There is a gaping hole for an informative and witty tv blog that focuses on the abundance of quality television available to us thanks to Sky and the Internet. Taking cues from the witty and humorous yet impassioned styles of Popjustice and Ultra Culture and blending the lengthy analysis that still makes Pitchfork so readable, there’s a real opportunity to make something that is both informative and entertaining. A mix of quick news and LOL-worthy GIFs, with more considered reviews, retrospectives and excited predictions.
The remit is fairly obvious, from the US it’s your HBO-type dramas, your NBC comedies and those related. In the UK it’s more along the lines of Downton Abbey/The Inbetweeners etc. - it should be pretty easy to judge really.
One key feature will also be a place where Brits can quickly see when their fave US shows are returning to air so they know when to look for them. I’ve seen a few people looking for something like this so a simple resource like that would be great.
There’s two things I need, a good name and great content. I’ve been daydreaming about setting something like this up for a wee while and really think it could be a good time sink and resource for others.
What I’d love from each person on this email (and a couple of you have already come up with some ideas) is a few feature suggestions and name ideas.
The name needs to be snappy, closer to Google than Gorilla vs. Bear if you catch my drift.
The feature suggestions are totally up to you - one already suggested is a fun round up of all of those people completely misunderstanding the Downton Abbey plot pulled from Twitter each week, or the retrospective feature Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip has always deserved.
I will also be looking to compile the best short content and all of the lengthy essay-type stuff into a semi-frequent PDF for people to load onto their iPads and Kindles for digestion. I’ve read a few bits like this recently from other sites and have enjoyed immensely.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you’d like to be involved. Feel free to ask any questions!
E-mail me - me /at\ crablin /dot\ com
HAY FEVER
“Don’t sneeze on me man!”
but I’m suffering with pollen and you don’t understand.
HAY FEVER
Well I do what I can,
but I’m streaming from my eyeholes
and I’m a shell of a man.
To call myself a ketchup connoisseur would border on pretentious, so I’m not going to. However, I eat a great deal of the stuff and when given the opportunity to be one of the first 3,000 people to try Heinz’s limited edition new variety, blended with balsamic vinegar, rather than the usual spirit vinegar, I bit their arms off.
The bottle arrived at the office this afternoon and after reading the label on the rear, I set about picking up a pack of quality Lincolnshire sausages to ensure a good partnership with the sauce. The bottle suggests it accompanies steak and sausages well, so I expected a more robust flavour than Heinz’s flagship product offers.
I cooked up the sausages and partnered with some fresh garden peas and a decent serving of McCain’s Skin On Rustic Oven Chips. I often find oven chips in general work better with ketchups - by their very nature they tend to be drier and more receptive to the addition of a sauce; fried chips not so much.
It’s fair to say that the bolder flavour of this blend catches you on the nose a little more quickly than ordinary ketchup, the use of brown sugar in the recipe gives the sauce a truly luxurious, rounded taste and when mixed with a fork of sausage and chip, healthy latherings of the sauce were quickly the norm throughout the meal.
I have to say I was quickly enamoured with just how deliciously well it worked with these sausages and choosing a thick cut chip was vital; the whole thing together was nothing short of wonderful.
To the naked eye, the balsamic vinegar mix is noticeably darker and I don’t believe it will work with every ketchup-partnered meal. Bacon sandwiches, for instance, will continue to benefit from the sweeter, easier-going flavour of the classic ketchup and thinner chips, french fries etc. too will be better with the original sauce.
I do however believe Heinz have producer a total winner here. I’m looking forward to giving it a go with a beef-based meal, I’ve got my eye on a steak treat at the weekend and intend to give it some lashings of this when that rolls around.
The sauce itself goes on sale in supermarkets fairly soon but is a strictly limited edition and on the evidence of this first meal, will catch on very quickly indeed.
Highly recommended.
songs
summer camp - ‘ghost train’
james blake - ‘limit to your love’
my chemical romance - ‘na na na’
kelis - ‘a capella’
the bees - ‘winter rose’
katy b - ‘katy on a mission’
chapel club - ‘o maybe i’
perfume genius - ‘mr peterson’
the walkmen - ‘angela surf city’
albums/eps
big boi - ‘sir lucious left foot’
deftones - ‘diamond eyes’
forest swords - ‘dagger paths’
washington - ‘i believe you liar’
foals - ‘total life forever’
los campesinos! - ‘romance is boring’
i’ve forgotten loads. this is what was in my head as enjoying this year so i can remember by the end of the next
So, Oprah is running a competition in the US to find one person to host their own show that will air in her slot, it can be basically about anything at all. Step in Zach Anner, a guy with cerebral palsy who has an idea for a travel show “for people who never thought they could travel”.
