex-lovers drunken friend who is lying about where they are, and doing it badly.
1 Attempt at getting someone to not punch themselves in the face and calm them down.
1 Unprovoked attack by junkie standing near car who seems offended by you saying "the club is open" to your friends.
1 Watching ex-lover who has proclaimed love to you getting into someone else.
1 Getting felt up by ex-lovers new toy.
1 Speaking to new toys Mother, Sister and Brother in law assuring them that you will find out what has happened to their son/brother and why you have their bag /phone even though you don't really understand it yourself.
In short fun.
So I now wish I was part of somewhere fun and glossed over like High School Musical :(
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