Sunday, July 19, 2009
Pitch The Bitch
Out to dinner on Saturday - the only downside being that Sunday's battle with the paint was conducted with a hangover. But hey, there's always an upside. In this case, it was not having to sit through The X Factor in real time but instead on our wonderful DVD recorder. Louis Walsh? Where's the Fast Forward-button? Oggon's pre-sing VT? Double-Fast-Forward.So, anyway, the bandwagon rumbles on. This week we were down to five contestants, and this time they would each sing twice. I can't now remember what the criteria were - but Google is my friend, and it turns out they were American Classics and Britney Spears songs. Britney graced us with her presence, not to mention a hideous song and most of her arse falling out of Kylie's hotpants. Ewww. Apparently some Disney creation called Ciley Myrus (I think) also sang, but my readiness with the DVD remote means that we missed her. Turns out that T Rot (the penultimate Rottie) is a big fan of hers, and he "chaptered" her turn, so I'll watch it tonight and will do a post scriptum if necessary.I want you to know, friends, that rotting about The X Factor has become a huge chore. I'm so bored with it. The highlight of my year is going to be Christmas - not because I like the sound of carols (I do) or because I like the sound of children fighting over their Christmas presents (I don't), but because by then The X Factor will all be over.What can I say? Ruth was kicked off - which is fine, because despite having the second-best voice in the competition, she had absolutely no charisma and had reached middle-age before she reached thirty. All the judges had decided that she was a "rock chick", for which I have only two words:Shirley.Manson.As for the rest - well, JLS haven't sung a decent harmony since their first audition - which means that either they were very lucky then, or they've been too lazy to work on them since. By harmony, I mean something that isn't either unison or fifths. Think Counterpoint, lads!Alexandra was her usual workmanlike self - but she's just not special in the way that Leona was. Eggnog was dressed as a Teletubby, and looked, according to Mrs Rot, like a "bewildered pygmy". Well, actually she said "piggy", but I misheard her, and I prefer my version.Which leaves us with Diana. She sang REM's "Everybody Hurts", which is a terrific song and should, by rights, have been her passport to the final. However, somewhere along the line between boot camp and the semi-finals, she's totally lost her mojo. I know people bang on about her sounding like Dolores O'Riordan, but so what? They said Cliff Richard sounded like Elvis, that Chris Martin sounded like Thom Yorke. The point is that whereas I used to look forward to her singing, now I dread it. I still think she could win the competition, and of the remaining competitors she's the only one I care tuppence about, but inflation means that tuppence isn't worth what it once was. Cluelouis' contribution to the discussion was to suggest that she wasn't versatile enough because she didn't dance. I mean, ffs. In any case, has anyone seen Leona dance? I doubt's that's a pretty sight... I fear, though, that Oggon will win by a massive margin - who ARE all these people with access to a phone?Still, it's a sad day when you don't learn anything new, and I learnt that the Australian word for being completely out of tune is "pitchy". Although "pitchy" could be Geordie. All I can recall is that it was someone with their hair in a ponytail describing yet another abject performance.***So, from the ridiculous to the, well, not sublime exactly. BBC1 has made a series out of the Wallender books by Henning Mankell. Mrs Rot's parents put us onto them - they're fine examples of the genre - plenty of grisly death, a tortured policeman with a difficult home life, but set in Sweden, which (for those of us who have never been there) conjures up fewer mean streets than, say, Glasgow or Baltimore. Or even Oxford.The casting was superb. David Warner played the peri-demented father to perfection. Jeany Spark was just right as his daughter Linda, while Kenneth Branagh was pitch-perfect as the eponymous 'tec.The opening scene, where a teenage girl sets herself on fire in a field of rape, was shockingly arresting, but unfortunately it was all downhill from there. Everything about the programme was rushed, no-one was introduced, the rest of the police were ciphers who existed to feed Wallender with lines - even though we'd both read the book Mrs Rot and I struggled to keep up, though Mrs Rot's duties elsewhere in the house meant that she missed all of the murders. I rather think that was probably a good thing ...***Further to my mention in my previous post about my former career as a musician, I'm in the process of setting up a MySpace page where you can listen to stuff. It won't be up for a while yet, but watch this space (well, not this one, obviously).
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