This is his audition:
Amazing. He’s basically a natural. So the video gets posted to Reddit and it’s losing on votes in the competition by miles, from there it gets posted to 4chan, Digg and John Mayer’s website. By the time Zach gets back from his weekend in Dallas, he’s massively far in the lead. Check his reaction and thanks in this video:
It’s another story we’ve all heard before - people power mustered via social media and Anonymous combines to promote a greater good, but it’s just such a magnificent story I had to share.
Oh and check out what John Mayer sent to Zach via YouTube earlier…!
The FA taking no action over Steven Gerrard’s assault on Michael Brown last night is an utter disgrace and only serves to support the idea that the FA stand by the England players and Premier League ‘superstars’ and shit on those beneath from a great fucking height.
Well, you know what, the FA? I can’t wait to fuck off your stupid Premier League, the league responsible for 53% of ALL of Europe’s football debt, the league that lets a club be taken over repeatedly by unscrupulous and ill-meaning investors.
I’ll miss playing big teams, but I won’t miss being part of a disgraceful circle-jerk circus that commits repeated bukkake on the teams beneath the Euro qualifiers on a continuing and unchecked basis.
Fuck you The Football Asssociation, fuck you the Premier League. Thank fuck for ESPN’s Bundesliga coverage.
Continuing my never-ending quest to make the word ‘crablin’ both an internationally recognised brand and synonymous with ‘excellence’, I’m pleased to announce the incredibly long-awaited launch of the world’s greatest e-mail service, with unrivalled BlackBerry and iPhone push features, a fabulous mobile client, synchronised calendar, contacts and more.
That’ll be because it’s just Gmail running on my server, right? RIGHT!
If you want a new e-mail address and are looking for something a bit different (yourname@crablin.com is SO hot right now) as well as something that’s going to fuel my already raging ego, just drop me a message on here or email me {at} crablin /dot/ com
WHATEVER NEXT?!
1. Modern Warfare 2 (360)
2. Left4Dead 2 (360)
3. FIFA 10 (360/PS3)
4. Battlefield 1943 (360)
5. Flower (PS3)
In my short but varied career, I’ve had the pleasure of working on both sides of the artist fence. For three years, during my tenure editing a music website I had the excitement of incredible new bands arriving and hearing them produce their first released fruits; watching as everyone slowly caught on and expressed their equal, undying love for them.
Now, as a manager, I get to source new bands (and some established) and be the first person in the world that gets to hear those aforementioned fruits - holding them close to my chest, so carefully, the fear of ‘The L Word’ hanging over my head. Leak.
This isn’t an essay designed to tell you just to stop downloading albums illegally. It’s not even a vain attempt to make those who feel its okay to upload unreleased copyrighted material to the internet to win brownie points on members-only torrent sites or on some rapidshare link message board. All I want to point out is why you might want to just search yourself and have a think before doing either in the future.
I have to take the most recent example that’s close to me, the leaking of Los Campesinos!’s next album, the excellent ‘Romance is Boring’, due on Wichita in February.
Having been on the editorial side of things when Los Campesinos! were ‘discovered’ a few years back, I’ve excitedly watch them grow and mature into the band they are today. With it, I’ve had the pleasure of a passing friendship with the band and most pertinently their emotional beating heart and frontman, Gareth.
What I think a lot of people need to understand when they upload the album they’ve been sent, in good faith for review purposes, and it ends up in the hands of the fans before professionally (and creatively) intended is the emotional impact that it can have on the artist.
Imagine you’ve spent two years of your life creating something. When you finally got to show those whose opinions you value more than anyone else’s (in this case, your fanbase) you want to be able to do it in a fashion that’s most fitting your work. You want to be able to show the lyrics you’ve poured you heart, soul, blood, sweat and tears into. You want to show off the beautiful artwork you’ve commissioned to frame your songs; artwork that yet another person in the creative process has poured THEMselves into.
The bottom line and the sole thing no one can argue with is this: these albums are not your work. ‘Romance is Boring’ isn’t your album to do with as you see fit. It’s not your decision to have people hear any album before the artist and their representatives intended. It’s not your right to download an album before it comes out, listen to it once through and write some half-arsed opinion on some message board somewhere. When you’ve not paid for something that was crafted by the hand of another man, you entirely lose your right to critique it.
This is, once again, NOT a rant against illegal downloading, nor is it me saying that I can’t understand those who download an album before it’s released; I can totally understand it. You’re fucking excited to hear an album by your favourite band - everyone gets that.
All I’m asking, all anyone is asking, is before doing any of this, please try and remember what I’ve said. You’re not just taking money out of the bands pockets, or the label’s coffers. You’re taking something away from the artist emotionally. You’re taking away their right to present themselves, to you, in whichever way they see fit.
